Even our view of the night sky was affected by the transcendence. Light shifted and time stuttered to accommodate the abrupt transform of our dimension, and as a result, black holes moved or were formed. Stars that could not be seen on our visible wavelength appeared in new splendor, and stars that had already died thousands of years ago anyway could no longer be seen. Shooting stars and circling planets and revisiting comets that had once flown through the sky like clockwork were thrown out of orbit while natural satellites physically shifted themselves in a strive for equilibrium in this hiccup in the laws of physics.

Suffice to say the Big Dipper at least still dutifully pointed north.

In Mabel’s lifetime, many of the old horoscopes and zodiacs were still being used out of habit, despite most of the constellations being no longer visible. Pretty quickly, however, new celestial calendars were developed based on new constellations, picked and christened by professional stargazers.

Each country had a different name for each pattern of stars, and a different idea of what each might represent. These rose and fell in popularity through trial and error. Some based on the months, others on years.

It took three centuries for one to come out on top.

You see, what Dipper had realized was that, as much as he despised and rejected everything that Bill stood for as a demon in general, there were at least a couple if things that were beginning to make some sense. He had started to accept that attempting to only retain his humanity as a moral compass may not always be feasible, possible, or even ethically right. After all, humans were just as capable of evil, if not more, and on some level he would just have to adapt. He had to cheat if he wanted to avoid being cheated. Kill if he wanted to avoid being controlled. Victimize if he wanted to aid the victim.

Most importantly, however, if he was going to keep track of all these souls, the ones whose current names he may or may not yet know and whose actions seemed to repeat themselves over and over again regardless of the number of rebirths or second chances,

then he was just gonna need a better system.

He already calls his soulmate, Mizar, and the antler one, Woodsman, but what about the rest? As it turns out, people get testy if you refer to them as names from their past lives so that’s out.

Still, there’s only so many times you can call a soul, “that guy”.

His circle couldn’t remain malleable forever. Eventually it would have to solidify, so these souls, the ones that seemed to fly over his view like shooting stars and revisit him over and over, the ones that he was anticipating, he placed on his final circle.

The Twinstar. The Woodsman. The Prophet (Cassie). The Triplet. The Owner (Gideon). The Triangle. Even a couple more.

(And suddenly “shooting star” made so much sense. Suddenly “pine tree” seemed so simple. Suddenly he wondered how long Soos-Journey-Chang-Maria had REALLY been wearing that question mark.)

If anyone ever asked the meanings of these symbols, Alcor would simply answer that he was waiting on them, they were his prophecy. Slowly, the symbols were connected with personalities and great deeds done in demonic history and alcorian myth. The personalities and figures of story referenced in these new stars.

Such is the end of the story of how there came to be new, significantly more accurate horoscopes.

If nothing else, having these special souls recorded in the sky did only good for their memory, and having the celestial zodiac engraved on his summoning circle only solidified his ever present star theme, so Dipper certainly wasn’t complaining.