Kera Langley/A Ballet Of Light And Shadow

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Kera couldn't help but stop and put her book down to wipe at her eyes. Her eyes were moist and she couldn't focus on the words. This was homework, dammit. She had to read these chapters to be tested on them tomorrow. The test usually involved a 1 page 5 paragraph essay that involved... Zoe's face.

Damn.

Not now. Always when she was at her weakest. She marked her place in the book, and set it down. Maybe a break would help. She slipped down from the library to lounge, rooting around for a soda. She didn't find any. She found milk, bottled water, but someone had polished off the soda.

Damn. Damn.

Well now she could either head to town in Talos and try to get a soda at the corner market and lose some study time, or she could go back studying with bottled water.

Pausing she found the wrapped plate of wrapped lasagna, leftover from the other night. Her first reaction was to go for it. But then she stopped. No... She'd ruin her dinner, and... Zoe's face.

Damn. Damn. DAMN!

She picked out a bottled water and walked out of the foundation base and out to the streets. Fresh air. Some grass and green. Kera went to one of her favorite spots - atop the cliffs in Talos overlooking the ocean. She sipped the water. Calm. Peace. Calm. Ocean. Yes. She closed her eyes, and laid back in the grass. The grass reminded her of home in Virginia, going camping with her pa...

Dark shadows streamed across her memory. The dark shapes would roll over the ones made of light, consuming them in blackness. And it was good... so good... it would make you feel strong for a decade. She could remember her laugh. Her own voice, laughing in delight at the slaughter of hapless innocents...

Zoe's face.

She shook her head. No. Zoe Brightstar had offered to be her friend. Her... first... Kheldian friend. Like... ever. That was huge. She couldn't harm the girl. But the hunger... it had lead her to this world in the first place, a pure, unravaged world, unsoiled by the wars of the Kheldian people. She had come to hunt and feed. But instead she had discovered the one thing she had never in all of time and space had expected to find.... a kindred spirit. Someone who thought and felt the same as she did. The human Kera Langley.

Kera reached up and poked her pointing fingers together. It was a remarkably simple gesture, but it meant a lot to her. She... we are Kera Langley. And we are happy we are here.

Another image floated out of her memory. Mr. Zen's stern and disapproving glare. No... She had to stay on her current path towards a better life, if for no other reason than to never earn that disapproving glare from Mr. Zen again.

Holding her water bottle, she trudged back to the building. The pang in her was still there - the hunger - the need to feed again. It was always there, it had never left her. She no longer needed to feed, being merged fully with a human now, she would live as long as her human half would. But she was still addicted. It was a delicate dance of self control versus addiction now, a ballet of light and shadow that was master of her heart.

As she set down her bottle of water next to her book, she thought of Zoe's happy smile, wanting to be friends. She took a deep breath, smiling. If there was at least one Peacebringer that didn't want to kill a Warshade on sight, then maybe the future would really hold a place for her. If nothing else, she was learning something no Nictus would ever know. After thousands of years of feeding on others, she was struggling - learning - to control the addiction; the need to feed.

She picked up the physics book and her notes again, returning to studying.

And perhaps that was the point. To learn and feel things no Nictus ever would. Like shame, humility, self control, and a value for life. Truly this new life surely had much more to teach her.