Raisa didn't expect him to come forward and touch her shoulder, but as unexpected as it was, she realized just how starved she was for the proper socialization she'd been denying herself. Even when her Mother and brother were here, even though Sera wasn't far, she always felt the need to be put together. Confident. Unshakable. Fun. Raisa lowered her head over his neck for a hug, standing rigidly there as she continued to struggle against a wave of grief.

Selfish.
Of all things that could've been said about the thorny tigress, she didn't think that one ever fit her. She could be barbed, and cold, and too protective over her packmates - her family. But everything she'd ever done, pushing herself to be an open, friendly leader willing to create bonds with other groups, playing in a world of politics she didn't understand, taking a mantle she wasn't ready for, it'd all been for them. So her siblings always had a home to rest their heads, so Koku and her kids always had a beacon back to where they were loved, so Cirilla might return and be proud of her daughter one day. But it was crumbling around her, the aching darkness inside her pulsing with every goodbye she was robbed. She wanted to be selfish, she realized. She wanted to let go of what she'd created, and if it burned without her, so be it. He was right - she was worth more than the cinders that would remain of her if she kept trying to light their way. Perhaps Cobalt had a point, and her people didn't need a rudder to guide them at all. Maybe nothing at all would burn, it would just fade quietly into a history nobody would remember, and their family would remain here, happy, intact.
Perhaps there was one among them willing to take reins so already worn between stressed hands. The willows had been inhabited, Barbosa had at least one member willing to fight for her. Before the sudden emptiness and her later resurfacing, alone, changed, there had been something budding. Would she want to let it flower this time?

Raisa held his advice in the front of her mind, hating it and obsessed with it alike. It was failure, but it was freedom, a burden she hadn't expected weighing along the ones she'd already shouldered. The ones still piling. The monarch nodded slowly, carefully, her conflicted emotions warring on her features.

It's worth thinking on. Thank you, Cobalt.

He went on to mention the crisis. Raisa ground her jaws, looking to the ground in shame. Sure, she'd gotten the dreams, the plea for help from an ancestor she didn't know. Was it even hers, or just some old inhabitant of the world that'd fucked it all up?
She had studiously ignored it so long as ichorwood remained untouched, pretending dream after vision hadn't wracked her and hoping perhaps it was just a plague of nightmares on her strained mind. Hearing it brought to life in the air between them stung, for it meant just one more duty she wasnt attending.

Maybe his rambling about vampires was more true than she put stock in. What was her life coming to?

I've been wrong to ignore that, I think. I... kept hoping the dreams were just my own nightmares.

It fit, that she would have troubled sleep for fear of the world around them crumbling in terrible ways.