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Do not sit by my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
—
The house appears at 7:25 pm on what can be assumed to be a Thursday. The kid behind the counter materializes with a slight delay, as if they’d had trouble re-adjusting to their place in space-time. That was hardly unusual for them. Even now, the curses that surround them smell like home. Things found in soil and broken glass and missing organs. Things cherished like small, volatile blessings. Atticus is out on an errand, so Bet will be here alone for a time, and they only mind that a little. They need some reprieve from him on occasion, anyway. For all his theatrics, he is a good guardian, and a better salesman. After all, he managed to convince Bet in their darkest hour to stay.
Bet had been drifting, carrying their life on their back and living off of whatever could be found. The bitterness grew up around and inside them like a tangle of poison ivy. A godparent does what he has to do to keep a child like that safe. If the curses that poured from his lips were real this time, rather than pretend, that didn’t need to be spoken or thought of. Because when the dark side of the moon was just within reach, calling with gentle insistence, Atticus Downings did the same from below. And that kindness became protectiveness the moment the child fell into him. He cannot be blamed for the venom that laced his words that day.
Bet didn’t need their mother. Bet hadn’t written to the rehab for ages, only wrote one lousy poem with lyrics balanced like on a ledge, the same way they had been, tentatively holding on with the faint, barely believable promise of being seen tomorrow. The words they had written spoke of spinning lights and glinting coins, of empty cans piled atop one another, of late nights and later mornings. Of a moment of peace while making a celebratory breakfast, that quickly shattered along with the first plate. They never sent it.
When Atticus reads over this, he sighs and sings of a well just as deep, of dark waters and fractured bones, of agonizing guilt and the tattered remains of a mother and daughter.
Neither forgave or forgot, but they did free themselves from the pain. Bet sprawled out on park benches and tuned into the faraway signal of a radio, hoping for the voice to be stronger than the void beyond the sky. One goodnight with, again, the faint promise of another was a bread trail through the forest, but the hands that caught Bet and cursed their past with fervor led them along. Those hands had been longing to hold something for far too long, and they fit together like a photo into a frame, Atticus’ hands holding Bet’s, a memory captured and contained within a caring cage.
They found Night Vale because they needed to.
Goodbyes were spoken tersely, if they were spoken at all. It was an arduous, tired time of paperwork and willpower and an old camper van that hadn’t been cleaned in years. There was a tense and meaningful silence broken only by the sounds of a distant town’s weather drumming steadily closer. It welcomed them with open arms, and they rushed into it with weeping relief, both forgetting to turn away from the other to hide their tears. They needed this.
Now, Bet watches the lights from the car lot simply because they want to, eating dried crickets and candied peaches from a bag, occasionally brushing fingers with a girl that lays beside them. She gives names to the stars, and each time they erupt with color like they’ve never heard their own name spoken. Bet can relate. And on the balcony above Crows’ Corner, Atticus blows blessed salt in their direction, a quiet prayer to tide him over until dawn. The sky is a sheltering violet, and he does not think of anything but this entire town staying awake to watch his godchild, keeping vigil with him, a nameless, profound thing that looks and listens.
“I think,” Bet begins, from their perch on a fence, “he needed me as much as I needed him.”
“And do you consider that to be a bad thing?” Cassie inquires, and it might just be the tilted angle to her head and the fading light, the subtle framing of her wondering face by soft red hair, but Bet swears her eyes glow brighter than those lights in the sky.
“No,” Bet murmurs, feeling a watchful gaze tethering them to home, “not anymore.”
Somewhere, a crow is dying, and a stag watches over it, life dripping from its antlers. When dawn’s searching light finds them, their bones will be laid together, crossed like fingers signaling an omen, or perhaps a wish, and the stars will sing their eulogy with an epilogue, an ellipsis…
with no true end in sight.