From Cocoon Forth a Butterfly (1/?): Purity is a Social Contruct
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So this is the beginning of that serial I was talking about a while back. The title (which can and will be shortened to From Cocoon when I talk about it because it’s a mouthful) comes from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name. It is relevant.
This is an AU!AU where what Mabel did in The Last Mabelcorn has a lasting effect on her in the future, post-Transcendence. Aside from ignoring some fanon/canon for the TAU-verse, it pretty well meshes with the actual AU timeline so...
Romance doesn’t play a hard role in this fic, but I am going to sneak in some pretty blatant Henry/Mabel/Paz hints because there’s not enough of that already.
The whole thing is inspired by this post so if you want to spoil the plotline then check it out otherwise, BEWARB!!!
And thank you for reading this. It means a lot to me. :)
"I can't believe you punched a unicorn in the snout!" Dipper laughed as the twins drank Pitt Cola and watched the sunset.
"Just another day in Gravity Falls!" Mabel watched the horizon for any signs of Sev'ral Times. It had been some time since she had last seen them. Also she wondered how they would survive the Oregon winter. If summers in Oregon were cool enough for Mabel to wear sweaters non-stop then winter must be brutal.
Dipper must have noticed her pensive, glossy look because he scootched closer to her on the porch and leaned his head on her shoulder. It was something he hadn't done since they were very little, leaning on his big sis like that. "Penny for your thoughts?"
"You'd spend your entire allowance pretty quick if you did that."
"Well a penny for these thoughts then." Dipper snorted and playfully nudged her with his shoulder. She rested her head on his and sighed.
"That unicorn...it said I wasn't 'pure of heart'. Like, I know that it was just being a butt-face and all...but it really hurt." Mabel took a sip of her Pitt and shook her head. "Why did that hurt so much? I'm the creative one, the cute one, and the spunky one, but why did a comment about my purity bother me?"
Dipper was quiet; the silence stretched forward and even the cicadas halted their song. Just as the bubbling nausea that was rising in Mabel's stomach threatened to spill over, Dipper sat up and spit the pit from his cola out into the yard. "Mabel, look at me."
She met his eyes and he smiled. There was a weariness there, however, that didn't always exist. When did he start to look so worn? "You are a wonderful person, Mabel. You believed me when there was no one else. You backed me up when I thought I was crazy. Heck, you even ruined your own magnum opus just to keep a demon from getting one of the Journals! You are a great person! Who cares what some prissy sword-headed mule thinks? You are Mabel, and you are better than that Princess Celestibellewhatever! Don't ever let anyone tell you differently, kay?"
"Not even you?" She asked, wiping away some tears that had started to bubble over.
"Especially not me," he replied, tussling her hair. She giggled and nodded. "Besides," he added, "What do dumb ol' unicorns know about purity anyway? From what you said, they sounded like they were the worst."
"The absolute worst," she deadpanned. He laughed as well and once again all was well. They continued to watch the sun set, leaning close and simply enjoying each other's company. The cicadas were in full swing again and in the distance one could even hear the quiet cry of a wild boy band. It was a great ending to a not-so-great day.
It was the last calm day of their summer.
Mabel crooned to a fussy Acacia, stirring the sugar in the pot with all the finesse she could muster. She was only ten minutes into the annual making of candy glass for Summerween and already she was covered in gobs of the partially-melted stuff. With her spoon in one hand and her eldest child in the other, she danced over to her tablet and prodded it with a partially-free and completely sugarless finger. Typing in her password (8675, an homage to one of Dipper's favorite old pop songs) she pulled up her e-reader app and pulled up the latest edition of the Gravity Falls Gossiper. Since technology had slowly overrun printed papers (though books were still in high demand) Toby had moved from a small printing press to a digital paper with a dozen different writers of various Transcendental standings. It was nice for him to hire people that the ProNat establishments outside of town wouldn't give a second thought about. It also meant that he had a following very similar to the Quibbler of Harry Potter fame; lots and lots of Equal Rights supporters and not a lot of ProNats.
She found the latest article and set her e-reader to read it aloud while she went back to not making a huge sticky mess in the kitchen. As she stirred the saccharine concoction, she listened intently and rocked Acacia to the soothing bubble of melting sugar.
"Unicorns: A Dying Breed," the stilted voice of the e-reader intoned. She had payed for a voice DLC so that her e-reader would sound like Sigourney Weaver, and there was nothing better than listening to the soothing tones of her long-time celebrity crush reading books to her. Still, that title caught her attention. She listened closer as Sigourney continued. "Many people know that unicorns are, by far, the most reclusive of transcendentals. For a long time it was thought that they had been hunted into extinction long before the Veil was lifted but studies show that the opposite is true. During the time before the Transcendence, they flourished. It wasn't until the Veil began to thin that they began to be at risk.
"Unicorns, when viewed by those who do not have the Sight or some aid, appear to be stallions or mares of high calibre with pure white coats and a strange temperament. Humans began to catch these rare 'white horses' and bred them with their own stock to create some of the most interesting horses ever. That, unfortunately, led to a large amount of the unicorns being captured and dying in captivity due to close contact with iron. Soon the few that remained hid away and more dangerous myths about the unicorns began to arise; such as the 'virgin' myth and the whole 'pure of heart' nonsense. After the Transcendence, however, poachers made it their duty to get their hands on unicorns for both animal trafficking and butchering.
"Unicorn meat is a delicacy among more carnivorous people and epicureans delight in its consumption because it is recorded to taste "as delicate as tenderloin but with the sweetness of a more fatty cut, [the meat] melts on the tongue and its aftereffects are like a glimmering haze of spiced rum and opiates". Unicorn horn and hooves are a reported aphrodisiac as well as a valuable source of the rare golden ivory, which is popular for not only its pure color, but also its magical properties. Unicorn hair is used to make magical cloth and is the core ingredient in many potions that effect the senses. Unicorn bones are good for making pendulums and other magical trinkets and ward against attacks of the magical nature. Unicorn blood and tears are deadly toxins and have been used in both the most powerful poisons and the most potent transfiguration draughts. Overall, a single unicorn could go on the black market for over three thousand dollars a pound, depending on what it is one was selling.
"All of this poaching and ignorance have led the majestic unicorn to rapidly become endangered and, seeing as egalitarians are still fighting for basic rights for the more humanoid transcendentals, getting up a poaching law and protection agency for the more animalistic will most likely come too late. Still, we can only hope that someone, somewhere, rallies up and finds a way to protect the endangered species."
By the time the e-reader had stopped, Mabel was so engrossed in the article that she almost forgot about the sugar on the stove. "Shit--sorry honey," she apologized to Acacia as she softly swore some more and began to stir the now-golden sugar. "Mommy shouldn't swear, even when you're too little to repeat what you've heard." As she frantically stirred the sugar, trying to keep it from burning more, a slow, dull pain began to throb in her forehead. She brushed it off as a stress headache but the pain was different and persisted long after she had moved the liquid sugar--dyed beer-bottle green to save face--to a pan to cool.
As time went on and Acacia was swapped out for Willow and Hank, the headache became more akin to a migraine, a sharp spear of pain that felt as though someone was trying to shove a railroad spike through her head. Before too long she could barely handle the pain and her rocking back and forth in the rocking chair was no longer just for the triplets' sake, but for her own as well. Even though she knew that movement wasn't going to stop the pain, she persisted. Thankfully, Hank and Willow joined Acacia in dreamland and she could put them down and take some naproxen. Almost as soon as she popped the pills she felt relief and was strangely okay with that. The pain had been so intense that the immediate relief was like jumping into a pool on a hot summer's day.
(Later, as she went to bed, she realized just how odd that relief had been. Even on its best and coupled with some possibly-illegally-obtained fairy dust, naproxen usually took about an hour to kick in. Still, best to not look a gift horse in the mouth, she supposed, and shrugged the whole thing off as happenstance.)
