Title: The Rat and the Ruby Slippers
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale
Pairing: Carlos/Kevin, Carlos/Cecil
Categories: Amnesia, Drama, Established Relationship, Horror, Mystery, Romance
Length: Medium (7119 words)
Warnings: Emotional and mental manipulation by an Eldritch entity

Author on LJ: indigostohelit
Author Website: indigostohelit

Author's Summary:

Carlos is having the strangest dreams, and the strangest headaches, like there's something he's supposed to be remembering. Not to mention the intern's wedding coming up, and that new chemical StrexCorp wants him to develop. It's going to be a busy week.

Review:

In psychology, there's a concept called 'object permanence', which is the brain's capacity to understand that an object exists even when it can't be observed with any of the five senses. Indigostohelit's The Rat and the Ruby Slippers explores that idea within the Welcome to Night Vale universe and how it ties into memory and, more prominently, amnesia.

Truthfully, there's very little I can say without utterly spoiling the fic, except that indigostohelit is thorough when it comes to exploring the different aspects of memory, particularly their mutability and the power they have. Also, their resilience against being forgotten. After all, memories are physically built into our brains, endless collections of endless data written into the very fiber of our being, and though we may lose the way to those memories, we still carry them within us, just as surely as we all carry a little bit of home within ourselves no matter where we go.

The Rat and the Ruby Slippers is a story of how Carlos discovers that, and how he saves all of Night Vale from a fate worse than death.

The Rat and the Ruby Slippers