STRAUD 032: Humility

STRAUD//

Davian taught me compassion. When I heard he'd brought the Marscapones back to life, I wondered why I hadn't done that. Or tried. There's no telling what I can and can't do but I hadn't even imagined such a thing was possible. But why?

I had found myself guarded. It came like storm clouds and obscured my thinking. Davian seems to have none of these moods, or at least he hides it well.

None of this affected him as he addressed the concerns of the Marscapone family. They had a problem, a missing matriarch and patriarch. He saw that he could correct the problem. And so he did, it really was as simple as that.

I feared overstepping my proper boundaries. I'd already cured the young man Kevin of the vampiric curse he suffered from. Perhaps I feared incurring a debt I could not pay off in any timely manner. Vincent alone carried a gravity I scarcely understood.

We'd been friends for a long time but there was still so much I did not know about him. We spoke always of immediate concerns. I suppose we were always old friends.

Why, then, did I not try harder to bring him back to life after his death at the hands of my old rival?

Because I needed Davian to teach me a lesson. I needed to be reminded of the strength of mortals and the weaknesses I possessed and needed to rid myself of.

CEDRIC//

Davian taught me humility. His apprentice taught me reverence.

At that table at the Blue Velvet, I'd embarrassed myself of speaking of the past. What could have been. "Are you still crying in your cereal about what could have been?" Áine was speaking truth. Too often I caught myself drowning in my self-pity. How could I stand among giants if I was squatting in the mud?

After that night, I told myself never again. I would fashion myself into something different. Someday I wouldn't be the fledgling of the coterie.

I felt this way around the Zhou family. They needed protection. They were a gentle people that had escaped the weariness of the world. If they didn't have someone to guard them then I feared the worst. I'd lose them forever to the darkness. And I had the rest of my unlife to dwell in what could have been.

It was so soon after the death of Svetlana that I was asked to step up for them. I suppose I never really processed it. I was never terribly well-grounded emotionally. When she left, I went on much the same way as I always had.

She had been everything to me. And yet, it had so rarely addressed the root of our shared curse.

Tatanya had called upon me. "If there's anything you want of her things, you are welcome to it." But what was there that could bring her back to me?

She had given me my suit, my outfit. My facing to the world. She clothed me. It was selfless. It meant everything to me.

Suddenly it occurred to me, after Davian brought back the Marscapones, could he bring her back too?

And yet I was humbled and in reverence of them. I was not ready to ask such a personal favor and I feared what it would mean if I did. What if she'd changed? If you asked for something, should you not be absolutely sure that's what you wanted?

Vlad had granted her request for euthanasia because, as I understood it, her soul had become corrupted. But couldn't we find a way to correct that? My humility came from my senses; Davian was capable of more than I understood.

But did I understand more than Vlad? It was he who'd decided finally that she could not be cleansed. But we had been out of contact with the mages then. How could things be different if we tried?

MANDARC//

The party Davian invited us to in the late spring was my first time really understanding what a mage could do.

I never knew Vincent except as the fabled voice inside Kevin's head. Some believed, others didn't, but I did. There was nothing too fantastical to not have a grain of truth (at the very least).

But Myrtle was different. She took me under her wing and protected me. She answered my nonsensical questions about the nature of magic. I suppose she felt I was one of her children. Which, in a sense, I was.

I even lived underneath the same roof as her for a time. It was at the request of the Master. He knew she was suffering from a deep depression. I could not fully grok what it was that she felt, but I did see her drowning herself in liquor and cigarettes. In some ways, I probably enabled the behavior but I tried to help. But I was powerless to understand what it was to lose everything.

I had lost a few things in my short time on Earth, namely whatever semblance of a family I could claim from Trelaine and the Sabbat.

And of course, there was Wendy. She was the first creature that invoked in me feelings of love and romantic affection. She was kind to me, gentle, when no one else cared to pay me any mind. She was a bright point in an otherwise dark period of my existence.

The Master later warned me against retaining such feelings, observing that she was one of his unholy creations. It hurt to think of her as such. But even in my short time serving him, I'd learned that his words were never idle chit-chat. If he warned me against attachment to her, I was inclined to believe it was well-founded.

It was perhaps my weakness for things feminine that led me to the woman Friday Perkins. When we employed the Master's alchemical cure, I felt a fear that I'd never before felt. Fear is imagined until you acquire something you can't bear to lose.

For me that was the bond that was forming between my sorry self and my friends. When Friday took Dexx with her, I knew I could no longer count her as one of the coterie. It was Cedric, Kevin, and even the Master who showed me their loyalty. We got the dog back and I experienced a sort of epiphany.

It was more than just the magic of friendship, it was also intensely personal. I was coming into my power and realizing my own capability. I could hold my own in a fight and I finally had something worth fighting for.

STRAUD//

I'd like you to come to my home today. Come prepared.

CEDRIC//

Are you appearing at the B.V. tonight?

STRAUD//

Depends on how you do.