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I'm worried about Luke.
It was a very unsettling text for Natasha to receive, especially given that, like most of Night Vale, Cecil tended to have an uncomfortably high threshold for when he started to worry about things.
High enough that she abandoned the briefing she was in mid-sentence, earning a glare from the other agent who was meant to accompany her and a worried and quizzical look from Coulson. Cecil picked up on the second ring.
“He's completely unhinged!” he answered as soon as he picked up, not waiting for her to ask.
She couldn't deny that her heart sank. Part of her, the eternally pessimistic part, had always expected to get this call, but then he'd started helping the Avengers, here and there, and they'd connected over the fake blind date Cecil had set up, and she'd started to hope.
“It's one thing to believe in mountains,” Cecil continued, and Natasha could almost see the way he must be throwing up his hands on the other end of the phone, “I mean, it's ridiculous, but people are allowed their differences of options even if they're completely wrong.” The last part sounded as though it had been rehearsed, a mantra he'd been reminded of more than once. “But to insist that we start teaching that they're real in schools?”
She blinked. “He's doing what?”
“I know, right?!” Cecil agreed hurriedly. “He's been telling children that he's seen a mountain, in person, and insisting that we amend the curriculum. And he's president of the PTA! Luckily, the Glow Cloud, all hail it's awesome splendor, is holding firm, but he can be really persistent. Can you talk to him?”
“You want me to talk to him,” she repeated numbly.
“Yes!” he agreed, sounding relieved.
“About believing in mountains.”
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath, letting some of the tension that had built over the course of this conversation escape. She pondered, for a second, what she would say next, before deciding that the quickest way out of this conversation was through.
“Cecil,” she said seriously. “I believe in mountains.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone.
There was an unholy, outraged screech on the other end of the phone.
When she brought the phone back up to her ear, the call had ended.
She should have expected it when the Avengers were called to assemble. Their team had felt like a precarious thing, recently; they'd all been instructed to more or less lay low while the government decided what they wanted to do in the aftermath of Ultron, and for the most part, they'd played along. The future was uncertain, and they all knew it, and it would take an unambiguous emergency to pull them all into action.
An emergency like, as a possible example, receiving reports that Loki was on the move and terrorizing an innocent town.
“He's been spotted near Lone Pine,” Fury said seriously, as they all stood uneasily in the briefing room on the helicarrier. “We've been told that he conjured some sort of magical storm that's threatening the town. The storm itself is interfering with communications, so that's all the information we have right now.” He turned to Thor, who looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Do you have any idea why he might have gone off the rails now, or what his goal might be?”
“I have told you,” he said, “I know not what—”
“Actually,” Natasha said, and while Fury looked annoyed, Thor seemed almost grateful for the interruption. “I might have an idea. Is this town possibly near a mountain?”
The look Fury gave her was so flat that if she didn't already know how much he trusted her, she'd call it suspicion. “It's at the base of Mount Whitney,” he said. “What do you know?”
“I don't think he conjured the storm,” she said, and wondered how, exactly, she was meant to explain this in a way that didn't sound insane. “I think they're having a disagreement.”
“This 'disagreement' is doing something to an entire town that has several thousand people fleeing their homes in terror,” Fury said sharply.
“Yeah,” she said, “that tracks.” She paused, while Fury frowned in disapproval and her teammates frowned in confused concern. “Has anyone been hurt?”
“There aren't any reported casualties yet,” he conceded, “but let me remind you that right now we have no intel on what's happening in the town. All we know is that the same guy responsible for New York and Stuttgart is attacking civilians, again, and I have every faith that you all will put a stop to it.”
The words were a particular sort of pointed, and though he included everyone in that statement, she had no doubt they were directed at her.
Not that she needed the reminder. She knew—that this could turn ugly, that she might have to take down someone she'd cautiously been getting used to working alongside, and that knowledge sat in her stomach like a hard stone.
“Understood,” she said, because she did, and she would do whatever was necessary.
Fury nodded, acknowledgement and encouragement both.
She stared out the window most of the ride over. Her thoughts were a mess, turning over and over themselves in a circular way, thoughts of duty, and loyalty, and the sometimes subtle distinctions between necessary and right.
In the end, it had been decided that she, Thor and Tony would approach the mountain and investigate the heart of the storm, while Bruce and Clint waited on standby and Steve moved to help and reassure the people of the nearby town. It made sense; Steve's presence would be calming, they were keeping the Hulk in reserve to minimize any unnecessary damages, and they would spare Clint from engaging if at all possible, for obvious reasons. Thor and Tony were probably best suited to take on a rogue Loki, in any case, if that was what they were facing.
She could only guess why she'd been included in the point team; she hoped the reason was that they intended for her to deescalate the situation if at all possible before they resorted to outright violence. That was her intention in any case, whether or not it was also that of her supervisors.
They stepped out of the helicopter into a raging storm. Wind whipped small droplets of water against her face, hard enough to sting. Clouds swirled overhead, pulsing with bright colors that weren't quite natural, lit from within like a violent sunset. More than that, though, the storm raged. She could feel it, an undercurrent of emotion in the air, electric and alive the way Thor's storms were.
Thor could feel it too, if the way he kept glancing uneasily at the sky meant anything. Mjolnir stayed tucked into his belt, but she could see his fingers dancing uneasily over the handle, ready to draw his weapon at a moment's notice.
In the storm, without having gotten a good look at the terrain before they landed, she wouldn't have known where to go; as it was, she followed Thor, who moved confidently as though he had some sort of innate Loki-sensing radar. Maybe he did. It would certainly explain some of their earliest interactions, and she had honestly seen and accepted stranger things.
Thor took them to a flat outcropping of stone, just beneath a sudden rise that marked out the beginning of the mountain's base. The outcroppings of the stone should have shielded them from some of the wind, but they didn't. If anything, the wind seemed stronger here, more insistent, more biting. Loki stood in the middle of the stone clearing, seemingly alone.
“It is right there”, he shouted, gesticulating with his entire arm at the mountain. “Right in front of your stupid cloud face!”
Loki's hair had come loose in the static, falling in a way that was just disheveled enough to give an impression that reminded her of someone who'd been up all night and tried to compensate with one too many cups of coffee. He was dressed not in Asgardian armor nor the casual yet businesslike human clothes she'd seen him wear in Night Vale, and was instead wearing some haphazard combination of the two, and the juxtaposition of Asgardian leather against jeans was somehow less jarring than it should have been.
In short, he looked crazy, but not try-to-take-over-the-world crazy. More of a 'Tony stayed up all night inventing and now he's picking fights at a board meeting' crazy.
There was something comfortingly familiar about it, despite the way the situation should have been terrifying.
This is a mountain, the cloud agreed, in a deep, echoing voice she could not say if she'd actually heard or merely felt.
“So you acknowledge it,” Loki said, with a nearly unhinged glee. “You were wrong.”
The Glow Cloud is never wrong.
“Oh, then how do you explain—” he waved his arms at the mountain, looking near-apoplectic.
The Glow Cloud is infallible. The Glow Cloud is ineffable. Fall prostrate on the ground and drive your foreheads into the loamy soil in supplication. Plead for the miserable space within the cosmos that you dare to occupy.
“Mountains,” he said, almost viciously, “are real.”
It is true that there is a mountain. It was also true when the Glow Cloud previously said that mountains did not exist.
“Is that truly how you want to play this? You want to try and claim that this mountain spontaneously sprung into existence within the last twenty-four hours? Are you serious?”
“Loki,” Thor tried, raising his voice to be heard over the wind and the strange static that seemed to fill the air this close to the cloud and the frantic shouting.
“Not now,” Loki snapped back, without bothering to turn and look at them. “I am in the middle of something.”
“That's kinda the problem,” Tony added, shouting in a way she suspected they still wouldn't hear if it weren't for the suit magnifying his voice. “We need you to stop whatever this is, or we'll stop you.”
Loki turned, then, finally facing them, and it was uncomfortable to have that half-crazed expression turned on her. “You know what?” he said, throwing his hands out. “Fine. Fine. You talk to them.”
And with that he turned on a heel and stalked off. She considered going after him, suicidal as that sounded when she ran the impulse past the decision-making part of her brain, but Thor peeled away from their group to follow before she could make that mistake.
She was not at all surprised that the swirling, colorful clouds writhing overhead did not move or change as Loki left.
“Hey,” Tony called after their retreating backs, “You forgot your creepy magic storm.”
“Not mine,” Loki hissed back, “and if I held any influence over them we would not even be here.”
All wills bend to the awesome might of the almighty Glow Cloud, the storm added helpfully. The wishes and dreams of your insignificant minds are as leaves before a hurricane, inconsequential and trembling.
A short ways away, what appeared to be a dead rattlesnake came hurtling out of the clouds, bouncing none-too-gently on the rocky ground.
“Umm,” Tony said to her, after another awkward moment or two had passed, during which time a couple of beavers and what appeared to be an emu had rained to the ground. “Gonna be honest. I'm not sure what our next move is here.”
She resisted the urge to point out that driving the only sorcerer who would semi-routinely work with them away before fully taking stock of the situation may not have been the wisest way to start this operation. Instead, she took a deep breath, calmed the racing thoughts and half-imagined strategies that were racing around her brain, and reminded herself that this was a Night Vale problem. And Night Vale problems, for all of their terrifying ability to bleed over into the rest of the world, tended to have Night Vale solutions.
She tried, with the very best of her imagination, to picture what Cecil might do in this situation.
“Hey,” she said, shouting to be heard. Tony startled and then stared at her, which didn't do anything to make her feel less ridiculous. “Glow Cloud. Do you think you might want to go home any time soon?”
The horizons of the Glow Cloud are ever expanding, it said, which wasn't encouraging. Quake and slither on your stomachs in awe of the almighty Cloud.
She turned and gave Tony a look that he'd know to interpret as well, that's all I've got.
“Should we call Bruce?” he tried.
“You think the Hulk can punch it?” she raised one eyebrow, and his expression shuttered into something defensive and guarded.
“Well excuse me for trying to do something about this,” he snapped back, and she could feel the way it grated on her nerves, could recognize the impulse to say something even more scathing. Before she could decide whether to give in and allow him to finish picking the fight, the Asgardians reappeared, with no less stomping than when they'd left.
Loki was, if possible, scowling even more deeply than before. “We are returning to Night Vale,” he announced, aiming the words at the cloud like a demand.
The Glow Cloud cannot be commanded. The Glow Cloud cannot be controlled, it boomed, more literally than even Thor could manage.
“Why you condescending puff of condensation,” Loki muttered, so quiet she could barely hear him, before he straightened.
“Very well then,” he said aloud. “In that case, I do believe now would be an excellent time for me to raise a motion for a curricular amendment while the School Board President is…otherwise occupied.”
He raised his fingers, snapped them, and vanished.
The cloud overhead rolled like water in a pot that had just been stirred, bunching and gathering. The wind picked up. The trees shook, eddies of sand rose from the mountain rocks, and loose strands of her hair whipped around into her face hard enough to sting.
Then the cloud bunched up with an odd, hiccoughing undulation, and it shot away, quick as a jet and trailing bright and shifting colors behind it.
The air went instantly still in its wake, leaving the three of them standing, disheveled, in sunshine so bright and cheerful it was almost blinding.
“Well,” Tony said, “that happened.”
She turned to Thor, whose hair had fallen into snarled knots from the wildness of the wind, and who was staring out over the valley looking a little dazed. “What did he say?”
“That the world is full of stranger things than we can conceive of, and that we owe it to ourselves to look beyond the smaller, more explicable version of it that we create for ourselves in our own imagination in order to soften the blow of our own ignorance.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
He shook his head helplessly before finally meeting her eyes.
“I have no idea.”
“We have to do something about this, though,” Tony said. “He can't just run around terrorizing innocent towns.”
“Technically,” she said carefully, “I think it was the cloud doing most of the terrorizing.”
He gave her a blankly incredulous look. “You can't seriously think we should just let this go?”
She kept her expression carefully neutral. “Do you want to try and arrest a cloud?”
“My brother did not cause the storm,” Thor said firmly, to Fury's evident skepticism. “In fact, he helped us dispel it.”
So, of course, he looked to Natasha. Thor and Stark both turned to her as well, the former almost pleading her to agree, the latter glaring in challenge.
And, to be honest, she wasn't sure what she should say. Loki hadn't conjured the storm, that was true, but she was fairly sure he was responsible for dragging the Glow Cloud out of the confines of Night Vale. The question was whether admitting that would be helpful, or whether it would just cause more problems.
When she spoke, it was with a confidence she didn't feel. “Coulson and I have observed the Glow Cloud before,” she said calmly. “The best we can tell is that it's an independent and autonomous entity. Its arrival in Night Vale predates Loki's.”
“So what was it doing outside of Night Vale?” he asked, looking supremely unimpressed in the way that meant he was actually truly rattled.
She met his gaze, keeping her voice steady and controlled. “That's what I'd like permission to investigate.”
The silence stretched uncomfortably, as though neither of them were quite willing to break it, until Fury sighed. “The Avengers are back on the bench for now,” he said. “Don't do anything stupid.”
She nodded her understanding. Night Vale was not an Avengers assignment; she went there on behalf of SHIELD, so this was the closest to permission she was going to get.
“Of course,” she agreed, and wondered if that was an order he even truly expected her to follow.
“Oh great,” Cecil said when he saw her, “another mountain believer.”
He and Carlos were sitting in camping chairs, and the fishing poles in their hands were attached to lines that dangled off the edge of the canyon. She didn't ask.
“You sound frustrated,” she said mildly.
“It's like everyone's lost their minds,” he groused, pushing to his feet and leaving the dangling pole sitting on his chair. “Even someone's scientist boyfriend won't give him a straight answer. He just asks 'what are mountains?' and 'what is real?' and 'isn't the existence of a thing dependent on how we choose to define it?'”
“That's all true,” Carlos said.
“But it isn't supportive.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “The Glow Cloud flip-flopped on the issue.”
“My niece Janice says the teachers have started telling people in their class that there may or may not be mountains,” he said. “Can you believe it? Well,” he amended, looking almost sullen. “Maybe you can.”
“We ran into the Glow Cloud outside of town,” she said.. “Any idea what it was doing there?”
“Who knows why mountain-believers do what they do,” he muttered, before shooting both her and Carlos a significant look, one after the other.
“You're taking this awfully personally.”
“There are some things we just know,” he insisted. “Some things we have known, for so long we can't say when we began to know them. We know that trees are talking about us behind our backs, we know that the pancreas is the worst organ, and we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that mountains,” he said emphatically, “are not real.”
“Sometimes knowledge and truth have a complicated relationship,” she said.
Cecil scrunched up his face, like he was thinking about that, then scowled harder. Evidently, he didn't appreciate having vague half-proverbs directed back at him.
“I'm going to do something about this,” he muttered, not quite under his breath. “Cecil, you have a responsibility as a journalist and an uncle to not let this stand. I can fight for what I know to be true.”
He clenched his fists, grit his teeth, and walked off. Natasha watched him go.
“Where's he headed?” she asked Carlos.
“Right now, towards the sand wastes.” He shrugged. “He'll realize in a minute or two and head back.”
“People outside Night Vale saw the Glow Cloud,” she said carefully, once Cecil was out of earshot. “My supervisors want to know what we should tell them.”
The look she got wasn't quite judgemental, but it did border on wry. “At the core of things, you have two choices,” he said. “You can tell the truth, which is uncomfortable and sometimes incomplete, or you can tell a lie. Personally, I tend to recommend truth, but that may be because I'm not a very good liar.”
“The problem with truth is that it rarely makes a good story,” she said. “People don't want honesty. They want the world to make sense.”
He shrugged. “Some would say that the secret to finding happiness in life is to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
“John Peters, y'know, the farmer?”
“A fortune cookie. Cecil orders takeout when he's stressed.”
“Ah.”
She fell silent. The fishing line continued to dangle lazily into the canyon below. True to Carlos' prediction, Cecil stomped past them, heading the other direction now, without saying a word.
“We're going to lie,” she said at last.
“I figured. You are the government, after all.”
“Do you think this will happen again?”
His answering smile was small and frustratingly enigmatic. His hair, as always, was perfect.
“Who knows, with us mountain-believers?”
Fury hadn't been happy with her report, and she couldn't blame him. Still, it was his own fault. She'd long since stopped taking it personally when people were upset because they wanted two mutually exclusive things from her, and reassurance and truth were often mutually exclusive.
At least, unlike some of the bosses she'd had in the past, he was self aware enough to recognize this, even if he didn't like it. He may grumble and glare and be in a generally foul mood, but he was too much of a professional to take it out on her, so things gradually settled back to normal. SHIELD had decided, on her advice, that trying to extradite Loki from Night Vale would still cause more problems than it would solve. She hadn't been a part of coming up with the cover story for the storm, but she knew it had been vague and devoid of any mention of Loki or magic or sentient cloud-beings, and people had enough going on in their own lives to let it stand even if it wasn't the most satisfying answer.
In a different, simpler world that would've been the end of it.
Instead, she found herself picking up a call from an unknown number on instinct, half-expecting it to be randomly-dialed spam, only to find herself talking to John Peters, y'know, the farmer.
“Radio broadcast cut off this morning,” he said. “Right in the middle of Cecil's show.”
“Did it?” She was sure she sounded indifferent, because it was a tone she had perfected. “Technical difficulties?”
“Nope,” he said simply. “It was still broadcasting. Intern Rashad picked up the mic and spent a good half-hour doing interpretive dance to try and salvage the show. Cecil was just gone.”
She turned that over in her mind, picking it apart. “Anything else noteworthy happening?”
“The Farmers Markets are back,” he said after a short pause. “I don't think that's connected, though. Anyways, just thought y'all at the Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency ought to know.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That's helpful.”
She had driven to Night Vale.
It wasn't supposed to be possible. Well, it wasn't supposed to be possible for her; Thor did so fairly regularly, but Thor could do many things she couldn't hope to just by virtue of being Thor. When she'd asked him how, he told her how he would turn off the car's navigation and try not to focus directly on the roads, driving by instinct until the tide-like aura of the city pulled him in.
It shouldn't have worked for her. She wasn't a figure from myths and stories come to life, an awe-inspiring force of nature like her teammate. Ordinary human spies couldn't navigate to hidden arcane towns by gut feeling.
But here she was, car parked just outside of town limits with a bag of stakeout sandwiches she'd bought at the Arby's, listening to Cecil's broadcast on the radio of her rented Honda Civic.
“Listeners,” Cecil's nervous words floated through the static, clearly whispered. “I have been kidnapped. This morning, Luke, the ancient and mythical chaos being, broke into my house while I was drinking my morning cereal bowl full of espresso, and right now, I am at some unknown location. I am fairly certain we are no longer in Night Vale.”
His voice dropped even lower, conspiratorial. “He tells me he is taking me to a mountain. Listeners, who knows how long we will be trapped in this unending journey, searching for mountains that don't exist? I worry. I worry when I will see Carlos again. I worry when I will see all of you again, Night Vale. And I worry for Luke, who is my friend even if he has kidnapped me in this tragic, delusional quest to find something that doesn't…”
Another voice cut him off, sounding smaller, more distant in the static. “Are you serious? Where did you even get a microphone?”
There was a scuffling sound, like a microphone being grabbed, and the next time Loki spoke he sounded closer. “Stop telling people that I kidnapped you. It's not like I dragged you away, kicking and screaming. You agreed to this.”
“I don't know how you convinced me, though, clearly you used some kind of arcane persuasion to—”
“You're very impressionable first thing in the morning,” Loki said. “Especially before you've finished your coffee.”
“I must believe that my friend is in here somewhere, listeners,” he said, whispering conspiratorially towards a microphone she was fairly sure Loki was still holding. “Otherwise, I might lose hope of ever making it back, and hope, as you know, is a powerful thing. In the words of Emily Dickinson, 'Hope is the thing with feathers. Like, sooo many feathers. It must be super tough, because otherwise, how could it get so many feathers? Birds are strong and protective of their plumage'.”
She would have sworn, until that moment, that it wasn't possible to hear an eye roll through the radio.
“If I let you keep the microphone, will you cease your tantrum?”
“Listeners,” Cecil hissed, lowering his voice in a way that definitely wouldn't have prevented Loki from hearing him even if he didn't have Asgardian hearing, “I will not negotiate with the mountain believers. I will stand strong in the face of—”
The broadcast cut off, leaving static in its wake.
She turned down the volume, but not so low she wouldn't hear if the broadcast resumed, and settled in.
A couple of minutes later, the passenger side door clicked open, and a man slid into the seat beside her. After a couple seconds' hesitation he grabbed one of her sandwiches, unwrapped it, and took a bite.
“Stealing my stakeout snacks, Mr. The Scientist?” she asked. “I've killed men for less.”
Carlos raised his other hand, which held a cardboard sleeve filled with six glass bottles. “I brought your favorite soda.”
She grabbed one and popped the cap off. “All is forgiven,” she agreed. She gestured to the radio with the bottle. “Are you worried about Cecil?”
“Always,” he said immediately. “No more than usual.”
“He's been kidnapped by a supervillain.”
The smile he gave her was small and ironic, in a way that probably would have come off as mocking from anyone else. “Luke?”
She kept her reply serious. “He's still dangerous.”
“So are you,” Carlos said simply. “So is Cecil, and so am I, in a way. And so is heat, and cold, and gravity, and earth, and knowledge—”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I do,” he agreed. “And I think you know what I mean. If we feared every danger we would be paralyzed. Besides,” he added, “it's hard to be truly scared of someone after watching them come in last in a three-legged-race.”
“Okay,” she said, “I'll bite. What happened?”
“His partner refused to leave her cactus behind.” His eyes crinkled in amusement, which somehow made his hair look even more perfect than normal. “It was glorious. Also, he would probably kill me for telling you about it.”
“Your secret's safe with me.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence as they finished their sandwiches. The radio had started playing music, a soft, slow melody that sounded suspiciously like someone trying to accompany a music box with a bass guitar. A secret police member peeked into her window, gave her a very unsubtle thumbs up, then melted back into the background.
“So,” she said at last. “Do you want me to go find them?”
Carlos didn't answer immediately. He looked thoughtful, for a moment, before answering slowly, as though he'd chosen the words carefully and wanted to make sure they came out right. “Love means wanting to protect the people we care about from many things,” he said. “The discomfort that comes along with having their horizons broadened isn't one of them.”
She glanced at him sideways. “You think this'll be good for him.”
“He does love travel,” he said agreeably. “Look, I promise I'll call you if anything more ominous than a sightseeing trip happens, or if there seems to be any more danger than the ordinary danger we all face every day by being living beings in a vast and terrifying universe. But for now…”
“You don't think this is government business,” she finished for him.
“I think you have legitimate concerns and good intentions,” he said. “You, personally, because I'm not willing to extend that assumption of goodwill to the entire United States government, but anyways. Yes, I don't think this is a problem for the Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency.”
She paused, considering whether to say the next words, because she meant them, and there was a vulnerability in being truthful that she still sometimes found uncomfortable. “And if I'm not here as an agent? I consider you my friends.”
It probably should have offended her that he looked so surprised, but she couldn't quite muster it. People's expectations of her were a tool, one that she had long since learned how to wield effortlessly, and it didn't make sense to blame people for buying into expectations that she herself had crafted.
“Then I'd say you should come to the lab,” he said at last. “The coffee's not great, but I'm pretty sure it's coffee today and not bees, and our air conditioning works better than the one in the car. Plus it's less cramped. That is, if you want to.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I think I'd like that.”
They listened to the final update together, on a radio that looked like it had been cobbled together from old parts, leaning over a desk with a microscope and an abundance of disjointed, hand-scribbled notes. In her time listening to SHIELD's archives of Cecil's show, it had become familiar; not just his voice, but also the ebbs and flows of the narration, the way the events they contained would weave together to become a story.
“First off,” Cecil's voice said, “I wanted to apologize for saying I had been “kidnapped”. This wasn't entirely accurate. As I am currently a fully grown adult, a better and more technically correct word would have been “abducted”.
“Second off—and this is a big piece of news, I probably should have lead with it—I'm back from being abducted! It's good to be back, and a huge thank you to intern Rashad, who I'm told held down the fort here both figuratively and literally. Great job, Rashad, and I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say: get well soon.
“And now, for the news that I hesitate to bring to you, because I myself am not sure what to make of it. Listeners, I—there are things that I knew, that I know to be true. I know that Carlos has the most perfect hair of anyone I've ever met. I know that the sun rises in the east, that ostriches are not to be trusted, and that pine trees are plotting the slow yet inevitable downfall of human civilization. And I know—I knew—that mountains aren't real.
“But knowledge and truth sometimes have a complicated relationship. This is not something I used to know, but it is something I am learning.
“Mountains are real, Night Vale. Now, I'm not saying they exist, not for sure. I can't that easily dismiss what I have been taught my entire life. But what is a mountain? And, more importantly, what is real?
“Mountains are real the way hope is real. The way love is real. I cannot show you hope. I cannot scoop up love and hold it out in my outstretched hands for you to touch and tentatively prod with a curious tongue. And I cannot show you a mountain. But I have felt hope, and given and received love, and stood to watch the sunset with the firm stone under my feet and the valley far below. And I can tell you these things, and you can choose to believe in them, or not. And it doesn't matter, because I have experienced them, and my experience does not need your belief to be real. It is real to me, and so it is as real as anything is.
“Stay tuned next for an official station representative angrily denying and contradicting everything I've just said. Goodnight, Night Vale. Good night.”