The Cobalt Lingua
Elias lived in the quiet hum of his own peculiar symphony. The world, for him, wasn't just seen and heard; it was tasted, felt, smelled, a kaleidoscope of cross-wired senses that made simple existence a constant, overwhelming performance. The color blue, his most constant companion, had always tasted of metal. Not the rough, oxidized iron of a forgotten nail, but the clean, almost electric tang of surgical steel, cold ozone, and the distant, echoing clang of a bell. It was the taste of precision, of sterile brilliance, a flavor he’d once embraced in the hushed, gleaming labs of forensic chemistry. He’d left that life behind, the constant, gruesome confluence of taste and sight, the visceral echo of death that clung to every evidence bag, becoming too much to bear. Now, he meticulously curated his world, silencing the cacophony as best he could in the quiet solitude of his apartment, surrounded by the muted, earthy tones of old books and brewing tea. But the city, always a relentless conductor, had begun to play a new, insidious tune, a growing dissonance of blue.
