seiya234:

Henry looked up from his plate of waffles. 

There was something different about Mabel this morning.

He took another bite, noting that one of the kids managed to
sneak real maple syrup in the cart when they went to the store with Stan.

He looked at Mabel again, and sighed.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?”

 Mabel giggled, and the antlers that had been crowning her
head, matching his macabre trophy for trophy, poofed back into the ether.

“That didn’t take you long.” 

“I… there’s nothing, um, wrong is there?”

Mabel’s brow furrowed, and her waffle quickly became topped
with pickles and sour cream.

“Why would you say that?”

“I haven’t dreamt about my wife since.. since-“

“-the time you got kidnapped into a hell forest and had a
major identity crisis?” Mabel finished for him, stuffing the waffle topped with
deviled eggs and chocolate syrup into her mouth in one go.

“Er. Yes.”

Another waffle poofed onto Mabel’s plate. He continued
eating his; after all, they didn’t have maple syrup back at the house.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?”

Henry stiffened. “Yes, of course, always. It’s just… I didn’t
expect to see you again. You’re the
same, aren’t you? From the forest?”

Mabel closed her eyes, and when she opened them they were
the same flashing rainbow he remembered.

“But then again,” Henry went on. “You told me back then you
were a hallucination, an image projected onto the world by my brain-” 

“I didn’t say it all like that,” Mabel interjected, spraying
Miracle Whip and Reddi Whip in equal quantities on her waffle.

“Mm.” Henry finished his waffle. Immediately, another one
appeared on his plate. He was getting kind of full… but it was a dream, and
this tasted exactly like the syrup that Aunt Mary used to tap from her trees.

“So my question then is, are you just a memory reappearing
in my dream? Are you an actor in the dreamscape, like every other piece of my
dreams ever? Or are you… are you real?”

“Hmmm.” Mabel put her fork down. The icon on her sweater
turned into the Cheshire Cat. “What is
real, Henry?”

“Mabel-“

“What is a Mabel?”

Henry sighed. It hurt, sometimes, when Mabel would get goofy
with him when he was asking a genuine question, and it hurt here too. “Okay,
fine, whatever-“

A warm hand, that shifted between the tight skin of youth
and the wrinkles and spots of age, touched his. He looked up into Mabel’s
swirling oil slick eyes.

“Stay. Please? I just… wanted to see you, again.” Mabel
blushed. “In a nicer place this time, without all the dying and angst.”

“I-“

“I even asked Mabel Prime’s permission-“

There was so much to unpack from that but all he could say
was, “Mabel Prime?”

“We were thinking Big Mabel or Other Mabel, but Mabel Prime
won out. Anyway, she told me she didn’t mind sharing, especially with herself
so here I am and here you are…”

Henry looked at her hand on top of his, then covered it with
his free one.

 “Here we are indeed.” He looked into her eyes as the kitchen
faded into grey around them. 

“What would you like to do Mabel?”