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Dipper had found the town with the seaweed forest a few days ago (or weeks ago, or months, time is an illusion and no one really gives a shit), when he had woken up from a nap and the apocalypse that was devastating the planet had been over for thousands of years.
(“Oh, hey,” he had said, while scouring the globe for anyone he knew. “Seaweed doesn’t usually grow there.”)
The town with the seaweed forest was weird as, well, him (nah, nothing was as weird as him). Honestly, it would be the perfect vacation destination if he hadn’t been on vacation for the last hundred thousand years. Views of the sea (or, rather, the lack of), streets that reeked of fear and despair, imitation sea serpents in the fire pond…
Wait, imitation sea serpents in the fire pond?
Dipper floated down to the fire pond in question and, yep, that was a genetically-engineered faux-sea serpent.
“Hey,” he said to it. “You’re a genetically-engineered faux-sea serpent. How’s that going for you?”
“I do not know what half of what you just said means.” said the genetically-engineered faux-sea serpent.
“Do you have a name, genetically-engineered faux-sea serpent? I’m getting tired of calling you “genetically-engineered faux-sea serpent”.”
“Name?”
Oh, damn. This really was a “bred in captivity, doesn’t know anything about the world” kind of situation, huh.
“You know, what people call you?”
“They… they sometimes call me Bombinating Beast.”
“That’s long. How about…” Dipper mentally ran through every possible nickname for ‘Bombinating Beast’. Beastie? No, too vaguely pro-nat. BB? No, that just sounded dumb. What about… “Bomby?”
“Bomby?”
“Yeah! It’s fun, it’s short, it’s cute.”
“I’m Bomby.”
“Heck yes you are, you funky little genetically-engineered faux-sea serpent.”
“Thought I told you to stop calling me that.”
Dipper snorted, and then the snorting gave way to full blown giggles, and then Bomby joined in with their buzzing as well, leaving a humanoid and a large faux-sea serpent shrieking with laughter, sopping wet in a fire pond.
Man, he… he missed this. He missed having friends.
~•~
They were chilling in the fire pond, like they always did. Dipper was slowly making his way through teaching Bomby human vocabulary, and Bomby was telling him how disgusting honeydew melons are.
“That’s all they give you?”
“Yes! And they taste horrible!”
“I’ll fetch you some ice cream. It’s amazing.”
Dipper reached into the mindscape, groped around for a bit, and finally unearthed… nothing. A quick double check confirmed that, yes, Dipper was out of ice cream at possibly the most inopportune time ( a phrase which here means- the worst possible time, we know. shut up, this isn’t your story, snicket.)
“Maybe the town over there has a grocery store or something,” he told Bomby. “I’ll go get some.”
After an uneventful trip to the grocery store (the owner seemed very glad that someone was finally buying something other than honeydew melons), Dipper was left standing in the middle of the street.
Hey, he thought. Is there anything else to do in this tiny town?
His mental search brought up a library. That seemed pretty neat. Well, other than the nonfiction books with information already in his brain and stories with endings he already knew. But it was better than nothing.
~•~
As soon as he entered the library, the librarian, a tall man with a strange haircut, was in front of him.
“I haven’t seen you around town.”
It took a while for Dipper to craft a suitable lie. Of course such a small, empty town wouldn’t get much tourism. “I… uh… I’m staying over here for a bit… before I go back home. It’s… it’s complicated.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion.”
“Why would it be? I made a new friend.”
“Well, do you need any assistance? Or book recommendations?”
“I’m not interested, thank you.”
“Well, then,” the librarian gestured around the room that would have looked cosy when he was younger and more interested in libraries but now just looked small. “Make yourself at home.” He left Dipper to his own devices, and headed across the room to apparently go swat some moths.
Dipper selected a book from a tall, rickety shelf about two sisters, a fire, and a poisoning. He had already read it before (it was a Transcendence-age classic and he was not quite sure how it had landed on library shelves millennia later) and already knew the twist, therefore there was nothing for his omniscience to spoil, and he liked the style of prose. He sat in a comfy armchair and began to read.
He got three chapters in before noticing the boy at the corner table, acting like he definitely wasn’t watching him out of the corner of his eye, oh, no, sir, he’s just reading a boring book about the fishing industry. Dipper winked at him. He pretended not to notice.
He’d later arrive back at the fire pond with two large tubs of chocolate ice cream before learning that Bomby was apparently allergic to chocolate. (He didn’t know that sea serpents, however fake, could vomit. I mean, he knew that, but he’d never really thought about it before.)
But for now, he sat, and he read, and he lost himself in the familiar.
~•~
It had been around a month since he last saw Bomby, and Dipper decided it was probably a good idea to check up on them. Sea serpents didn’t exactly have the longest lifespan.
A quick scan of the fire pond and the surrounding areas found Bomby to not be in the fire pond, as usual, but in the seaweed forest.
He blipped over to them. Maybe they decided to go walking or slithering or something.
It was a nice night, he supposed. Dark and moonless, with a smoking pile of rubble near the seaweed forest - near Bomby - that later revealed itself to be a train wreck.
“Bomby,” he asked into the clear, chilly night, “what exactly did you do?”
“I was called, and I came.”
“Called where? Did everyone get out of the train safe?”
“I was called, and I came. Why didn’t you tell me human flesh tasted so good, Dipper?”
“What- Did you wreck a train and eat everyone inside? That’s not very responsible behavior, Bomby?”
Bomby buzzed noncommittally. “Was fed.”
They were interrupted by the entrance of a figure (a child), walking purposefully into the forest, their aura a mix of worry and melancholy and anger and fear. Dead seaweed crunched under their feet.
“Bomby, I’ll see you again, but I’ve got to go, right now, okay?”
He blipped out of the forest, away from the town, away from Bomby, and settled in the Mindscape. Even though Dipper could probably end all life on Earth with a thought, he was getting the distinct feeling that this was something he couldn’t control, something out of his hands.
He wondered whether the kid in the seaweed forest felt like that too.
~•~
And that was that. Really.
“And that was that” isn’t the best or most satisfying way to end a story, but in this case, it’s the most accurate.
He spent the next few decades hanging with the Flock and restocking his candy stash and checking up on a Ford reincarnation who had almost definitely been kidnapped into a cult, and he never saw Bomby again. By the time he first thought of them again, they were long since dead.
And that was that.
That was how it ended.