Mabel woke up to the sun streaking in through the window, and her husband long gone, his side of the bed cold and rumpled.
Her face screwed up into a frown. Gosh darnit. She had asked everyone over and over and over again that she didn’t need to be coddled! That included stealing her alarm clock to make her sleep in. Stan needed her help in the Library and-
Oh. Speaking of, there was a note with his writing on her bedstand. Thankfully she was on the right side of the bed to face it- turning over was becoming more and more of a problem this past month.
“You’re due next week. Sleep while you can kiddo.”
Mabel should probably be more upset… but the bed was warm, heated as it was by the fall sun.
Her stomach, which had escaped the covers, lay exposed to the beams of light coming in through the window. Of their own volition, her hands fell to tracing the skin of her belly.
There were stretch marks- oh so many, and it felt like there was a new one every day. Mabel liked her stretch marks- or as she called them, tiger stripes. Here was the big mole that once spent four hours explaining to Dipper wasn’t actually skin cancer, promise. Her belly button had gone from an innie to an outie- that was one change she was a little worried would be permanent. Outies were weird looking, but not the weird she liked. And then there-
Her hand paused.
A large, ropy scar. It had been an inch thick and stretched entirely from rib to rib before she was pregnant, and it had only grown as her stomach did. It was as rough and angry bright red as the day she had gained it. Dipper had fretted at that, offered to get rid of her scar entirely, but Mabel had refused.
She liked that it was gnarly and bright.
She wanted to remember what had happened. No, she wanted to remember that she had survived.
That though she should have died, she continued to live.
Under her hand,a tiny fist, a little foot pressed against her belly, making the skin bulge and pop up slightly, reminders of the new life within.