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They found a place in the sand wastes that Cecil called safe. As safe as anything could be in Night Vale, Carlos supposed, but he had followed Cecil out there without protest. Maybe he was being reckless, but Cecil hadn't led him astray yet. Of course, Carlos didn't voice any of this out loud, but Cecil still responded with his usual flair for narrative near-omniscience.
"I have a knack for this desert, Carlos. I always have." He was looking away from Carlos now, and if someone made Carlos guess, he would have told them Cecil looked proud. Or maybe, if he chose to look longer, embarrassed -- Carlos couldn't really see his eyes.
Cecil was looking down, slightly yet subtly watching the ground and the west. Down, at the hot and dry red stones that were scattered throughout the sand wastes like pieces of a dead, dried up reef half-buried under the sand. Each piece, quietly waiting for night so it could finally breath out the dry heat of the day into the cooling, salt-tasting air.
It was evening, if you judged by the clock on your wrist the way Carlos had a tendency to judge, but the sun hadn't yet left the desert behind. You could see, if your face was slightly, yet subtly facing the west, the reflection of its old light in the red and purple clouds. If you looked straight at it, you'd see that even that old light was far from fading, but the pretense of impermanence was what gave it any sort of meaning. "Don't you think so, Carlos?"
Carlos looked up from his ticking, lying watch. "That you have a knack?" he asked. Cecil looked at him, straightened up, away from the west and instead facing Carlos.
"A knack," Cecil confirmed with a smile. Carlos felt a shiver run up his shoulders, into his mouth and lungs, and Cecil smiled wider, enthusiastic and earnest. "I mean, not to, like, toot my own double-flute, or anything. And I wouldn't want to jinx it, because, obviously, the City Council had jinxes banned eight years ago, so."
"You do seem to be... a survivor," Carlos said. He hazarded another glance at the sunset. It was in the same spot, suspended, and Carlos flicked the crystal face of his watch. "To be able to stay here this long, to really live here. It seems like it would be impossible. I haven't been here that long, and I've been close to death enough times to last me until I'm eighty. I've seen so many people come and go here, Cecil, I don't... I don't think everyone has your knack for it."
Cecil looked at Carlos, a long, slow look. It was the kind of look that the thing grabbing at your ankles would give you, your body seven years old and frightened, if you didn't run up the stairs as quick as it thought you could. If only you applied yourself, that look said. The same look from the same eyes that watched you pull the covers over your head.
"Thank-you, Carlos," he finally managed, but he didn't seem inclined to give a follow-up.
Carlos nodded stiffly. He looked at the sunset, then back at Cecil, then back at the sunset because, evidently, that was where Cecil was going to look now.
"It's pretty," Carlos said, after a long moment of oddly tense silence. "The sky doesn't get like this where I'm from. Not enough sky there to really see the whole," and here he waved his arm, gesturing at the sky in its entirety, "picture."
It had been setting for quite a long time. Carlos wondered if it was the sun or time itself that had twisted itself into a knot to keep the sky mirroring the desert for longer than anyone would deem consistent with normal sunset lengths. Cecil sighed, and stretched, and put his arm out to touch Carlos.
"It really is pretty. You should stop worrying about it," Cecil advised. "What's so great about the sun setting at the same rate or time every day, anyway? How boring would that get, right?"
"I'm not worrying about it," Carlos said.
"Pish tosh," Cecil said, slapping Carlos gently on the shoulder. "You worry about everything."
"I can't help it," Carlos said. "Maybe I don't have the knack for this place that you have." He meant it as a joke, really, but Cecil took what he said and stilled. Cecil pulled back his hand, brushing it over Carlos' faded chest wound in a jerky movement nowhere near subtle.
Carlos watched as Cecil looked back, again, at the sun. He sat there, rigidly watching its descent. It was moving again, west and out of sight. Carlos glanced at it just as the light gave up the ghost, and night finally swallowed the desert. When he looked back, Cecil was looking at him, briefly quiet with half-thought-out sincerity and fear.
"Oh," Cecil said, standing like he was just sticks and bones and desolate honesty in the sudden, wide-eyed night. "Maybe you don't."