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For the most part, no one goes to that part of the forest.
Maybe some bugs or squirrels or whatever, but nothing sentient.
Not by any sort of instinctive force or what have you, but because it didn’t take long for the non-human residents of Gravity Falls to find the statue, and they have collectively enforced a wide do-not-pass barrier around the area.
This isn’t ideal for Bill, because it would be easier if people were curious. If “touching the weird statue in the forest” were some pre-teen/teen right of passage.
But Bill can work with what he’s given.
He’s on a dollar bill being held for a cellphone pic for the fourth of July.
He’s in a post spread across reddit labeled “Illuminati.”
He’s in the back of Stan Pines’s mind, in a little corner, the tiny miserable bit that was the most basic, most instinctual part of a human being.
In his last seconds, Bill searched for anything, anywhere he could retreat.
Unsurprisingly, there was nowhere. But.
But.
Bill did invoke Axolotl. Who, maybe one of the closer to extinct gods, but still a god on the particular plane of existence from which he was getting burned out of existence. And Bill invoked them in a timely enough fashion. So here he is, slowly growing strength.
A statue, swimming in half-aware dreams.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
The residents of Gravity Falls keep anyone away from his statue. They keep people away from shaking his hand.
But he’s got a message out there in the void:
“Hidden deep within the woods, a buried treasure awaits
Secrets lost and statues found beyond the rusty gates.”
No one’s supposed to be spreading his range, rebuilding his power, but they are. It may be a different third dimension reality, but they’re feeding him power, giving him strength, spreading his sigil across the globe with artwork shared on social media.
Bill waits, mind and body trapped in a small stone prison somewhere in a coastal forest in Oregon.
But one of the most terrifying and determined forces in existence is searching for him: a fandom.
They don’t think he’s real. They think this is a game. And the supernatural residents of Gravity Falls have kept them away very determinedly.
But one day they’ll fail.
The fans will find his physical body.
One day, someone will shake his hand.
Ohhh, one day.