Xaviers!

"I like black hair," Wanda says, "Exotic or not."

"Apparently." Miriam smiles. "So, what else is on the itinerary?"

"Well, back to the hotel room, then I thought I could show you the castle tomorrow. If that interests you."

"Sure, that sounds great."

An older woman approaches their table, mind obviously intent on something. She says something to Wanda in Swedish and Wanda frowns at her. From her mind, Miriam picks up the gist of what was said, "You think you're special? That a child of the earth would never ever be a threat?"

"How rude." Miriam pretty much blatantly tells the woman to her face. Presumably just for interrupting in a language Miriam doesn't understand, although she's talking about what the woman said as well, even if she doesn't entirely understand what she means. The general idea is clear enough and it reeks of anti-mutant sentiment.

The woman turns her baleful gaze on Miriam, "And you, child of the atom, what would you know of these matters?" She raises an eyebrow in that way only older people are capable of. The rest of the restaurant is either studiously ignoring them or missing this entirely and Wanda seems a little speechless.

Miriam manages to hold the woman's gaze. If there's one thing her power has given her it's the ability to not shy away from even the worst kind of sentiments.

"When insulting people it helps to use words that make sense." she glares back at her, driving her mind into the woman's to look for the meaning behind the old woman's words herself.

The woman's mind was old and broad, broader than a human's mind should be. Something about Wanda or something she had done or was doing was concerning the woman. Without warning, Miriam found herself standing in a courtyard of an ancient castle. The walls were a little worse for wear with vines growing on them, but the vines looked as important as the walls themselves to Miriam's mind. In the center of the courtyard was a longhouse, smoke curling from a hole in the roof.

"Fine, we'll do this the hard way..." Miriam mutters to herself. Her avatar coalesces. It's still her and Norma, but no longer concealed by the funeral shrouds, instead wearing them as dresses. She's carrying her sister with one hand and holding a lantern with the other. The two masks she used to wear are now hanging side by side on her hip. She starts walking towards the longhouse and knocks on the door, not waiting for an answer before trying the door to step inside.

The inside of the longhouse is filled with shadows, the central bonfire not providing all the light it should. The scent in here is heady and not at all what Miriam would have expected from an enclosed living space. Somewhere on the other side of the fire, a voice says, "Like so many children of the atom, she rushes in where angels fear to tread."

"Old enough that I don't have to be polite," the voice said as a figure steps into the flickering firelight. The avatar is not that of an old woman, but a woman in the prime of life. In the crook of one arm, she carries a short staff with fluffy material wrapped around the top. In the bad light, it makes it look like she's cradling a stick of cotton candy. "I am one of the lesser weavers, here to give your companion a warning."

"Because your friend is in danger," the woman says. "I may not spin the great fates as the Norns do, but I see the loop of the thread. Your companion is a loose end, a thread in danger of being pulled out of the tapestry. In human arrogance, she believes that her abilities will save her when her abilities are precisely what could doom her."

"In danger of what?" she presses on a bit more urgently. It's weird non-sense, but in a mindscape that could just as well be metaphor.

"The dark stalks her and even now it traces her steps. You must find the light if you wish to save her."

"That's tremendously unhelpful. Thank you so much." she says as she tries to trace what the woman is saying to it's source. Following mental connection to other, perhaps more illuminating parts of her mind.

As she traced the line of reasoning, it occurred to her that this woman wasn't the least bit human, despite her appearance to the contrary. That made tracing it a bit difficult and more than a little madness inducing on top of it. She just didn't *think* the way Miriam expected a person to. Things at right angles when they should be straight, curved when they should be a right angle.

Finally she tracks down a memory of a thread in a brilliant emerald green and royal blue... a thread that was in the process of being created and woven into a tapestry that showed images from the university. In the memory, a dark hand reaches and begins tugging on the thread, pulling it slowly free of the tapestry. As it does so, the threads in the tapestry begin to turn black from where they touched the pulled thread.

Miriam recoils, more from the strangeness, but the impression of whatever this woman... no, this thing, is trying to warn them about. In the real world not more than a second or two can have passed and Miriam opens her eyes again to stare at the woman.

"What are you?"

"Exactly what I told you, child of the atom, a weaver," the woman says, "Did you learn what you wanted?" There's a slight smirk on her lips.

"Not really, no." she says with a glance at Wanda.

Wanda's still looking at the woman with a befuddled expression, the look of someone whose perfectly pleasant dinner has been interrupted. Then some sort of recognition dawns, "Do I know you?"

The woman shakes her head and takes a step back with a simple response, "No."

"Do you often walk up to strangers and dispense vaguely threatening warnings?"

"Only when I see something that necessitates a warning," the woman says. Another step back.

"Uhm. Thanks?" Miriam says with a face that says she doesn't really mean it.

"Wait, I know you... you were at one of my birthday parties... which year was it?" Wanda says, still confused.

Whether that's true or not though, the woman steps back one more time and vanishes.

"What the... You know her? What was this all about?"

"Well, I don't *know* her. I just remember seeing her at one of my birthday parties growing up. I just thought she was a friend of my mother." Then she seems to process the rest of the conversation, "You were in her head, weren't you?" She keeps her voice quiet and there's no reproach, just curiosity.

"Yeah. It made as much sense as what she was actually saying. If she's human she's a really strange one."

"If she's human?"

"She claimed she wasn't and was going on about weavers."

Wanda frowns, "Weavers? That's not strange or anything." Something about the whole thing was troubling her in a way she couldn't put her finger on. "I guess it's good we were just about done with dinner..."

"Your mom is friends with some weird people..." she says as she gets up.

"My mother is a university professor. That's a synonym for eccentric," Wanda says, paying their bill and getting up as well.

"There's eccentric and then there's crazy..." Miriam mumbles as they head out.

"Well, we can get back to the hotel and forget her. Hot chocolate and a nice hot soak?"

"Sounds lovely."