magibrain

She can see Night Vale past the fence, but it's never the right Night Vale. It's always mirrored or out of order or hanging upside-down, suspended from the sky by golden threads.

(In a few weeks, the fence will be black walls, and there'll be nothing familiar beyond them at all. She doesn't know that yet. It would help if she did. It'd give her something to hold on to, to tuck away in the corner of her mind that will age it to nostalgia later.)

Sometimes there are dogs howling in the distance. Sometimes there's static. Sometimes the two are indistinguishable.

At one point, she finds a group of hooded figures gathered around a trendy bloodstone picnic altar. Their hoods all turn to face her with the rickety grace of a windmill whose blades are coming undone.

"Excuse me," she says.

They make a spot for her.

On the altar is a banquet of pebbles and empty beer bottles, and the hooded figures take them by the handful and bring them to the regions where unhooded citizens would keep their mouths. Then, sometimes, they fish in their hoods and bring out curiosities, cheap gems like geode, brighter stones like tiger's eye. Dana swallows a pebble. Her body doesn't offer up anything in return.

After a while she takes her leave, and one of the figures brushes her hand with its as she goes. When she's walking again, she checks to make sure her hand's still there.