Tall Tales of Spring • Cecil/Carlos

[igrab]

my eyes saw the chaos that started everything


A single car cuts through the desert, kicking up clouds of dirt that make the blue sky look greenish and unreal. A woman is driving, her red-nailed hands clutching the steering wheel, and she keeps glancing at the boy in the passenger seat (even if she knows he's a young man, he will always be her baby boy), who seems to be asleep, his forehead resting against the cool glass of the windows. She loves her boy, but he causes her more pain than anything has ever caused her. Not even her husband of five years leaving her with five months left in a difficult pregnancy. Not even her parents dying, one after another, mere weeks before her son comes into the world. Even then, he caused her pain. Joy, yes, but she was too young and too alone and she was supposed to be able to take care of another squirming pink life form? She was terrified. She had never stopped being terrified.

They're driving through the desert, now, and the terrified mother glances over again. She named her boy Kevin but he has never liked it, and he tries on different names now and then, though she can't help seeing him as Kevin, her Kevin.

That momentary, fragile image shatters when the boy's eyes flutter open and he stares up at the sky, pupils tracking something far off in the distance.

Don't ask, the woman begs herself. Don't ask, you don't want to know, please don't ask, you don't need to do this to yourself. But she cannot help it. In a voice cracked with desperate pleading, she says, "What is it?"

The boy frowns and furrows his brow like he's trying to work something out. "Either an angel or a dragon, I'm not quite sure."

Oh, Kathy, you didn't want to know, why did you ask, you didn't want to know! She's shaking now, and trying not to cry. "Dear, it's probably a bird."

"Oh, no, it's much too steady for a bird."

"A plane, then." Her eyes are round and wide and she doesn't look at her son, can't bring herself to see the look of pure innocent conviction there, like angels and dragons are perfectly legitimate options for things in the sky.

"Don't be silly. Planes don't have feet."

"Then Superman." It's a joke, it's supposed to be a joke, she has to make a joke or she'll start screaming.

But her son gives her an arch look that she feels even if she doesn't turn away from the wavering highway ahead. "Don't be ridiculous, mother, Superman isn't real."

•
Imagination is all well and good when you're three, or five, or even nine. But Kevin Baldwin was thirteen now and he still insisted that the sheriff of their town had some sort of 'Secret Police' who were always watching, and that a faceless old woman lived in every house. He didn't talk to her when his mother was around, he said, because she was shy. When he was younger, the imaginary-friend thing was sweet. But he's a teenager now, and his mother is starting to worry.

Her sister says she should have been worried a long time ago. Kathy argues that she had never thought it was a bad thing to encourage her son's creativity, to which the sister replies "He thinks librarians are going to eat him. He has always thought that librarians were going to eat him. You didn't think that was a bit unhealthy?" But in Kathy's defense, the librarians had never complained about her son, and he hadn't tried to climb the bookshelves since he was three.

•
Across the country, in New Mexico, a boy plays with a chemistry set that he got from his grandparents, and wonders if his papa was a scientist. That would be really great, he thinks, because he likes science and he very much wonders about his dead parents. His grandparents never speak of them, and he has never asked. One would think, a curious young boy like Carlos would be full of questions, but whenever he tries, the words just sort of slide away, and he finds other things to do. It's probably not all that important. Maybe they would tell him that his parents had nothing interesting about them, and he'd be disappointed. No, much better to believe in all manner of theories at once, without proving any of them. It's the only part of his life in which he doesn't feel a need for empirical proof.

•
Kevin gets into college somehow, after that long and painful exodus from East to West when he was fifteen, after he's been released from the asylum - or, well, the Youth Care Facilities, as they were called, which left out the key words "delusional" and "horrendous". The facilities did absolutely nothing for Kevin's deeply ingrained fantasy, and Kathy just couldn't stand it any longer. He was, after all, her son. She couldn't just stand by when he was clearly in pain.

And, she told herself, it wasn't like his delusions were hurting anyone. Mostly. Really they only broke her heart, and she could live with that, because a mother does these things for a son sometimes. Kevin was smart and creative and Kathy wanted him to be happy. So she packed him up and drove to a new home, far away from all the trees and the mountains (that he claimed did not exist, which was a constant source of stress on both of them), where the land was flat and dry and he could get into a decent college and learn things. He does this, and he goes, and he seems happier than he's been in a long time, so Kathy figures she must have done something right. He even applies for a semester Abroad, and she's ecstatic, because he's finally stretching his (metaphorical, no matter what he insists) wings.

She gets a postcard from, as Kevin writes it, a place called Svitz. He goes on and on in a tiny little script about the wonders of this completely made up country and then signs it 'Cecil', and if Kathy didn't know her son so well she would've thought she'd gotten someone else's mail. She puts her face in her hands and cries.

•
Birthing a baby in Night Vale varies greatly depending on the type of baby, the biological peculiarities of the parents, and the current phase of the moon. Elodia goes into labor at the peak of the full moon, amidst wild howls from Old Town and without help from anyone but her usual Secret Policeman and the Old Woman who lives in her house. She does not have a husband, because one has never needed a husband to have a baby, and in fact she's not quite certain who the father is. Mostly because he had still been wearing his dark cloak at the time of conception. Whichever time that was. Elodia had lost count.

She has a mere three eyes and a forked tongue, with pointed ears and a rather voluptuous mouth in the palm of each of her hands. By Night Vale standards, she's quite plain-looking. Her mother had been an Outsider, and though of course she had forgotten everything about her previous life, she still managed to instill some sense in her daughter that there was another world out there, a better one, with less blood. Elodia has always had a secret fantasy of going out there, though of course, it was only a fantasy. She had three eyes. No one outside would accept her.

This is why, when she holds her baby in her hands and gently licks the blood from his face, she is shocked to see how absolutely perfect he looks. He has two eyes. His ears are tiny and curved. He has one nose, one mouth, two arms, two legs. His skin is within an acceptable range of color. When he yells with his little lungs (only two!), she can see that is tongue is perfect, perfectly pink and tongue-shaped and not weird at all. He even has a full ten tiny, perfect toes.

She knows, instantly, what she must do.

•
The dog park eventually gets built for the Hooded Figures to have somewhere to roam, but before that, they sort of clustered randomly in Old Town, under the remains of the drawbridge, and in the Dust Bowl just outside of town where they hosted their annual sledding competitions. Most people don't make an effort to seek out the Hooded Figures, but Elodia has always been an exception.

One separates from the crowd and drifts over, his fingers working nervously under the cloak, making it flutter in distinct opposition to the breeze. "Elodia," it says, its voice whispering and masculine, just as she remembers it. (She thinks. She is not entirely certain her memory can be trusted.)

"Hi," she whispers, and she knows its silly because the Hooded Figures always seem to operate as a singular entity, but even if it's just an act, she wants it to be just between the two of them. "I... look."

She doesn't have words, their relationship never had words. She pulls the baby sling down from her back and offers him up for examination, biting her lip with nerves. His - its - opinion matters to her. It shouldn't, but she can't help it. She isn't perfect. How she possibly produced such a perfect baby is beyond her, but she did. They did.

He touches the baby, and she can see the shape of fingers through the cloth, very faintly, and only when the sun hits at just the right angle. It brushes the baby's face and he gurgles, a delighted smile jumping to his face, and he grabs a finger, chewing on it toothlessly. Elodia's heart melts.

"He's perfect," the hooded figure whispers, sounding surprised and pleased and a number of other emotions that Elodia was never taught the names of. "Incredible. He is entirely, one hundred percent normal."

"...I want to make a deal," she says, in a tone of voice that might as well be suggesting she skip her Rico's dinner this week.

The figure pauses, though he hasn't pulled his finger away form the baby yet. "What kind of deal?"

She swallows, because this is going to cost something, and she doesn't know what it is, but she does know that she's going to pay it. "...I want to send him away," she whispers, and her voice is shaking apart, bouncing across her chest between her overabundance of lungs. "I want - I want to send him outside of Night Vale. I want him to grow up normal. I want him to have a normal life."

"It is going to cost you," the hooded figure says, and she bows her head in acknowledgement, to receive her sentence.

•
Kathy goes to the wedding because she can't not go to the wedding, but it's been a long time since she's talked to her son and she worries very much for his wife-to-be's state of mind. She hasn't even met her. She's a lovely girl, vaguely ethnic, with a name that everyone forgets instantly. Kathy sees that the name on all the wedding paraphernalia is 'Cecil' and she is neither upset nor alarmed. Perhaps, the only emotion she feels is surprised - surprised that he hasn't changed the name since college. She almost thinks that perhaps this means he's going to settle down, but she doesn't let herself hope.

A man who looks like a son she once had gets married to the nice girl in a ceremony that is completely without incident. He says all the right things, smiles at all the right times, but when Kathy hugs him after the ceremony, he feels thin, and empty. His eyes look hollow as she smiles at her and she thinks, he must love her, this wife of his. Because she knows, like she knows many things a mother always knows, that Cecil - Kevin - is doing the thing that she wished he would do for her, long ago. He's pretending that his delusions are delusions, that his fantasy world is a fantasy, pretending not to see the world the way he sees it. And, as much as she may have wanted him to be normal, all those years ago, it's killing her now. It's killing her because it's killing him, her son, and it's not like she believes him but if his delusions make him happy -

She smiles and makes small talk with the forgettable wife's family, and a sudden desperate longing comes over her. I wish that everything he's ever believed in was true.

•
Cecil stretches his arms over his head and leans back in his chair, arching his back, trying to chase the tension away. It's his first day on the new job and he finds that he likes it - he likes it a lot. He used to do... well... he can't quite remember, but he didn't like it nearly as much as this. He loves this town, loves it, and sliding into his place here is like sliding into the softest clothes that fit perfectly, and were lovingly stitched from warm skin.

He's renting a trailer out by a car lot. He drives home in a car, with wheels and windows and an engine that works sometimes, and there's something about this car that fills him with a desperate sadness. He figures, though, that it's just a pocket of emotion that he's driving through, and he doesn't let it bother him.

The lights are on in the house next door. He parks the car haphazardly across his lawn, thinks for a moment, then goes over and knocks on the door. After a long silence, the door opens, and Cecil smiles bright at the old woman behind it. She is, even after the years have draped over her like blankets, uncommonly beautiful. She has three beautiful dark eyes and two beautiful mouths in the cupped palm of her gnarled, but beautiful hands. She's giving Cecil the oddest look, and it reminds him of... something. Someone. Someone that he used to know, maybe, or something he only just imagined.

"Look at you," she breathes, cupping his face and the mouths are quiet and comforting against his jaw. "You're not from around here, are you?"

They have tea at midnight and she tells him that there's something she's forgotten, but every time she tries to remember it hurts, in her heart, and she has to let it go. He knows exactly how that feels, and he reaches across the table to hold her hands tight.

"Such a handsome boy," she says, as she walks him to the door. "Your mother must be so proud of you."

•
When outsiders come to Night Vale, they forget.

How he got there is irrelevant, he has a dim feeling of driving and driving and driving, through the night, a distinct lack of tears on his face and a great yawning emptiness behind him, growing stronger the further he drives. It wasn't so much about getting away as it was about going to, and the closer he got the more the dim flat world behind him seemed like a distant fever dream. He does weep, when he drives into Night Vale and asks someone why the road is blocked off and they (with round black eyes that have facets like a gem) say that the Secret Police are up to something. They know. Everyone here knows. He is home.

•
Carlos has a brief fling with philosophy in college, but mostly, he's always been about science. The type of science changes sometimes - one week he's passionate about chemical bonds, the next, fluid dynamics, and then he's mapping the possible genes of mutated corn - but he is always a scientist. He can't seem to settle down, though, to pick a singular field and become an expert and write papers like normal scientists are supposed to do. He gets frustrated when his experiments work, and they don't produce any new information whatsoever. Even the cutting edge of biological research doesn't interest him for more than a few days at a time. Is this all we are? he felt himself saying, constantly, and that was when he figured he might as well try out the softer un-sciences. But they were terribly vague and not at all satisfying, and his only friend is a person of questionable gender who firmly believes in alien life forms.

It's this friend who finds the ad on a bulletin board, requisitioning a 'xenoparanormologist with a background in surgery' to come work in a town called Night Bluffs, or maybe Desert Vale. He can never quite remember. It looks ridiculous, and the bulletin board in question had been hanging in a psychiatric hospital, but Carlos needs a change. He hates his town and his job and his friend of questionable gender, most noticeably because they are batshit insane. He ignores the ad, but that night he has a dream, of a dusky violet sky and the air thick and heavy and scented with propane and blood.

He gets in the car and drives.

•
The first job Cecil gets in Night Vale has something to do with hauling crates and not asking questions. He has no idea what's inside them, and sometimes the crates tick, which should have been more disturbing but Cecil can think of a hundred and twelve reasons for a crate to tick that does not involve them exploding in the narrow timeframe that it takes to move them, and also he doesn't believe in bombs, not really. Sometimes they sound like clocks, or a metronome, and once he could swear he heard a beautiful bell-like laugh.

He doesn't like the job, but it pays well. That is to say, they give him money and he gives it to the Night Vale Community Bank and he assumes he has enough for things like groceries and clothes and council-approved forms of entertainment, because none of the shopkeepers give him any problems when he makes purchases, and no bills ever come to his trailer. He is happier than he's ever been, because, like everywhere else he's lived, the shopkeepers have no faces, but unlike everywhere else he's ever lived, no one is trying to tell him that they do.

One day he takes a crate. Because he can.

Cecil has made a habit of narrating to himself, because he likes the sound of his own voice, and it passes the time as he loads crates. Now, he murmurs to himself, speaking about his fear and curiosity and wondering what he's going to do with the thing, and finally he just packs the crate back into his truck and heads back out into the desert. They find him there, and later he forgets all of it, because technically it happened outside the Night Vale perimeter. He doesn't remember the tiny house, filled with tiny people, and he doesn't remember the liquid black eyes of the man with the strange hunched back, wrapped in a dark, misty cloak.

The next morning, he gets an invitation for a job interview, to be a radio show host. He has a vague feeling that something about this is important, that something he's done has meant something, somewhere, and now he's being rewarded for it. But he can't puzzle it out, and he goes to the job interview and is hired on the spot.

Or rather, he assumes he is, because everything in the studio has his name on it, and there's a sort of purring that comes from the Management office when he takes his chair.

The Voice of Night Vale. He likes the sound of that.

•
Old Woman Josie is suddenly and inexplicably Not Alone.

It's not the usual Secret Policeman, or the Old Woman With No Face, though she hasn't manifested in over a year and Josie isn't certain she's alive anymore. No, this is a different kind of feeling.

She picks up her cast-iron frying pan and edges out into the foyer.

There is a man on her porch, changing the light bulb.

He is tall and radiant and something about him yanks at that part of her that's edged in pain, the chunk of whatever-it-is that she can no longer remember. He has wings, great sweeping black wings sprouting from chocolate shoulders, and his kinky curled hair billows in a cloud down his back. He looks.... familiar.

"Hey!" She shouts, because radiant or not, there is a strange man on her porch and he may be the handsomest creature she's ever seen, but he's still trespassing.

He looks up. Black eyes meet hers and he smiles, somewhat helplessly, somewhat scared. "...I thought you were out," he says, in a whispering thread of a voice.

She usually is out, bowling, and she doesn't like that he knows that. "I didn't feel well. My leg was acting up."

He glances down at it and she has the urge to whack him with the frying pan anyway, or kiss him. Both for being impossibly tall and handsome and not remotely clothed enough.

"It's better now," she mutters, and a smile flutters over his dark, beautiful face.

•
It's that day, the day that Josie finds out that angels have been keeping house for her when she isn't looking, but not the day she finds out that Josie isn't her real name, that the world changes. It does for Cecil, anyway, who has no clear memory of what life was like before Night Vale and no particular desire to find out. There's someone new in town. An outsider.

Everyone expects him to forget about his old life, to forget about mountains and pens and clockwork, but he doesn't. He insists these things exist. He tries to evict the Faceless Old Woman. He takes apart all the clocks, and then he calls Cecil about it, and somewhere in that muddle Cecil has the clear thought that Carlos is not from around here, but Night Vale hasn't eaten him yet. He doesn't understand. Carlos, to the best of everyone's knowledge, has never been here, but he belongs here. He belongs in Night Vale.

•
Kathy has been looking for her son for years, now.

The thing is, she isn't entirely sure she wants to find him again. Not in the way of actually speaking with him, seeing him face to face. Her life without him was simpler. She doesn't necessarily regret that. But she's a mother and her son is missing, and what if he were dead? She would blame herself, of course she would. She brought a human being into this world and from that point on, nothing in her life has made the slightest bit of sense.

Then, one day, a man comes to her door. She couldn't describe him if she tried, except, perhaps, for the tan jacket he wore, and that he was definitely holding a suitcase.

"...Hello?" She's confused. She hasn't seen a door-to-door salesman for years, she thought they'd gone out of style.

"I know where your son is," he says.

•
The Apache Tracker slides into a seat across the table from Cecil, who instantly wants to shove his spoon deep into those horrible Aryan eyeballs and chuck them across the room. But he doesn't, because it would be a waste of good eyeballs, and he doesn't want to get blood on his spoon.

"What do you want?" he growls, stabbing at his visible pie with said spoon.

"Do you remember the crates?"

Cecil snorts. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

And he doesn't, not really. He dimly remembers that he had a job involving crates once, but it slips away into the ether, and Cecil really can't be arsed to give the offensive Apache Tracker a straight answer anyway. He asks a few more questions and Cecil answers them, yes, yes, no, I've never been married.

He leaves before Cecil can finish his pie, which is a good thing, for his eyeballs anyway.

•
Kathy is in a car with Cecil's forgettable ex-wife and the man in the tan jacket. The ex-wife looks the same as she did on her wedding day - exactly the same, down to the tumbling curls and the white flowers in her hair. She's crying, and Kathy wonders if she did this to make Cecil upset? She can't think of another reason why she would've done herself up all over again.

It's a long drive, and the radio crackles with static for hours before a smooth, comforting voice comes over the radio, lulling Kathy into a doze.

"...Blue, squarish, with tires and windows and an engine that works, most of the time. A woman is driving it, and she is also glancing whenever she can at the child in the passenger’s seat. He is a child, but he is fifteen. You understand. She is glancing at him, but she is not saying anything. And he is not saying anything either. She wants to cry, or she wants to push him out of the car, or she wants to go back in time and insist on using a condom, only she would never do that."

She realizes, with a sudden start, that it's Kevin's voice. Cecil's. Her baby boy. She looks frantically over and the forgettable wife is just crying harder, her face in her hands.

"She couldn’t change any of this really, not for all the money, piles of money, some of it defunct money from defunct and absent governments. She wouldn’t give any of this back. So she drives her car, blue, squarish, with tires and windows and an engine that works most of the time, and she glances at the fifteen-year-old child, and neither of them speaks."

Kathy remembers. She shouldn't have been so upset about that. So what if he thought he saw angels in the sky? He was her son. He could think whatever he wanted. He could see all these beautiful things and she misses him, so, so much.

"This has been traffic."

•
Cecil blinks and stares at his notes as the weather tunes in to some funky, upbeat instrumentals. He isn't quite sure what just happened. It's like that time two weeks ago, when he spent an entire episode talking and afterwards, he realized he had no idea what he just said. This time, he tries harder. He thinks about it. Something about a car. A car... somewhere.

He's fifteen and his mother doesn't understand him and his heart aches for her. He just wants someone to believe him, for once, and why can't she believe him like she used to? She used to be okay with everything, she used to understand, even when he'd turned into a bird or the time he almost killed a monster with a hatchet. But it was like suddenly the world was lying to him and his mother, his only family in the whole world, is telling him that none of it exists. None of it.

What is the world if not for shadow creatures and faceless cashiers and wild dogs with knives? He's scared for his mother, who doesn't see the faceless old woman who only wanted to be friends, who doesn't understand that the Secret Police are watching and that mountains don't exist.

He's fifteen and he's in a car with his mother when the engine breaks down again, he's there when she screams and beats her fists on the steering wheel, and he doesn't understand what she wants from him.

That night, in a fit of frustration and a memory crumbling under the weight of so many cracks, so many patch jobs, so many things slipping in and out of reality, he climbs into his car and heads out into the desert.

There is something out there, he's sure of it. Answers, maybe. Maybe nothing. But for once in his life, he wants nothing. He wants silence. He wants peace.

He screeches to a halt somewhere on the other side of Radon Canyon and stumbles out of the little blue car. Blue. The car is blue. Wheels and windows and the engine only works sometimes. He can hear screaming, he can hear wedding bells, they sound the same.

He's out in the desert, out under the night sky, and a memory returns, sharp and clear. He's ten years old and he's trying to explain that the sky is a void and existence is meaningless. Another memory. He's fourteen and he's in a white room with white walls and the boy sharing his room is convinced that all birds are out to get him, and that there is a grand conspiracy to cover up facilities dedicated to human cloning. Cecil finds him ridiculous. The birds, after all, are just spying on them for the Secret Police, and you don't need giant facilities for making clones. Another memory. He's in an office in that building and an offensively patient man is listening to Cecil repeat himself, over and over, about the various realities of the world. His tongue feels like lead and his heart seems to be full of viscous fire. They think he's crazy. They are all blind, and they think he is the crazy one.

Another memory. There's a girl, vaguely ethnic with a nice smile, and Cecil doesn't even like girls but when she kisses him, he can't find it in him to protest. He has stopped trying to assert himself. He has stopped trying to be happy.

Another memory. A dream. The weight of an invisible planet pressing in on him.

Another memory. Driving through the night, feeling nothing.

Another memory. A tiny house, full of tiny brightly-lit windows.

Another memory. A face.

A face from his present.

This is a memory, but not an old one. A beautiful face, a perfect face. Perfect lips, perfect hair, perfect lopsided grin. A perfect smile. A slice of perfect happiness, because Carlos doesn't know about clocks but he wants to understand, he wants to know the truth about things. It makes the hole in Cecil's chest ache.

There is a car in the desert and it's a different car, a long black car. It comes to a halt before them and Cecil knows what he's going to see - he said it on the radio, two weeks ago, though he hadn't realized he was remembering something that hadn't happened yet.

"Cecil?" His fiancée - no, wife, had he really married her? He sees her face and it fills him with a desperate sadness.

"I want a divorce," he whispers, and she bursts into a fresh wave of tears.

•
Carlos is happier than he's ever been, but he still feels like something is missing.

He remembers the day that Cecil proudly announced, over the airwaves, that his mother had come to live with him. She can't remember her own name, much less anyone else's, but the one thing she knows is that Cecil is her son and that she loves him. And that, he told his dear listeners, was the only thing that matters.

The whole business had left a strange, unsettling feeling hovering around and about the vague heart-like area of Carlos's chest. He had never known his mother, and he had never been particularly concerned about it. But seeing Cecil so happy to have his mother home in Night Vale has made him wonder, for the first time, who they might have been.

On one hot spring night, he calls his grandparents, back in New Mexico. It had taken a larger sacrifice than usual to put in a long-distance call, but finally the blood seeps through and it rings, twice, three times. Someone picks up.

"Hola?"

He is unspeakably relieved to hear that familiar voice over the line, and later he'll realize that he'd been living in Night Vale so long, he just assumed that unspeakable horrors were always around the next corner. The thing he was beginning to realize was, they had always been. How close had he danced with death? How many times had he only escaped a grievous injury by a tiny percentage, insignificant in the infinite possibilities? It was so wonderful to hear his grandmother's voice, to know that she is alive.

"Abuela, es Carlos." They laugh, they cry. He tells her that his 'ciencia' thing is going 'bueno'. That's all he says about Night Vale. He doesn't mention Cecil, though he wants to. He wants to say, Abeula, I almost died and then I asked a man out on a date and it was hermoso, it was perfecto. He doesn't want to worry her. He isn't sure what she'd think about the dating-a-man thing, though in all fairness, she did see him through high school. She probably knows.

"Abeula," he says, and though part of him does try to shy away from the question, the deeper feeling, the missing piece, the curiosity is stronger now. "Quienes eran mis padres?"

Who were my parents. This is Night Vale so he almost said 'what', but obviously, he isn't from here. His parents were human. Of course they were.

There's a long pause, and the answer isn't what he was expecting. "No se," she says, and something in her voice is the tiniest bit afraid. "No se, Carlitos. No se. No me pregunten. No se."

"How can you not know?" He, too, is afraid, and he has no idea why. Night Vale is getting to him. He was probably just adopted, and no one ever told him. Nothing strange is going on here. There is nothing to be afraid of.

"Ah, mi hijo, I should have told you. We should have told you, but we were so afraid."

"Abeula," he says, desperately, and though he's bracing himself for 'you're adopted', the fear swooping deep in his stomach is so much deeper than that.

"You were brought to us, by a man in a black cloak, a man who had wings."

•
He considers, for a split second, actually going to the Dog Park.

Then he laughs at himself (albeit hysterically) and walks (or runs) down to the NVCR studio. Cecil is waiting for him. Carlos wonders if he Knows; then he checks his watch and realizes it's half past (half past something at any rate), so the show has just finished up. Cecil looks impossibly delighted to see him.

"Carlos!" he calls out, and then his face falls when he sees the darkly serious look on his boyfriend's (oh my god, he thinks, that word is ridiculous and terrifying and wonderful all at once) face, and he stops mid-what-might-have-been-a-joyful-leap. "Carlos?"

"My grandmother says I was delivered to their house by a man in a black cloak with wings," he says in a rush, staring down at his sensible shoes.

"Oh," Cecil says, and for a moment Carlos expects him to say Well that's normal in Night Vale, but instead he just nods and opens his passenger door. "Come on, then."

They roll through the night and share, in stops and starts, a few theories and questions on what might have happened. Really, they have no idea. But Cecil at least figures that the angels will be more talkative than the hooded figures, and they have wings, right? Could angels also be hooded figures? Neither of them know.

Cecil parks in front of a beat-up trailer next door to the house; at Carlos's questioning look, he gives him a little self-deprecating smile. "Force of habit," he murmurs, and Carlos files that away for another day's questions. They walk up to the brightly-lit porch hand in hand.

The door opens just before they get to it. An angel is framed in the doorway - a tall, tall angel with ebony skin, wide black eyes, and a thick braid down his back. Two massive black feathered wings arch from his shoulders, their tips sweeping the ground. He sighs, a soft smile lighting the dark face. "We have been expecting you."

•
The angels settle here and there on the various pieces of living room furniture. Cecil and Carlos are curled together on the couch, Carlos leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees and Cecil's hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. They seem to be waiting for something, so Carlos says nothing. He's studying the black angel. He wants to believe there is something familiar about him, but honestly, he isn't quite sure. He does feel... something, but it's not a memory, more like... an awareness, of something echoed within himself. Like the first time he put his hands on a rack of test tubes, or that night under the Arby's sign and Cecil's warm breath on his cheek.

Wings part, and Old Woman Josie is there. She isn't as old as the moniker makes her out to be - in fact, she's quite handsome, with dark eyes (though there are three of them) and tan skin and long gray hair spilling over one shoulder. She peers at Carlos, startled. Then she looks at the black angel, then back at him. There's something on the tip of her tongue, he can practically see it, and he's burning with that curiosity that had slipped away every other time. Who am I? Who do I come from? And, for the first time, Where do I come from?

"The spell was supposed to last," the angel says, his voice a distant whisper, "but since you are here, there is no need to draw this out any longer. Carlos, the truth is, you are my son. Our son. And Josie, I return your memories to you, you who were once known as Elodia."

Two things happen at once. Carlos feels a strange rush of power in his fingertips, and Josie - or Elodia - his mother? - falls to the ground, gasping like she's been drowned, and lets out a long wail of indeterminate but overflowing emotion.

Without thinking, Carlos leaps to his feet and runs to her, cradling her head from the ground and praying to a god he never believed in that she's all right.

"Carlos," she whispers, her voice shaking and cracked. "Oh, Carlos, mi hijo, Carlos!"

They hold each other and cry. She apologizes over and over and he pets her hair, shaking, silent tears dripping everywhere and says it's okay, mamá, it's okay. It's minutes later that they remember they are not alone, but the other angels have dissipated, leaving the black one staring at his black hands and looking heartbroken.

".... Are you really named Erika?" Cecil is the one who breaks the silence, of course. He still has his knees pulled up to his chin and he's crying just as much as they are, happy tears, joyful tears for his perfect man.

"I suppose," the black angel says, and he blinks and looks at Josie - Elodia - as if for confirmation. She shrugs.

"You're all named Erika, because why not, right?"

They laugh and laugh in the night air and everything fits together like a beautiful puzzle, with pieces made of blood and bones and memories. Carlos and Cecil go to bed that night, wrapped in each other, feeling like every path their strange lives have taken has led them to this, to Night Vale, to love and family and wholeness.

"We should get married," Carlos whispers, and Cecil can't help but laugh.

"I was married once," he says. "But I think this time I'll be able to do things right."