MonthofMaybel2019 Week 2: Cryptid Cuties
Summary: Two warring insectoid societies turn the Pines’ backyard into a battlefield. Mabel and Dipper care for an outcast from one of these societies, then realize that he is the key to ending the conflict.
Well this turned out way longer than expected.
And also way more intense?? I have trigger warnings, just in case!
We don’t see it, just the after effects, but our Cryptid Cutie got beat up by his society and made an outcast.
There’s a quick battle between cryptids at the end and someone’s limbs go crunch. Nothing graphic, limbs are shown healed but a bit bent later. It’s minor but it’s in there.
It was Saturday and the room was warm without being stuffy. Mabel snuggled deeper into the covers. Waddles was still sleeping, Dipper was mumbling dork words in his sleep, and she could hear her mom making Saturday pancakes in the kitchen. She yawned and, without opening her eyes, reached under her pillow for a pre-breakfast snack of sugar packets.
Blinking the sleep from her eyes, Mabel propped up her head and lifted the pillow. No, they were there, only they’d been shoved to the edges of the mattress. And every last one of them was empty! They were as flat as Dipper’s bow tie after Waddles had sat on it!
Suddenly Mabel heard a hair-raising shriek from the kitchen, followed by a really loud crash. Instantly she, Dipper, and Waddles ran down the hall.
“Mom!” Mabel called. “Mom are you – what happened?”
Their mother was standing clear across the room, arms plastered to the fridge, staring bug-eyed at an open kitchen cabinet where they kept the flour and sugar.
“You – it – thing!” she said, pointing emphatically at the cabinet. “I told you no more supernatural pets! Especially hair eyeballs that go rooting through the sugar!”
Mabel stifled a laugh. She could already see the Grunkle-Ford-like gleam in her nerdbro’s eye.
Evidently their mother say it, too. “Oh no you don’t. Whatever it, we are not keeping it, you are marching it straight to the backyard and Mabel you make sure it actually gets there and doesn’t end up under the bed.”
Mabel gave her a thumbs-up, then grabbed two cereal bowls while Dipper grabbed a spatula and a ladle. The two glanced at each other, nodded, then slowly approached the cabinet.
The sugar container was already open. They couldn’t see anything yet, but the piles of sugar were quivering ever so slightly, granules sliding down the sides of the snowy mini-dunes. She held her breath. Dipper slowly extended the spatula…
The second the spatula touched it, a huge hairy eyeball sprang out of the sugar and zoomed straight for Dipper’s face. He shouted and executed a terrific backhand, sending the ball of blurred fur right at Mabel. She caught it one bowl and clamped the other neatly on top.
“Tada!” she trilled. “Thank you, thank you!”
“Did you see that, did you see?” Dipper said excitedly. “I didn’t see any wings, do you think it’s another kind of eyebat, I only got a glimpse but –”
They’d barely made it to the back porch when Dipper grabbed her arm. “Wait wait, Mom didn’t say anything about recording it! Just let me get my fish tank, we can trap it and I can make a video recording before we let it go!”
“Okay but then we’re actually letting it go, right?” Mabel said. “Because Mabel ain’t riskin’ her pancakes for an eyeball.”
“Yeah okay be right back!” He dashed into the house.
Mabel sighed and sat down, the bowls still in her hands. Guess the pancakes would have to wait a little longer. Waddles settled in next to her with an oink. That was when she noticed it.
Their backyard was a biggish square with low jasmine hedges on either side of the porch, one tree each against the left and right walls, and a nice spread of grass perfect for picnics and leaf-pile-jumping and the occasional mowing of crop circles (Dipper’s handiwork, she was 90% sure). But somehow twin termite mounds had been created in each of the yard’s back corners, both of them over four feet tall and ringed with piles of dirt that made them look like tiny gopher playgrounds.
“Hmmm…I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that?” she asked the bowls.
To her surprise, she heard a very small but unmistakeable groan.
Should I do it? she asked herself.
You should absolutely look at and nurture what is obviously the cutest fluffy kitten version of an eye bat ever to exist in the universe! (said herself).
“Welp, when I’m right I’m right!” Mabel said cheerfully. She cracked open the lid –
The back door banged open. “Okay, I got the tank, let’s – ack, Mabel, close the lid, close the lid!”
She held up the bottom bowl. Cradled at its center was a creature six inches high, with a brown furry spider butt that turned seamlessly into the torso of a young human boy. The butt part was complete with eight spider legs and a design on the back that looked exactly like an eye, and the boy part of him was a lean athlete’s build right down to his chiseled arms and back, with a sprinkle of chocolate-colored freckles under a pair of huge wounded innocent puppy dog eyes. Mabel’s heart wanted to burst right out of her chest and proclaim her undying love for him on the spot.
Only two things stopped her. One, his muscular torso was covered in deep cuts and purple bruises, with his two front right legs were twisted at definitely broken-looking angles.
Two, he was curled up as small as he could get, looking absolutely petrified.
“Oooookay,” Dipper said slowly. “So, not an eyebat.”
“Dipper, I think we really hurt him,” Mabel said urgently. “Can you get some floss and toothpicks or something? For splints?”
“Well, sure, but a lot of spiders can be poisonous. What if it bites you?”
He just whispered it, but it was so unexpected that Dipper jumped and Mabel nearly dropped the bowl. Then she squealed so loudly both boys flinched and covered their ears.
“OMIGOSH YOU ARE SO CUUUUTE! Don’t worry, we’re going to fix you right up and then we’ll go on dates but we’re from two different worlds so our romance could never last and we’ll be star crossed lovers it’s so ROMANTIC!”
“Interesting bedside manner,” Dipper said drily. Then he turned to the spider. “Give me a second to get some first aid stuff. Mabel, try not to plan the wedding while I’m gone.”
She didn’t plan the wedding (out loud), but she did take care of the actual bandaging part, using tweezers to tie floss around splints made from toothpicks. Waddles assisted her by oinking encouragement, and Dipper held up a magnifying glass for her to make it easier. He also kept up a running conversation to distract her patient.
“Yes,” Anansi said, a little breathless. (He’d told them his name, but they didn’t have the extra vocal cords to pronounce it, and he’d agreed that this was a decent substitute.) “But we don’t…generally bite…we coat our spears with it…”
“Shoulda seen that coming. But what do you need the spears for?”
“To fight…the Mantis-People…” His face twisted. “Please, is this almost finished? This last splint really ow ow OW OW!”
“Done!” Mabel said quickly, sitting back. “Sorry, I think I tugged the floss a bit when I cut it. Better?”
“Much, thank you.” Anansi got shakily to his feet.
“So I’m guessing those mounds over there, they’re for the Spider- and Mantis-People?” Dipper asked, nodding to the termite skyscrapers.
Anansi drew himself up to his full height (he looked so ruggedly angsty.) “Yes. This land belongs to the Spider-People, but it was stolen from our forefathers when they were tricked into signing the Contract. We warriors have fought for generations to reclaim what is ours from the cowardly Mantis.”
“And the land you’re fighting for is…?”
Anansi glanced at the backyard.
Dipper groaned. “Of course it is. Look, Anansi, pretty sure we can persuade our mom to leave the yard alone, but we should really get you back before our mom gets antsy. No insect pun intended.”
Mabel sighed, but she got up with Dipper as he scooped up Anansi and started towards the left-hand mound.
“Wait – NOT THAT WAY!” Anansi screeched. “Those are the Mantis-People, they’ll kill me on sight!”
“Oh, oh! Sorry.” Dipper started toward the other mound.
“Not them either! They – they’ll probably kill me, too.”
They both stopped short and stared at him.
“But what about your family?” Mabel asked. “Even if you’re the lone wolf-spider type, every angst warrior needs a family!”
“But…I’m not a warrior.” Anansi hung his head. “Every time we fight the Mantises, all I do is run away. My brother won’t even look at me anymore. But all I really want to do is crawl up to the tallest mounds and listen to the stars, to write the poetry of a river, the whispers of a stone…I want to create beautiful works of art. Like the Weaver.” He glanced up at Mabel, guilt written all over his face.
“The Weaver? What’re you – oh, oh! The sweaters!” Then she gasped. “THE WISHING SWEATER! The tiny writing, that was you!”
“Not so loud, please!” He thrust out both arms to quiet her and glanced anxiously at the mounds. “Weaving is forbidden, no one else knows how! If they heard you and realized I was here –”
“But you can’t stay in our house,” Dipper pointed out. “It was an accident, but you got pretty banged up.”
“That wasn’t from –” He stopped short. Mabel started to get a squirmy feeling in her stomach.
“Anansi,” Dipper said slowly, “I thought you said you ran away from battles. How did you get all those other injuries?”
He swallowed. “They…caught me weaving…”
Mabel gasped. Tears filled her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. She locked eyes with Dipper, who looked equally grim.
“You know what? Never mind,” Mabel told him. “You’re staying with us. Dipper’s got an empty fish tank and Mom’s got two pounds of sugar she’ll probably toss out anyway. And if anyone from anywhere tries to hurt you, he’ll have to get through me, Dipper, and a seriously adorable pig.”
Their mother was displeased.
But once Dipper and Mabel explained the story, she agreed to let him stay, as long as he mostly kept to their room to avoid her (or their dad) squishing him on accident. She even went out to the pet store for little colored rocks, and then to the fabric store for a tiny pair of silver needles, so Mabel could teach him how to knit. Within a day, Anansi had settled in and started Weaving like crazy. His masterpiece was a web that stretched straight across the bedroom ceiling and glittered like an indoor Milky Way.
The yard was a different story. Every day at dawn, the Mantises would climb to their tallest tower and read the Contract, a tiny Weaving no bigger than a butterfly wing, and read it aloud. (Neither Dipper nor Mabel spoke Mantis, but somehow it still sounded smug.) The Spiders would hear it and climb their towers and shout battle cries, and then the two sides would run down and clash in the middle like teeny-tiny titans. The Mantises had blades on their forelegs, which made them excellent in hand-to-hand fighting, but the Spiders could throw spears the way Mabel threw bubble-themed parties.
Mabel tried to do her Lilliputian Peacemaker thing, but that ended just as badly as the first time. The Mantises scraped up her ankles and her legs stung for hours from the Spider-People’s spears. After that, Dipper tried to film some of the battle to show Grunkle Ford, but he stopped after just a few minutes.
“It’s literally war,” he’d told Mabel, walking into their bedroom and staring at his camera. “Literal, actual war. It’s nothing like the movies.”
By the end of the week, Mabel and Dipper came home from school to find that their backyard had been pitted and cratered so much that it resembled the surface of the moon. Dipper and Mabel glanced at each other and then hurried to their bedroom.
“Hey, Anansi?” Mabel called once they’d reached it. He was sitting in his tank, staring at his sugar bowl, still full to the brim.
Dipper dropped his backpack with a thunk. “Hey man. Listen, the battlefield’s getting pretty close to the house. I don’t think anybody knows you’re here, but just in case, maybe you should start coming to school with us.”
Mabel nodded vigorously. “Yeah! You’d make a totally cute boyfriend-in-a-pocket accessory! Or you could hang out in the Art Room with Waddles. You could spin a web over him as a commentary on the advertisement and consumerism in Sheryl’s Net! What do you think?”
Mabel looked closer. Anansi wasn’t just sitting there. He was all hunched over with his hair hanging over his face. And she almost missed it, because he was so tiny, but his shoulders were definitely shaking.
“Oh, no, please don’t cry!” She hurried to her dresser, grabbed a cotton ball and handed it to him to use as a tissue. “Tell us what’s wrong, we can fix it!”
“I m-miss them,” he sobbed. “They’d all k-kill me if they found me and I miss them anyway. I can’t stop m-missing them. I don’t even know if my b-brother’s still alive. I’m sorry, you’ve b-been so kind to me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He buried his whole face in the cotton.
Mabel’s heart squeezed and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Anansi.”
Dipper started pacing. “There’s gotta be some way to end the fighting. Or at least get them to accept you. Just because the Mantises can Weave doesn’t mean…” He slowed to a stop. “Wait. Anansi, how did you learn how to Weave if only the Mantises can do it?”
Anansi looked up, then down, twisting the cotton in his tiny fists. “I…when I went up to the tops of the towers…I didn’t mean to look, but they read the Contract every morning, so –”
Mabel gasped. “You read the contract?”
“I didn’t mean to! It was just there! And then I noticed how some of the patterns matched the words –”
“Can you tell us what it says?” Dipper asked.
Anansi recited it instantly, word for word, but this time in English. Mabel shook her head in disbelief. Talk about a serious bookworm! Bookspider?
Then Anansi got to the end of the Contract and both Dipper’s and Mabel’s eyes widened in realization. When he was done, Dipper turned to look at her.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
She nodded, a fierce grin spreading over her face. “Oh yeah. Anansi, don’t worry about a thing. The Mystery Twins – and pig – have a plan.”
The next morning was Saturday. Dipper and Mabel waited at the back door, listening. Anansi was hidden in the fluffy neck of Mabel’s sweater, under her hair.
The Mantis leaders climbed their tallest termite tower, the Contract glittering in their scythe-hands like a creepy gem. But just as their leader took a breath to read it, the twins burst through the door.
“CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” Mabel roared.
The leader spun around so fast he nearly fell right off. “Challenge?” he sputtered. “What challenge?”
“The one at the end of the Contract,” Dipper said. “The one where whoever wins three contests gets to amend any part of the Contract they want, or even nullify the whole thing.”
The Spider-People began crawling out of their mounds. They’d been waiting, too, spears in hand, and were now staring back and forth between the twins and their sworn enemies.
“The Challenge itself is null!” the Spider-Leader called out. He was about as tall as the Mantis leader, but while the leader was thin with a turquoise shell, the leader was a bigger, buffer, way hairier version of Anansi. “The entire Contract is a lie! We refuse to be bound by any part of it. Besides, it’s rigged in the Mantis’ favor! They get to decide all three of the contests!”
“You’re just unwilling to admit inferiority!” the Mantis leader bellowed. Instantly war cries went up from both sides.
“Wait wait wait!” Mabel said quickly, stepping between them. “You guys are tearing up the land you want with all your fighting! Plus our mom is pretty much ready to hose you guys. The Challenge is the best way to end it. Dipper and I can be your impartial judges. And, and! The Spider-People get to pick one of the challenges!”
“No they don’t!” the Mantis leader screeched, just as the Spider guy yelled “ONE ISN’T FAIR!”
“Do you forfeit, then?” Dipper asked innocently. “I mean, either side is allowed to invoke the Challenge. If the other side decides not to accept, it would be a pretty cowardly defeat.”
Within seconds both sides had not only agreed but were throwing Challenge-based puns that would have made Grunkle Stan proud.
The Mantises picked close-range combat for the fist trial. Dipper brought out a breakfast tray to serve as the fighting area and each side chose a warrior. The one from the Mantis side was extra-tall, at least eight inches, with a carapace the color of pale jade and scythes that were the envy of every sushi chef alive. The warrior from the Spider side was so ruggedly handsome he could’ve been the cover for Gentlespider’s Quarterly, and his muscular body moved with a predator’s grace.
Anansi gasped and shivered against her neck. “That’s my brother!” he whispered.
She swallowed and held up her hands. “Okay! You win if your opponent goes down for a count of ten. No killing or you automatically lose.”
The Spider scowled darkly and the Mantis looked annoyed.
“What if he’s jus a little bit dead?”
“No killing! Ready – GO!”
Both warriors lunged. Anansi’s brother dug a leg in the tray and swiveled his body in a half-circle so the Mantis’ own momentum carried him straight past, then karate-chopped Mantis in the neck joint. But the Mantis threw his armored head back, trapping his hand between the head and the shell, then swung both scythes sideways, hard. The spider’s front right legs snapped and he went down with a shout.
Dipper shouted and Mabel jumped to her feet.
“You didn’t say anything about maiming,” the Mantis said smugly.
“That doesn’t – fine, whatever! 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-you-win! Now somebody please help him!”
Two of the Spiders moved forward, their faces stony, and helped their fallen comrade off the tray. The Mantis side welcomed their warrior back with victory cries. Anansi trembled against Mabel’s neck the whole time.
The Spider leader stepped forward. “The second contest…IS SPEAR THROWING!” he shouted, and cries of challenge went up from his people. “Let the Encroachers see how well they fair against a skill they deem inferior!”
Once again, each side chose a warrior who stepped to the center of the tray. The Mantises didn’t even make spears and had to borrow one, much to the vicious pleasure of the Spiders. Both warriors had to throw the spear at the far wall as hard as they could, without hitting or hurting anyone on either side.
The Spiders won. It wasn’t even close.
Once both sides had sort-of-barely calmed down, Dipper indicated the Mantises to announce the final contest. This was the trickiest part of the plan. They were counting on the Mantises choosing a very specific task. If they didn’t…
The Mantis leader smiled coldly. “Let the Spiders’ fate hang on a skill that they themselves deem beneath them. The tie breaker will be…WEAVING!”
The Spiders shrieked so loudly the windows of the house actually rattled. After three minutes of yelling and insults, Dipper had to threaten the hose to get both sides to calm back down enough for an actual conversation.
“THE ENTIRE CONTEST WAS A SHAM!” the Spider leader screeched. “YOU’VE BEEN ON THE MANTIS’ SIDE THE ENTIRE TIME!”
“YOU AGREED TO THE TERMS!” the Mantis leader screeched back.
“AND WE WERE DECEIVED AS YOU DECEIVED OUR FOREFATHERS! WE’LL NEVER HONOR THIS CHALLENGE!”
“THERE IS NO CHALLENGE IF THE CONTEST ITSELF IS A FRAUD!”
“You still agreed to the entire thing,” Dipper said, staring the Spider leader down. “And it was discussed aloud, so you can’t blame messed-up Weaving for this one. Only a coward would ignore the consequences of his own promise.”
“But we don’t even have a Weaver!”
“Yes you do,” Mabel said.
A quivering lump moved under Mabel’s sweater, across her shoulder, down her sleeve. She held out her arm, and Anansi stepped out in the open at the center of the tray.
Mabel had thought his people would start shouting again, but somehow this was so much worse. They were staring at his back as though they could drill straight through it.
The Mantis leader smirked and gestured to a youngish-looking Weaver at his left. “A youngling of our own will suffice for us,” he sneered. “Though even our novices would outclass every last one of you.”
“The Weaving has to be a poem about peace,” Mabel said quickly, before the Spiders could start yelling again. She took out her stop watch and held it up. “Both sides have five minutes. Begin.”
The spinners began immediately, with the Mantis spitting a thin stream of saliva into sticky string. They started in the corners of the tray and worked their way toward the middle. One minute ticked by, then two. No one moved but the weavers.
At three minutes, though, the Mantises began to shift and mutter. Where Anansi’s weaving was tight and even, his runes uniform, the other weaver’s loops were too tight or too loose, and there were little knots everywhere that ruined the symmetry.
“The appearance means nothing!” the Mantis leader screamed. “It is the words themselves that hold true power!”
“You’re right,” Mabel said. “Weavers, if you please.”
The Mantis weaver stepped forward and read his poem. The faint threads from the shadow grew under the weaving like a pool of lavender, and the knots glowed like stars. It really was pretty.
Until Anansi stepped forward and read his poem. The many delicate lines of his work seemed to shimmer and undulate like waves of grass. Then she realized the air above the weaving actually was shimmering. Fresh greenery grew straight out of the threads, pouring over the sides of the tray, flowing across the broken earth until everything was covered in a fresh layer of moss and clover and tiny white flowers sparkling with dew.
“The Spiders win the Challenge!” Mabel called out, over the shouts on either side. It took a while to get the Mantis leader to actually hand over the Contract. Once the Spider leader had it in his hands, he ripped the whole thing in half.
“How are your legs doing?” Mabel asked.
It had been another whole week since the day of the Challenge. The Mantises had left and the Spiders had stayed, although they mostly kept to their mound. Anansi had retreated back to his tank in their bedroom. He was currently working on a web over Waddle’s bed, just like the one in Sheryl’s Net.
He flexed his injured limbs. “Better, thank you. The bandages can come off soon. Can I borrow the book again? Human letters are so much harder than runes. Too many curves.”
“Runes are human letters, too,” Dipper called from the bed.
Anansi actually rolled his eyes. “Where do you think you got the runes?”
“Ohhhh were there tiny Norse Spider-People?? There were, weren’t there? I bet they had tiny little Norse hats with horns and everything!”
Dipper sighed audibly. “Mabel, real helmets didn’t have –”
They looked up. Three Spider-People stood at the windowsill.
One of them was Anansi’s brother.
Mabel glanced at him, checking, but he nodded so she went over and opened the window.
“We are here for the Weaver,” Anansi’s brother announced.
“Not you.” He right past her at Anansi. “You. Weaver.”
“Uh,” Dipper said, getting up.
Anansi just sort of head-bobbed at them and skuttled awkwardly along the wall until he reached the sill. Even with the brother’s legs still bent funny, he was at least an inch taller than Anansi and twice as muscular. Dipper hurried to stand next to Mabel and she grabbed his shirtsleeve, watching anxiously.
“The Mantises are contesting our right to the other lands,” the brother announced, like he was giving a public speech. His two escorts stared straight ahead like they were being graded on how well they resembled statues. “They claim that the Challenge was only valid for the land where we won. We will Challenge them again and again until their own laws turn against them. Therefore, we will send Egglings from every tribe, and you will teach them Weaving.”
Anansi looked stunned. “Teach – warriors? Weaving?”
“Warriors do not learn Weaving,” one of the other Spiders snapped, his tone harsh. Anansi’s mouth clicked shut. Mabel stuck out her tongue and Dipper scowled.
“We will send the first Eggling in a moonturn,” his brother continued, as if nothing had happened. “I will relay further instructions at that time. Prepare your lessons. That is all.”
At once the other two spiders turned and scuttled away. Anansi’s brother turned as well, then sort of half-stumbled, so that his two injured legs brushed Anansi’s. Then he was gone.
“Nice guy,” Dipper said drily, moving to shut the window.
Mabel knelt down to put her face at Anansi’s level. “Hey, you okay?”
“Fine,” Anansi said, all wide-eyed like a spider in the headlights. He looked at the spot where his brother had touched him. “I’m fine. I’m – I’m wonderful. Did you hear them? Nobody called me a coward! They want me to keep Weaving! They want me to teach Weaving!” He actually jumped five inches straight up, making Dipper jump back and bang his head on their bunk bed.
“Sorry!” Anansi said, not actually looking sorry at all.
Mabel squealed and pinched her cheeks as hard as she could. “Omigosh you are so cute when you’re all bouncy!”
“Uh-huh,” Dipper said, his eyes watering. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but you realize we still have a problem.”
Mabel jumped to her feet. “You’re right, the Spiders still haven’t embraced the true beauty of Weaving! Grab your needles and spinneret-things, Anansi, we’re gonna make Weavings so great we’ll wow the spider-pants off every last Spider!”
“Not that,” Dipper said. “I mean yes, obviously, but his brother just said he’d be sending a bunch of little baby spiders to hang out with Anansi.”
“So – exactly how are we going to explain that to Mom?”
Uhhhhhh, tada? I don’t normally write stuff quite this intense (or with heavy political undertones??) but I hope you enjoyed it! Please feel free to leave comments, and thank you for reading!
izzy806
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
discoholicmusic
origamiaround
annaxmalina
2087
gummygunk
