In their haste, both Dipper and
Torako forgot about the existence of time zones.
“I can’t believe we didn’t think
about the fact it was nighttime here,” Torako muttered as they sat in a public
park. In the distance, Torako could hear the ocean—similar enough to soothe,
off enough to unsettle. “Aren’t you the all-knowing demon?”
“I forgot,” Dipper said. He had on
the hazy semblance of human skin, tight enough around the edges that Torako
wasn’t at all fooled by it. But in the cover of night, to somebody who didn’t
know him, Dipper might be taken for mortal. “I don’t usually have to think
about time zones.”
“All-knowing,” Torako insisted. She
kicked the dirt path in front of them, glared at the public gardens surrounding
a swatch of grass in the center. Some plant across the way was literally
glowing, and she didn’t know if it was magically induced or just bioluminescence.
Dipper didn’t have anything to say
to that. When Torako looked over at him, he had brought his knees up to his
chest and was staring out at the garden. Oh
no, Torako thought. There he goes.
“I shouldn’t have left,” Dipper
said. “If I hadn’t left, Bentley wouldn’t be gone.”
Torako sighed. She leaned back
against the bench and stared up past the canopy of trees into the sky. “Probably,”
she said. Torako watched the stars flicker, trembling under the weight of the
universe’s enormity. She felt it press on her. She was too tired for this.
But she couldn’t be. She couldn’t
be. Her boys depended on her.
Torako spent the next day, night,
and half the day after alternatively sleeping and crying at Officer Nathan’s
apartment. Then, heart still heavy, eyes red and nose stuffed full, she willed
herself to get up. Then, after she managed to do that, she forced herself to
make dinner and stop being such a burden.
“Sweetheart,” Hepsa said when Torako
brought her dinner, her knitting falling off her iron nails, “you didn’t have
to! I was going to call in for food. You need your rest.”
“And you need yours,” Torako said
back. She straightened the jacket Bentley had sigilled for her, back in her
cult hunting days. “Besides, you’ve put up with my caterwauling for the past
what, thirty-six hours? And fed me? It’s fine.” She set the tray down on Hepsa’s
lap, then sat in the stool next to her.
Hepsa frowned. It was intimidating,
and Torako couldn’t stop herself from squirming and glancing away at the
reinforced closet doors.
“They’ll find him. It will be okay.”
Hepsa reached out, and Torako obediently held her rough hand, slightly cool to
the touch from the denseness of Hepsa’s skin.
Torako swallowed and closed her
eyes. They stung. She was sick of crying, but it just wouldn’t stop. She wanted
Dipper. She couldn’t have Dipper unless she went home. She didn’t want to go
home. She wanted Bentley back, and Dipper there, and she had no access to
either of them.
If Dipper had been around more this
last week, she couldn’t help but wonder, would Bentley still be at home? She
pushed the thought aside as soon as she had it, not ready to face the idea.
Hepsa squeezed her hand, lightly,
careful of Torako’s relatively fragile skin. It reminded Torako of Dipper, and she
clenched her teeth to stop herself from turning back into a saltwater fountain.
“They will. You have to have faith.”
Bentley is on film duty. They have gone through thirty-seven takes of this short clip. His arms ache. Torako has not gotten the line with the right intonations, according to Dipper, thirty-three of those thirty-seven times. The four times she has have coincided with one of the twenty-nine times Dipper has tripped over nothing and fallen, hence ruining his own line.
They line up to take the shot again. Bentley raises his arms and ignores the discomfort in his elbows to weakly call, “action.” Torako, sitting on the couch, raises her head and flips her hair, then pushes the shades down her nose. She looks over the top of them at something off the screen. “Here come dat demon,” she says. Bentley still isn’t sure what counts as the right intonation, but he thinks that might be it. Carefully, he pans the phone over to where Dipper is just starting to take off. Bentley holds his breath. Dipper doesn’t even wobble. He zooms by, Bentley following his form, and passes by the couch. As Dipper does so, he calls out, “oh shit, whaddup.” It had taken Dipper two hours to explain the significance of these lines to Bentley and Torako, and Bentley wasn’t even sure if he understood them entirely.
It takes Bentley a moment to realize that they have succeeded. It is a miracle, and a wave of accomplished fatigue overcomes him. He shakily stops capturing film. Then he takes a few faltering steps to the couch, where at last he will have rest. Torako and Dipper are high-fiving. Dipper asks to see the film, and Bentley hands the phone over, face pressed into the back of the couch.
He hears the last ten seconds of their lives replayed. Dipper and Torako are silent, and then Torako says, “Awesome, we did it!”
Dipper then says, “No, the camera was shaking whenever it stopped on something. We can’t do that. It’s not smooth enough. Not cool enough.”
Bentley pulls his face from the back of the couch. He stares at Dipper. Then, slowly, without a word, he stands up and leaves. Later, he hears that Dipper’s attempts to have the nightmares film ended in disaster.
HEY HEADS UP At the end of the chapter, there is a very short section with non-consensual kissing. This is a dream. It doesn’t actually happen to the character in question. BUT it still happens and you need to be aware of that.
Also please do not expect another chapter so fast because this was a literal miracle. Also I was excited to write this, so it happened. 😀 Enjoy!!
Wednesday went by in the same rush
of slow-cook tension as the day before it. Torako, exhausted from her bout of
sleep paralysis the night before, and Bentley, exhausted by the idea of her
targeted by the very demon she’s hunting, decided to take Thursday afternoon
off. Bentley invited Meung-soo over for dinner, reasoning that it was less expensive
anyways. Meung-soo agreed and was apparently excited enough to send Bentley a
virtual sticker. He gushed over it for ages. Torako agreed to be on call for
the evening in exchange for not having to physically be at the police station.
Most of it was a waiting game at that point, and Torako would rather be called
in when she was needed rather than sit around and do nothing. The magical
creature disappearances had died down after they’d been connected to the
cultists, the robbery at the magitech appliance store had been labeled a dead
end, and nobody was turning up incapable of moving. Torako worried, of
course—why did cultists need that many magical creatures? Why was the demon
taking so long to strike? Were they summoning more demons?—but there was
honestly nothing to do about it.
Which is why, at 15:22, she was
pushing a cart along at the closest Mizzle Twizzle Market and pulling things
off the highest shelves for Bentley. For example, a package of assorted specialty
fruits from the Californian Island Federation that he needed for dessert.
“Why do they insist on putting that
stuff up high, anyways?” Bentley groused, ticking the fruits off their shopping
list on his phone. “It’s so stupid.”
“Not priority for shoppers,” Torako
said. “Or they hate short people.” She put the bag in the cart and leaned
against the shelf. “What’s next?”
Bentley muttered to himself for a
moment before biting his lip. “I have a bunch of veg on the list next, and
after that is fish, but I could swear there was something else before we got
there. Bread? No, not bread.”
“Were we just shopping for tonight
or for later as well?” Torako bent over and looked at the list from above. She
wasn’t a champion at upside-down reading, but she was pretty proficient.
“I was only thinking tonight,” Bentley
said, moving out of the way of another shopper and their two rambunctious
children. “But I just can’t think of what other fruit we’d need for dinner…”
Torako scrolled down the list with
her forefinger and let out a sound of realization at the same time Bentley did.
Nearly in tandem, they said, “The pineapple!”
A/N: seVEN MONTHS LATER WE’RE still gearing up. It’s okay. I’m thinking maybe a chapter or two until big thing one happens. But who knows!! Things can change. This chapter, we meet an Acacia reincarnation!!
Dipper, when he takes Lata to
Australia, fully intends on keeping them close to hand. Safe activities only!
No petting dangerous animals. No jumping from rock outcropping to rock outcropping.
No toddling close to that creek over there with the increasingly loud bunyip.
Dipper looked up from the oddly-energized rock he was holding as Lata approached
the child-eating creature.
“Lata!” He yelled, standing and
brushing his human hands off on his knees. “Lata, no, no, come back, that’s not
safe!”
Lata turned around, put their hands
on their hips. “Why? He doesn’t look so bad!”
Dipper observed at the monstrous,
oddly-jointed creature. It looked like it was made of cobbled-together animal
parts. He could smell it, just a little, and the moistness of the scent had him
thinking of the Everglades in summer. Its single, bulging eye was fixed
hungrily on Lata, or rather on Henry’s antlers.
If it weren’t for that last, unsettling bit (the bunyip had
no right), he might be inclined to agree with his charge. He stepped forward
and held a hand out to Lata. “No. Come.”
“We haven’t even seen any
kangaroos,” Lata whined. They stomped their foot. The bunyip inched forward on
its odd forearms, half-out of the creek. It bellowed. “You promised me
kangaroos!”
Dipper glared at the bunyip. It
didn’t pay him any attention. He bristled; yes, Henry’s antlers were
fascinating, but they were his and
were from him and also he held far
more power than a pair of measly antlers, so the slight was unforgiveable.
“Yes, I did, and yes, we’ll find them. Lata, step away from the nightmarish
child-eating monster.”
Torako buys (or makes) him lots of things like that. She’ll see some graphic tee in a store and get a big grin as she imagines Bentley – or Dipper – wearing it, or at least the looks on their faces when she presents it to them. It brings her joy.
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