#oc is similiar age as stan twins

[vixnovacoda]

How The Pine Trees Fall || Chapter 1

Ford Pines x OC (Post-finale)

Word count: 1.6k

[AO3 version here]

Transcript of recorded statement 10.1: > A forest should be a haven. But, here in Gravity Falls, Oregon, there’s a spot where all is dead and your paranoia licks at your neck. Through the typical person’s eye, it would be believable to assume nothing inhabits this strange corner in what is already a strange town…

This was it. The sun was setting, and this was it.

    Lorelai was sure of it.

    This was the sort of instinct her peers would chastise her for. ‘Science isn’t founded by the reflux in your gut,’ they would probably say. But, she had never been wrong before and why would today be any different? She’d prove them all wrong. Lorelai held the tape recorder steady, the whirring of tape mixing with the forest’s empty silence echoing like an orchestral backing track for her recording.

> But I believe this place may be the key to discovering entities beyond our comprehension.

So far the forest was nothing but tree after tree for a thousand paces. A thousand. Paces. A thousand since leaving her old sailor of a car. A thousand under the beating sun. A thousand since she hit record. But, it was only ten when the hairs on her body stood on edge and the notches in the trees looked more and more like eyeballs that followed her every move. A part of the Gravity Falls forest that defied all understanding. It was the way the ginormous trees stood as still as sticks in the lofty breeze, the chill that hit her like a ton of bricks the instant she stepped foot in this quadrant, and how silence permeated all things that even the leaves being crushed beneath Lorelai’s boots were quieter than a breath. If you dropped a pin here the whole thing might just collapse.

    “BOOP!” Out of nowhere, a high-pitched voice reverberated within the area, sending Lorelai jumping out of her skin. Heart pounding and half expecting something to happen, she whipped her head around in all directions before landing her sights across the way from her and on a young girl that could have been no older than eleven or twelve with a sweater so colourful that it made the forest look like a graveyard – which was a less unlikely theory by the minute. 

    “Hello tree that looks like a face!” joyfully exclaimed the girl, waving to a tree… that actually kind of did look like a face. Lorelai wished she had seen stranger sights than a child hopping and skipping and greeting every little thing unphased in a place that made her skin crawl, but it was quickly becoming one of her top moments.

    “Mabel, come on, we’re supposed to be taking this seriously,” groaned a boy that walked out from the clearing who looked almost identical to the girl, right down to the mousy brown hair that he covered with a cap. Fraternal twins, probably. Siblings, definitely.

    “But, Dipper, I am being serious,” debated the girl, Mabel, putting her hands on her hips in a mocking manner.

    Dipper sighed.

    Mabel giggled.

    “Let’s just focus, please.”

    “Aye, aye, captain!—” suddenly the young girl yelped, stopping short from a fall into a hole whose size Lorelai couldn’t predict, but it must have been big for Mabel’s eyes to turn into dinner plates. “Whoa, that was close.”

    Dipper closed the book in his hand. “This is what I’m talking about. If you had fallen in that hole, how am I supposed to explain that?”

    “We got ambushed by a bunch of gnomes?”

    A groan, deep and depleted. He mumbled something under his breath and went back to moving on ahead, a string of red yarn following behind them as it was attached to the pair of them.

    Lorelai tilted her head quizzically as she watched on. She noted how they were both unfazed by all that was around them, how the girl waved and greeted everything they walked past, and how no one else seemed to be nearby. They were in the middle of nowhere. The town of Gravity Falls was miles off and Lorelai should’ve been more concerned, but she shrugged it off. Their parents were probably not that far off, and there were other matters that warranted getting back to, like her work. 

    “What’s the worst that could happen?” she told herself.

    Now that she thought about it, a lot actually.

    “Maybe…” No. No. This, her magnum opus, came first.

> Note to future self, cut the last five minutes.

Now it was her turn to sigh. This was going to be hell to edit and transcribe later. Continuing on her straight path and adjusting her glasses, she kept her head down, fussing with the oversized fit of her brown corduroy jacket against the sudden oncoming breeze that seemed to chastise her decision. But she wasn’t so easily swayed by weather (the snow storm in the Alps learnt that the hard way).

    Superstitions and omens, on the other hand. She’d rather play with caution.

> Gravity Falls is the epicentre of all things unbelievable, strange and mysterious. Many things lurk here, hiding in the shadows or in the plain light of day like a gust that pushes you around with the strength of a human being. The question you have to ask yourself is how many are there, what are they, and, most importantly, what are their intentions?

So a compromise – she had to walk past them anyway – she’d keep an eye on them until they were out of sight. Lorelai could do that. They’ll be safe and out of mind, her worries will be gone, and she can finish what she came to do. She just had to keep walking and minding her own business.

    Just keep walking.

    Stepping out into eyesight, Lorelai carefully stepped over the laxened bit of yarn and gave a curt, passing by wave with a small smile fixed onto her face. The shine of the sun almost blinding her from where she stood at the other end of the clearing.

> Good?

Mabel was the first to wave back. In fact, she was the only one to reciprocate Lorelai’s attempt at friendliness. Dipper just squinted. Quick to pull on his – possible – sister’s arm.

> Bad?

Cellophane wings crunched and snapped. Lorelai lifted her foot. The remnants of a little critter broken beyond repair; a dead butterfly. She winced at the possible effect this small action might have on her possible future timeline, but quickly forgoed any ideas as a splitting sensation rendered her head in agony, stopping her in her tracks.

> Or are they unbound to the strings of our morality?

A tugging from her gut. Something tugged and tugged at her, pulling to explore further, venture deeper and leave it all behind. To forget. Until another pull whipped at her head, the sensation tearing her in half like some rag doll, the stitches unbecoming. What sight befell her eyes was clearer than the midday sun. Inches from Mabel’s feet laid a tarp, camouflaged to blend in against the grass. Undiscerning to those who didn’t look. Mabel didn’t, she just grinned, braces and all; carefree; careless. But, Lorelai, she looked. It was another hole, roughly the same size as the other by a tree nearby. She didn’t know what to do. 

    Her heart pounded.

    Then came the running, feet rushing without care, almost slipping on every step of dirt. A dive and a shove. A blur. Dirt. Darkness. 

    THUD.

    Then pain. Her body jerked out of instinct, which only hurt more. Adrenaline was all but forgotten, it seemed, with each subtle movement or angle of her foot sending her seething behind gritted teeth. Taking the moment to recollect her surroundings, Lorelai knew that the hole wasn’t truly all that deep for someone her height, but given her new injury, getting out alone was going to be impossible.

    She sighed. Laying back and dirtying up her blonde bob as a new pain spread like a searing white-hot burn. God, she was getting too old for this. searing turned boiling, which turned to a steam that blurred her vision as it flashed in and out. Too much to almost even bare. All she could make out was the distant sounds of shouting that echoed out and about.

    The faint smell of cigars lifted from her jacket, wafting up her senses. She remembered where it came from; the memory slowly overlapped with the present. They’re sitting outside. It’s dark out. A diner stood behind the man who joined her, the yellow lights leaving from the interior against the windows framing him as something he was not. She cannot make out his face – the pain is too much – but she knows. She knows him. “Don’t be a hero, Lore, ” said he after taking a drag on his cheap cigar. A habit of his that led to his gruff tone deepening worse with age.

    She probably should have listened. Took his advice for once. But, then again, what sort of idiot digs a big hole in the middle of the woods? She thought. Because who would do that?

    “Oh my,” interrupted a new voice. This time, real, and right above her. Almost… familiar and without the grit.

    Lorelai blinked and used the remainder of her strength to keep her eyes open as the shadow of a man leant over the edge of the hole. The details weren’t clear, however, she could just make out the defined jaw, greying hair and glasses that belonged to the man. 

    “Stan?” the disbelieved whisper came out forced from her mouth. It was all she could do before the weightlessness kicked in and all was returned to darkness.

---

In her subconscious, the memory continued. It was her turn to speak and unpleasant and bitter she spoke. “Well, maybe you and I have a different way of seeing the world.” The end played itself over and over again before descending into the madness of a broken whirring of a tape stuck on repeat.

>Statement abruptly halts. Transcript over.