A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Visitor

Summary: Ellie receives a message from the angels, Carlos comforts an upset Cecil and the team have a strange encounter at the House That Doesn't Exist.

When Ellie dreamt, her dreams were strange. Obviously they had gotten more abnormal as she had moved to Night Vale, but even before that she had weird dreams. They were a bundle of oddities, often with film and TV characters thrown in while she was dreaming about moving paintings and pumpkins that could kill you.

So to have a normal dream was an alien concept to Dr Ellie Green as she took in her surroundings. She was walking through a lush green field, the sky was a brilliant shade of azure and there was a gentle breeze picking up her strands of blonde hair and making them waft in the wind. The grass smelled like strawberries and the not-Angels looked quite content sitting on the hill. Wait....not-Angels?

Ellie stopped walking and looked at them. They were some of the absolutely non-existent Angels that used to be with Old Woman Josie before she disappeared.

"You...." She whispered, before immediately considering the possibility that someone was monitoring her dreams. That was a thing in Night Vale, right?
"You don't exist?" She said aloud just in case. "But....uh, hypothetically, if you did exist, would you need to tell me something?"

She was going to be arrested again, she was sure of it.

"Eleanor..."

She cringed at the name but listened.
"Eleanor...you have been doing good work for us."

"Er, if you were real, which you're not of course," The blonde woman babbled in reply. "I would express thanks."

"There is something that you must know."

Ellie raised an eyebrow, her glasses slipping slightly down her nose. Wait, since when has she had her glasses on? Well, at least this confirmed it was a dream.

"Your friend Natalia...she is alive."

Ellie's heart did some kind of front flip.

"Where is she?!" All sense of self-preservation caused by the dream invaders had vanished.

"That's the problem. She remembers her name, but little else. She is working for this Smiling God. She has been touched by the light of the unravelling of all things. We cannot reach her, even though we are Angels. By the way, my name is Erika."

The biochemist felt numb. Natalia, her best friend, working for Strex? The ones that were making Cecil upset (and by extension Carlos), wrecking up the town and who KIDNAPPED Natalia in the first place?!

"Is there anything that can be done, hypothetically if Angels were real?" She said solemnly.

"We are attempting to track her. Miss Flynn and her militia owe her a debt of gratitude for helping them, so they too are eager to see her saved from this light. But we are trapped in a strange desert otherworld. There is rumbling, and a bright light. It is hard for us to even protect the chosen ones in this place."

So Josie was alive, Ellie mused. And what was this 'strange desert otherworld'?

"Wait, what is that? How can I help Nat?" The scene began to blur and Ellie heard someone calling her name.

"Ellie........Ellie?"

"Wait, don't go!" She yelled at the Erika, who had turned away and begun heading down the hill out of sight.

"NO!" She awoke with a start and shot up immediately.

"Ellie, are you okay?" Rochelle was leaning over Ellie, who was asleep on her workbench at the lab; hair was covering most of the blonde woman's face and she sat up wearily.