cobalus

The touch of Cobalt was strange and bitter compared to the taste of Gold. It was the dark shadow stretching underneath the bright light of what humanity could be, and it took Zerah some time to accept that. The impulse of hate against another, the thrum of the poisonous drugs he was warned away from, the indulgence that humans partook so often was something he didn’t understand, but felt like he must, if he were to ever understand what makes humanity tick. He was warned about the snake in the back alley, but to understand the whole of the light and the shadow, he knew he must observe.

But Cobalt also made him painfully aware of the cracks and splinters his friends tried to hide.

His best friend was a devoted werewolf. She fought against corruption of a worse kind than indulgence, even as she was accused of it herself. She always tried to put on her best front for him, and tried to pretend she was fine for her family.

But now, Zerah knew better. He watched for the tiny things, the little idiosyncrasies that his friend desperately tried to hide. The smell of whiskey, scotch specifically, on her breath when she would stagger downstairs was noticeable to him. She was definitely less pale last week, and looked a little healthier. The bags under her eyes that were clearly hidden with foundation that only barely matched her skin color anymore, and the stumble in her step.

She had spoken of her traumas before. Being run from a city, and her sister’s distance after that as she grew more accustomed to being a vampire. Having to cope with her sister giving her immortality, and what others of her kind might see her as for it. Witnessing her torture, and being unable to speak of what came after it. Her brushes with Spirals, whatever those were, and seeing her own flaws made manifest in them. He wanted to know them. He wanted to learn those flaws, and help her see catharsis, as he sought to do, deep in this new philosophy.

She feared her flaws, when she needed to face them. To put it in her own words, she needed to face this ‘Corruption Wyrm’ in order to conquer it. If she really was one of a race of warriors, she needed to face her pain and come out of the other side stronger.

And what kind of friend would he be, if he didn’t try to help her?

When he saw her, he would search her tired eyes for her past torments. He could see broken glass behind those eyes, smashed by anxiety, depression and trauma. If he put a little of his Fire into it, he saw flashes of her darkest secrets and regrets. Saw glimpses of her hiding empty bottles in the garbage, and the flashes of claw and ash in a dark room.

He wondered how someone who lived and breathed, as a whole person, one who was born and not created, might experience the same catharsis he was looking for in the darkness of humanity. He knew she could not follow that path of corruption; to hear her tell it, it would send her right into the jaws of incurable monstrosity. Into that Spiral, which he could only assume was like Flux, but for a werewolf. Something that would turn her into a monster, often forever. He didn’t want his friend to be a monster, he only wanted her to be stronger with him.

Perhaps in order to help, he needed to understand pain, and flaws, and bitterness further.