His Saving Song

Chapter One : Hello

     "This is amazing! Thank you, Dip-Dop! But I want to see you react to your present. Hurry up, put it on!" She slid back into the water, dipping under for a moment to wet her hair before popping back up. I looked at the gift in my hand, confused for a moment. I gave a small squeak as she grabbed it out of my hands and placed it on my wrist. It felt nice ; not too tight and not too loose. She had used wire to make me an extra bracelet. She giggled at the noise I had made and led me to the makeshift bookcase I used for my personal items. Stan had swam down to help me hollow out rectangular cubbies in the rocky sides of the pond walls. He had made a similar one for Mabel directly across from me. We each had larger ones next to the bookshelves he'd had fashioned into beds, using more of Mabel's special watersafe fabric and wire to make blankets and pillows.

     "Do you like it," she signed with her hands. The other sirens that visited us every once in a while had taught us their version of ASL. Mabel and I had jokingly called it SSL, replacing "American" with "Siren," but the others had adopted it as the official name for the underwater communication system. Stan's brother, Ford, came with him sometimes and taught Dipper and Mabel English and ASL, so they could talk to the other creatures that visited them and read whenever they needed. Mabel realized I was busy thinking, and turned me to face the full length mirror we had salvaged for personal use. I saw the charm bracelet on my wrist and smiled. It was made of fabric, with a small panel of white. A sky blue pine tree symbol was situated in the middle of the white. A few silver wire charms hung off it ; a star, a heart, a triangle, and a moon. I pointed to the surface and shot up, soon followed by Mabel.

     I hugged her and laughed, thanking her somewhere in the middle of the following tickle war. We calmed down and raced to the edge of the water. Mabel won, as I was tired from losing the tickle fight and laughing till my stomach hurt. We pulled ourselves up to sit where we could dangle our tails into the water. We sat there, talking about cool things we had seen throughout the day.

     "Bro, that squirrel was as big as a fox, I swear!" she shouted, throwing her arms in the air and splashing water over us. "It ran up that tree over there and I haven't seen it since!" She pointed at a tall pine tree to the left of us. It was constantly moving a little, animals scurrying through its branches. A question I hadn't thought to ask popped into my head.

     "Speaking of pine trees," I started, catching her attention, "Why did you choose to put a pine tree on it? If there is a reason." She thought for a moment. The chilly night air swept across the small clearing, making us shiver. We slid back into the water, sitting on a rock shelf so only our shoulders and up were visible.

     "No reason really. It just... seemed to fit, I guess." She yawned, telling me goodnight before swimming to her sleeping cubby. Various bioluminescent plants casted a soft light on her sleeping form. While I had carefully planted mine to form a rainbow gradient, Mabel had basically thrown the seeds into a pile, planted them at random, and hoped for the best. The results were a random array of colors with no order ; it just showed how different our personalities were. I was more orderly and cautious, while she was wild and brash.

     Glancing around and listening for anything that sounded bigger than a rabbit, I began to sing. It wasn't an existing song or something Stan had taught me ; whatever words came to mind, I sang. (A/N : For plot reasons, this song doesn't exist in this world, but it's amazing IRL. "Same Love" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. You should probably listen to it before you read my lame-ass writing, just to understand the rhythm and timing. It's the video at the top.)

     "When I was in the 3rd grade, I thought that I was gay 'cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room - straight. I told my mom, tears rushing down my face, she's like, "Boy you've been loving girls since before pre-K."