It Devours! (Welcome to Night Vale, #2)

by Joseph Fink

She was fine not being picked on or derided, but also not being invited to parties. Maybe she wasn’t happy. Maybe what she was doing wasn’t important or helping anyone. But it was fine. “I’m fine,” she was fine with telling herself.

From her window, if either of them had been looking, they could have seen the blinking light of the broadcast tower off in the desert. From the tower, theoretically, a person could see her window, but it would just be a light among many lights. Easily lost in a universe that was full of light, and a lot of other things too.

Isn’t it better to live happy until that last moment, believing the story you are living, shoulder to shoulder with others who believe and live that same story? Why flounder in the void when there is no need to do so? The story ends the same way, no matter how you choose to perceive it. Why not choose to perceive it as meaningful?”

It didn’t work out. That’s a simplification. Just because something eventually doesn’t work out doesn’t mean it never worked out. It was working out fine until, not much later, it wasn’t working out at all. Happiness is not canceled out by unhappiness. A relationship is not canceled out by its end. But try telling that to either of them, who, while still friends in a shaky, tentative sort of way, regarded the connection they had as an anomaly, a closeness brought on by shared danger mistaken for a true and lasting romance.

Take any person from Night Vale, and try to convince them of mountains. Tell them about altitude. Try to explain to them the feeling of cold air, of breath turning to steam, of red cheeks and noses. Tell them stories about people who have gone to high places, for good reasons and for silly reasons. Tell them stories of people who have lived their entire lives among the highest places, and of others who came great distances to die on top of some mountain they had never seen before. Tell them about mountain passes, about armies crossing them, about invasions and the turning of civilizations. Trace for them the history of the world, and how often it has been shaped by literal peaks and valleys. Show them a mountain. Point to a mountain and say, This was here before you, it will be here after you, it doesn’t need you in order to exist, and when you die the contour of its rocks will not be changed at all. Be cruel or kind. Reveal more than you should. Tell them anything you like. It doesn’t matter. They won’t believe you anyway.