Return to Rothezar - Prologue
Title: Return to Rothezar - Prologue
Author: chilibreath
X-posted to: Tumblr / FF.net / AO3
Rating: T
Summary: The Pines family returns to Gravity Falls for the summer of 2013, this time accompanied by Dipper and Mabel's parents. But they're not the only ones coming back...
Author’s Note: This continues directly after the last chapter of Not What It Seems. There was another part to the story of Maegella, and it took me months to set a cohesive plot to the sequel and a couple of weeks to begin writing again.
For @eregyrn-falls who talked me into kickstarting the writing flow. :)
June 2013
Fiddleford McGucket looks a lot better these days after becoming insanely rich. Before he left Gravity Falls with his twin, Stanford Pines had teamed up with a reluctant Tate McGucket and managed to convince Fiddleford to wear new clothes and shoes. It ended with a compromise: Fiddleford wore a shirt under his new overalls and he only wears shoes for “special occasions”, like eating out at Greasy’s Diner. However, there was nothing friend nor son could do to convince Fiddleford to let go of the patched and frayed brown hat that he snatched from a scarecrow. The cast on his arm was removed, but was promptly replaced with what looked like a red fiberglass replica of the cast.
When he was asked by Soos about this, Fiddleford replied, “My arm felt naked!” Soos nodded in solemn understanding.
Nowadays, his posture is now much straighter, his (horrible, screeching) voice toned down a bit, and he cleaned up nicely after his “wizard’s beard” was trimmed to half its length. Some of the townsfolk attributes this to a visit from Wendy and Soos around February. The former employees of the Mystery Shack had returned from a quick “visit” with the Pines family in California, and the day after they returned they headed straight for McGucket’s mansion.
Presently, Fiddleford was out at the front of the former Northwest manor. Spry and agile for his age, he hops out from an opening of a huge round metal hull that was propped up with wooden beams on the sides. Next to the fountain and lying on its side was the head and neck of a mythical sea monster. Fiddleford jumped nimbly on the ground and took off his welding helmet.
“Won’t be long now, Gobblewonker,” he said to the head happily, shutting off his welding torch before putting it on a nearby table. “I’ll finish ya before the kids get here next week and we’ll go out on the lake and scare the willies out of ev’rybody!”
He starts whistling a happy tune as he saunters back to the manor. Tonight, he’s hungry for some grub from Greasy’s Diner.
XXX
She crashed on the dusty floor of a dark and forbidding place.
After a moment, Maegella carefully pushed herself up to a sitting position, holding herself steady to let the dizziness pass. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but darkness. She shifted into a kneeling position and held out her left hand, palm-side up.
“Naur,” she whispered, frowning as she concentrated. This was a lot more complicated than wielding a staff, on top of summoning fire.
From the palm of her hand came a burst of blue flame. It illuminated her hand, making the sleeve of her silver robes shimmer in the light. With one hand occupied, she awkwardly pushes herself off the floor. She raises her hand out and turns around, looking at the area she was in. She could make out the rocky formation of the floor, a partition made of metal, and the walls carved from earth. It seemed like she was in a cave of some sort.
It was also familiar to her somehow.
She raised the hand with the flame and looked up. The light wasn’t enough to see the ceiling in this place. But if this was the place she thought it was…
"Koron en' naur!"
A ball of blue flame shot out from her hand. It struck the ceiling and briefly illuminated the earth above. Maegella’s eyes widened when she saw the corner of an opening. She sent out two more fireballs before she found what she was looking for: a large, jagged opening in the rock, but something seems to be covering it.
She took a deep breath and raised both her hands above her head. “Faina templa!” she yelled.
This time, great bolts of blue energy shot out from both palms and hit the ceiling.
BLAM!
After the debris stopped falling, Maegella grinned as she looked up; she could see the night sky from the hole she made. From the folds of her robes, she took out a small silver disc the size of a tiny teacup saucer and dropped it. The disc stopped falling and hovered inches from the ground. She tapped it with her foot and it began to grow in size until it was roughly the size of a manhole cover. She stepped on the Hover Disc and started flying up toward the hole she made in the ceiling.
When she cleared the opening, she breathed in deeply and turned around. Before her was a familiar dwelling with a triangular roof and a square body made of wood. The last time she was here, the house and grounds were covered with snow. Now, it was warm and dry and green all around.
“I have returned,” she whispered, a sense of relief and wonder creeping into her voice. “This is Soos’ home!”
Maegella moved away from the large hole in the ground and floated away to where she knew the entrance was. She felt giddy with excitement; she missed the friends she had made from this plane of existence.
She clasped her hands over her mouth at the thought that she would see him again.
She reached the front door and stepped off her Hover Disc. She tucked a strand of dark red hair behind her ear and gently knocked on the door.
After a few moments, she stepped back, frowning. She walked towards one of the windows next to the door and peered inside.
She remembered Soos saying that the front of this house serves as the “gift shop”, where people buy trinkets (possibly as gifts to others, Maegella thought then). From the light on the porch, she could see inside the gift shop. There was no one inside.
And then she realized that if Soos, Melody and Abuelita were inside, they would have heard her blow up the cover on the fissure.
“Where did they go?” she wondered, stepping back on the Hover Disc. She floated away from the Shack and up over the treetops. “Perhaps they went on holiday…”
XXX
“Goodnight ev’rybody!” Fiddleford called out as he and Tate stepped out of Greasy’s Diner. Strapped to the older man’s chest via baby carrier was a large and very well-fed raccoon. Apparently, the Huggy Wuvvy Tummy Bundle also works for Raccoon Wives.
“Welp, time to git on home!” said Fiddleford, leaning down to kiss her furry head. “I’m so glad we could have this git-together and spend time as a family.”
“Yep,” Tate said in his stoic voice and patted his father’s skinny shoulder. Fiddleford smiled; his son wasn’t much for conversation. In fact, their reconciliation last year was the most they have talked in years.
Father and son hopped into a brown pickup truck and started driving back to the manor. Fiddleford and Raccoon Wife provided the background noise on the drive back home, mostly chattering from the latter and the former’s excitement at receiving visitors at his grand new home in the coming week. They were halfway home when the pickup’s headlights lit on a figure standing by the trees. No, they weren’t standing; they were walking, but not in a straight line.
Something was wrong.
“Hornswaggle m’goat knees, stop the car Tate!” Fiddleford cried out. “We gotta help ‘em!”
Tate immediately parked to the side and before he could turn off the engine, his father had jumped out of the truck and ran towards the woman in silver with Raccoon Wife still strapped to his chest. When he got closer, he slowed down as he heard the stranger speak.
“Stop…please, stop…Mani uma lle merna?” she whimpered.
She wore what looked like a long silver gown, with a rip on the right sleeve and stains on the same side. Her dark red hair was wild and sticking up in places and partially covered in leaves. Fiddleford immediately felt sorry for this woman. He remembered living in the dump when his mind was ruined by the Memory Gun, and the kindness that went his way were few and precious to him.
“Pardon me, miss, but are ya in need of some assistance?” Fiddleford asked softly, but it was enough to startle the woman. She turned swiftly to face him, and Fiddleford mustered a kind smile in an attempt to calm her down, poor thing. Her gray eyes were huge with fright on an oval face and her lower lip was trembling. There was even a smudge of dirt on her straight nose.
The woman looked from his face to a point on his chest. Fiddleford looked down. “Oh, don’t mind ‘er, miss,” he chuckled. “She’s well-fed and content, she won’t harm ya none. She ain’t the jealous type!” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Ya look like yer in need of some assistance. It ain’t safe out here at this time o’ the night.”
She opened and closed her mouth, somewhat at a loss for words, before she managed to say, “I-I am lost. I was l-looking for my friends and I-I fell and got lost.”
She looked up at a point on Fiddleford’s right; Tate had stepped forward, looking between the strangely-dressed woman and his father. The senior McGucket looked at her in concern before stepping forward cautiously.
“Tell ya what? We’re gonna take ya with us and getcha cleaned up. Ya can sleep at our place an’ tomorrow, we’re gonna help ya find these friends o’ yers. Ya can tell us on the way back home,” he offered. “And I ain’t takin’ no fer an answer! As ya can see here, these woods ain’t safe this time o’ the night.”
Behind Fiddleford, Tate nodded in agreement. Though he wasn’t fond of strangers, even he wouldn’t want to leave the woman out here in the middle of the night. The woman blinked.
“You would do that for me?” she asked in surprise. When both men started nodding (including the raccoon), she gave them a small smile. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She accepted Fiddleford’s outstretched hand (which was covered in some strange glove) and limped slowly back to the pickup truck.
“The name’s Fiddleford, by the way,” he said cheerfully. “Fiddleford McGucket! And this here is m’son, Tate!”
She nodded at the two of them and said, “My name is Maegella.”
Author: chilibreath
X-posted to: Tumblr / FF.net / AO3
Rating: T
Summary: The Pines family returns to Gravity Falls for the summer of 2013, this time accompanied by Dipper and Mabel's parents. But they're not the only ones coming back...
Author’s Note: This continues directly after the last chapter of Not What It Seems. There was another part to the story of Maegella, and it took me months to set a cohesive plot to the sequel and a couple of weeks to begin writing again.
For @eregyrn-falls who talked me into kickstarting the writing flow. :)
June 2013
Fiddleford McGucket looks a lot better these days after becoming insanely rich. Before he left Gravity Falls with his twin, Stanford Pines had teamed up with a reluctant Tate McGucket and managed to convince Fiddleford to wear new clothes and shoes. It ended with a compromise: Fiddleford wore a shirt under his new overalls and he only wears shoes for “special occasions”, like eating out at Greasy’s Diner. However, there was nothing friend nor son could do to convince Fiddleford to let go of the patched and frayed brown hat that he snatched from a scarecrow. The cast on his arm was removed, but was promptly replaced with what looked like a red fiberglass replica of the cast.
When he was asked by Soos about this, Fiddleford replied, “My arm felt naked!” Soos nodded in solemn understanding.
Nowadays, his posture is now much straighter, his (horrible, screeching) voice toned down a bit, and he cleaned up nicely after his “wizard’s beard” was trimmed to half its length. Some of the townsfolk attributes this to a visit from Wendy and Soos around February. The former employees of the Mystery Shack had returned from a quick “visit” with the Pines family in California, and the day after they returned they headed straight for McGucket’s mansion.
Presently, Fiddleford was out at the front of the former Northwest manor. Spry and agile for his age, he hops out from an opening of a huge round metal hull that was propped up with wooden beams on the sides. Next to the fountain and lying on its side was the head and neck of a mythical sea monster. Fiddleford jumped nimbly on the ground and took off his welding helmet.
“Won’t be long now, Gobblewonker,” he said to the head happily, shutting off his welding torch before putting it on a nearby table. “I’ll finish ya before the kids get here next week and we’ll go out on the lake and scare the willies out of ev’rybody!”
He starts whistling a happy tune as he saunters back to the manor. Tonight, he’s hungry for some grub from Greasy’s Diner.
XXX
She crashed on the dusty floor of a dark and forbidding place.
After a moment, Maegella carefully pushed herself up to a sitting position, holding herself steady to let the dizziness pass. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but darkness. She shifted into a kneeling position and held out her left hand, palm-side up.
“Naur,” she whispered, frowning as she concentrated. This was a lot more complicated than wielding a staff, on top of summoning fire.
From the palm of her hand came a burst of blue flame. It illuminated her hand, making the sleeve of her silver robes shimmer in the light. With one hand occupied, she awkwardly pushes herself off the floor. She raises her hand out and turns around, looking at the area she was in. She could make out the rocky formation of the floor, a partition made of metal, and the walls carved from earth. It seemed like she was in a cave of some sort.
It was also familiar to her somehow.
She raised the hand with the flame and looked up. The light wasn’t enough to see the ceiling in this place. But if this was the place she thought it was…
"Koron en' naur!"
A ball of blue flame shot out from her hand. It struck the ceiling and briefly illuminated the earth above. Maegella’s eyes widened when she saw the corner of an opening. She sent out two more fireballs before she found what she was looking for: a large, jagged opening in the rock, but something seems to be covering it.
She took a deep breath and raised both her hands above her head. “Faina templa!” she yelled.
This time, great bolts of blue energy shot out from both palms and hit the ceiling.
BLAM!
After the debris stopped falling, Maegella grinned as she looked up; she could see the night sky from the hole she made. From the folds of her robes, she took out a small silver disc the size of a tiny teacup saucer and dropped it. The disc stopped falling and hovered inches from the ground. She tapped it with her foot and it began to grow in size until it was roughly the size of a manhole cover. She stepped on the Hover Disc and started flying up toward the hole she made in the ceiling.
When she cleared the opening, she breathed in deeply and turned around. Before her was a familiar dwelling with a triangular roof and a square body made of wood. The last time she was here, the house and grounds were covered with snow. Now, it was warm and dry and green all around.
“I have returned,” she whispered, a sense of relief and wonder creeping into her voice. “This is Soos’ home!”
Maegella moved away from the large hole in the ground and floated away to where she knew the entrance was. She felt giddy with excitement; she missed the friends she had made from this plane of existence.
She clasped her hands over her mouth at the thought that she would see him again.
She reached the front door and stepped off her Hover Disc. She tucked a strand of dark red hair behind her ear and gently knocked on the door.
After a few moments, she stepped back, frowning. She walked towards one of the windows next to the door and peered inside.
She remembered Soos saying that the front of this house serves as the “gift shop”, where people buy trinkets (possibly as gifts to others, Maegella thought then). From the light on the porch, she could see inside the gift shop. There was no one inside.
And then she realized that if Soos, Melody and Abuelita were inside, they would have heard her blow up the cover on the fissure.
“Where did they go?” she wondered, stepping back on the Hover Disc. She floated away from the Shack and up over the treetops. “Perhaps they went on holiday…”
XXX
“Goodnight ev’rybody!” Fiddleford called out as he and Tate stepped out of Greasy’s Diner. Strapped to the older man’s chest via baby carrier was a large and very well-fed raccoon. Apparently, the Huggy Wuvvy Tummy Bundle also works for Raccoon Wives.
“Welp, time to git on home!” said Fiddleford, leaning down to kiss her furry head. “I’m so glad we could have this git-together and spend time as a family.”
“Yep,” Tate said in his stoic voice and patted his father’s skinny shoulder. Fiddleford smiled; his son wasn’t much for conversation. In fact, their reconciliation last year was the most they have talked in years.
Father and son hopped into a brown pickup truck and started driving back to the manor. Fiddleford and Raccoon Wife provided the background noise on the drive back home, mostly chattering from the latter and the former’s excitement at receiving visitors at his grand new home in the coming week. They were halfway home when the pickup’s headlights lit on a figure standing by the trees. No, they weren’t standing; they were walking, but not in a straight line.
Something was wrong.
“Hornswaggle m’goat knees, stop the car Tate!” Fiddleford cried out. “We gotta help ‘em!”
Tate immediately parked to the side and before he could turn off the engine, his father had jumped out of the truck and ran towards the woman in silver with Raccoon Wife still strapped to his chest. When he got closer, he slowed down as he heard the stranger speak.
“Stop…please, stop…Mani uma lle merna?” she whimpered.
She wore what looked like a long silver gown, with a rip on the right sleeve and stains on the same side. Her dark red hair was wild and sticking up in places and partially covered in leaves. Fiddleford immediately felt sorry for this woman. He remembered living in the dump when his mind was ruined by the Memory Gun, and the kindness that went his way were few and precious to him.
“Pardon me, miss, but are ya in need of some assistance?” Fiddleford asked softly, but it was enough to startle the woman. She turned swiftly to face him, and Fiddleford mustered a kind smile in an attempt to calm her down, poor thing. Her gray eyes were huge with fright on an oval face and her lower lip was trembling. There was even a smudge of dirt on her straight nose.
The woman looked from his face to a point on his chest. Fiddleford looked down. “Oh, don’t mind ‘er, miss,” he chuckled. “She’s well-fed and content, she won’t harm ya none. She ain’t the jealous type!” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Ya look like yer in need of some assistance. It ain’t safe out here at this time o’ the night.”
She opened and closed her mouth, somewhat at a loss for words, before she managed to say, “I-I am lost. I was l-looking for my friends and I-I fell and got lost.”
She looked up at a point on Fiddleford’s right; Tate had stepped forward, looking between the strangely-dressed woman and his father. The senior McGucket looked at her in concern before stepping forward cautiously.
“Tell ya what? We’re gonna take ya with us and getcha cleaned up. Ya can sleep at our place an’ tomorrow, we’re gonna help ya find these friends o’ yers. Ya can tell us on the way back home,” he offered. “And I ain’t takin’ no fer an answer! As ya can see here, these woods ain’t safe this time o’ the night.”
Behind Fiddleford, Tate nodded in agreement. Though he wasn’t fond of strangers, even he wouldn’t want to leave the woman out here in the middle of the night. The woman blinked.
“You would do that for me?” she asked in surprise. When both men started nodding (including the raccoon), she gave them a small smile. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She accepted Fiddleford’s outstretched hand (which was covered in some strange glove) and limped slowly back to the pickup truck.
“The name’s Fiddleford, by the way,” he said cheerfully. “Fiddleford McGucket! And this here is m’son, Tate!”
She nodded at the two of them and said, “My name is Maegella.”