Xaviers!

Sam nods, following.

It's a quiet walk out to the woods. Once they reach the edge of it, Wanda steps out of her sandals and picks them up and carries them, walking barefoot the rest of the way. She seems to follow no particular course or maybe a very particular course. Sam can sense from her mental state that she's listening to something that Sam can't hear. Finally, she reaches one of the older trees on the property and she stops. "I think this will do. Sometimes you have to find the right spot for this sort of thing. I'm sure you can relate."

"...it never really went away for you, did it?"

"Not all of it, at least."

"It got harder to listen to it... and the panic didn't help, but no, it didn't all go away. There's more to it than bending the weather," she says as she kneels. "As I understand, and believe, we are both something very old, you and I, just in a new modern form." She takes out the bowl, turning it carefully in her hands before she sets it on the ground. Next is some of the small packets she took out of the bin, which she sets to her side before she starts rolling up her right sleeve.

"That's what was frustrating about it. I was still the Morrigan. I could sense these. I just couldn't do anything about it."

She takes out the marker and begins slowly drawing a design on the back of her right hand. It looks like an awkward process. "You couldn't do anything about it now. Just because what we are is old doesn't mean we're experienced. We're still learning."

"True. I'm just starting to understand these little lights."

"Little lights?" Wanda takes the design all the way up to her shoulder and then follows it back down to her hand.

"That's how I see them. Little lights, everyone's is a bit different."

"It's because I'm the Morrigan, and I know where to take them when people die. I just... know, somehow."

"So you're ferrying their abilities to an afterlife?" She caps off the design and picks up the packets, taking small bits of unidentifiable plants from the packets and putting them in the bowl.

"More than just their abilities. Humans have these too. And I'm to take them to... well, I see it as a tree."

"But I'm fairly certain it's not a tree."

"Trees are not exactly uncommon symbology, especially in this part of the world. What makes you think it's not a tree?" She crushes something into bowl with her right hand, powdering it over the assorted herbs.

"It... shifts a bit if more than one person is viewing it. Warring perspectives, I suppose."

"Metaphor can be everything," she nods, reaching over to pick up a fallen twig from the tree. She holds it up and bows her head to the tree before pulling out the lighter and lighting the end of the twig, holding it there until it begins to burn. At this point, something in the back of Sam's brain begins to prickle, almost like someone's whispering behind her, but the 'whispers' are as much feeling as anything approaching words.

"...what are you doing, there?" Sam asks, disoriented.

"Communing is the best way to describe it I guess," she says, closing her eyes as she touches the burning twig to the contents of the bowl, which flares up briefly before reducing to a smolder as the plants in the bowl catch and smoke. She takes the vial and removes the cap, holding it in her hands briefly before pouring it onto her head. Physically, it proceeds much like any of the others have for Sam. Meta-physically, there's a thrum as if someone has run their hands over a guitar or harp. For a brief moment, Sam can see the strands of *something* running between Wanda and the ground. They vibrate slightly with renewed power and a soft breeze picks up, carrying the smoke up and around the tree.

"...well then," Sam says as she recenters herself, "that was as interesting to watch as I'd hoped."

Wanda let the smoke continue to drift for a bit before she covered the bowl with a lid from her bag and she turned to Sam. "See something interesting in the leaves and smoke?"

"Saw, heard, felt. Every one of these was beautiful, but yours was pulling from somewhere else."

"My great great grandfather used to be able to listen to the Earth, according to my great grandmother. She says it warned him to stay away from the dark parts of the woods and helped him find the game he was looking for." She sighs, "I'm still not sure all it says to me. It tells me when something is... out of order. It supports me if I ask."

"I can understand things just feeling... viscerally wrong, sometimes."

"Erica had me come look at something to gauge my reaction. It was kind of pretty in a handiwork way, but it was nauseating to be around," she says.

"And you just wanted to destroy it, aye? You might not have known why, but the urge was there."

"I don't know 'destroy' so much as 'undo', but I imagine that's semantics and process."

"Aye, well you're a nurturer. I'm perhaps not so much."

"You nurture some things, like conflict," she teases, taking the cover off the bowl. A breeze scoops out the ashes and scatters them about the area. "But the Morrigan is many things and death is a part of the cycle. So you have a place, just like everyone else."

"As forest fires do, I suppose."

"That depends, but yes," she nods, resting her right hand flat on the ground. "It feels like everything's flowing back towards balance."

"Everything in its place, then?"

"With a little work, it will be," she says, closing her eyes and Sam can almost hear those strings being struck again.

"More... communing, I suppose?"

"No, that's for me," she says, dumping the few remaining fragments out of the bowl and beginning to put her things back in her bag. "Maintaining balance is hard work. Sometimes it requires listening. More often it involves rolling up your sleeves and getting something done."

"Back to that, then. You don't think I'm centered, do you?"

"Do you honestly want my opinion?" Wanda says, standing and shouldering her bag.

"I'm sorry if that sounded defensive from me. I know you've got no real... dog in this fight, as it were."

"But aye, perhaps I could use some perspective."

"Well," Wanda hesitates, "I can only speak to my experience with my partner. And our relationship is likely highly different from yours. As much as she's my partner, she's also my Guardian and that colors how we exist. But..."

A deep breath. "You have two wolves, two leashes tugging on you. And one of those leashes has been taken away, leaving the worry and concern that can be as big a tug as the leash, because one of your wolves has run away. But you still have one wolf here who is tugging mightily on the leash and likely trying to figure out where she fits in the grand scheme of your life. And you're still uncertain of yourself. So, I would say circumstances have made you lopsided. But as to what 'centered' means for you, I can't entirely say. That's for you to determine. Yes, the Morrigan is a war goddess, but that's not all she's ever been. She's even been an earth-goddess at times. Only you can decide what you, the Morrigan, need to be. And that as much influenced by your needs as the needs of others."

"So it's a big mess, aye? Guess I don't have much of an argument for that."

"That's one way to look at it. You could also look at it as a large system that you are just beginning to wrap your head around. People would call weather a 'mess', but it has rules, there is an order it follows, even if it's not always apparent to those not steeped in it." She smiles, "The Morrigan can have rules, she can have an order she follows. And you have a say in what those rules are."

"It all starts to sound like picking a major, after awhile. Higher stakes, sure. But the same language, it seems."

"Maybe," Wanda nods. "As I understand it, most of the Children, people like me, end up setting up somewhere out in the country and put down roots there. I have decided that I'm going to put down roots here, even though it defies the conventional. You could very well do something similarly 'unconventional'."