“You were my baby. But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don’t, and anyway they change. They go to high schools, where they learn dangerous things. They grow into adults, and become dangerous things.

“But none of that is as difficult as the main thing. We all know it, but most of you don’t spend any time thinking about the consequences of it. Time doesn’t work in Night Vale.

“You were a child, and then you were a teenager, and then you were old enough that I thought it might be time for you to run my pawnshop for me. Just some days. Just sometimes. I could use the time off, after running it for years while also raising a child on my own.

“I taught you how pawning an item works. ‘Pawnshops in Night Vale work like this,’ I said. I showed you the hand washing, and the chanting, and the dying for a little while, and how to write out a ticket. I showed you how to bury the doors at night so they wouldn’t get stolen. I showed you this and then you started running the shop on your own, and I was so proud.

“But time doesn’t work in Night Vale. And so one day I woke up to find you had run that shop for decades. Centuries, even. I’m not sure. You held on to the pawnshop but let go of me. I happened to offer eleven dollars to the first customer we helped together, and in the years of being nineteen you forgot that moment between us and only retained the offer of eleven dollars as a meaningless, unchangeable ritual. People in town couldn’t remember a time when you weren’t the one running the store. But I could. Because, from my point of view, you’ve only been running it a couple months. It’s all so fresh for me. The course of your life is so linear. But meanwhile you. It had been so long for you that you’d forgotten me, and forgotten the house you moved out of last month. Your entire childhood, gone for everyone but me. All those years spent with me. All those years I gave up everything to spend with you.”

Her mother was crying. Jackie suddenly remembered that her mother’s name was Lucinda. Lucinda was crying. Jackie was crying too, but wiping it away as quickly as it came, even now uncomfortable with the feeling of it.