Xaviers!

"IT'S ALWAYS INTERESTING WHAT I'M SEEN AS. THAT'S ONE THING I DON'T KNOW."

"THEN AGAIN, PERHAPS I'M NOT ACTUALLY HERE. PERHAPS YOU'RE JUST SEEING THIS BECAUSE YOU EXPECT TO SEE ME. YOU DO KEEP YOUR GHOSTS CLOSE TO YOU."

"This is not the bloody place to be imposing my own reality on things, no matter how slight... This is new, perhaps not this place but the chasm leading to it. Something happened and if you're here, this deep in her mind you might know things she doesn't. Not consciously."

"AND WHAT ANSWERS COULD I GIVE THAT WOULD SATISFY YOU?"

"I'm trying to help her. Find out what happened. If there's a new chasm in her mind that leads to some form of oblivion, she ought to know!"

"IT'S ONLY OBLIVION IF YOU THINK IT'S OBLIVION."

"IT'S THIS NOTION YOU PEOPLE HAVE, THAT THERE ARE THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T SEE, THINGS THAT WOULD SHATTER YOUR MINDS."

"YOU DON'T GIVE YOURSELF ENOUGH CREDIT. YOU'RE VERY ADAPTABLE, AND PERFECTLY ABLE TO TUNE OUT THINGS YOU'RE NOT YET READY TO SEE."

"And I'd rather keep it that way than suffer the same mental schism Sam has. But this passage, this tree, it's new. Something changed."

"SO YOU SEE IT AS A TREE? THAT'S INTERESTING."

"IT'S ALWAYS BEEN HERE, FOR HER TO FIND."

"And now she has. Or perhaps her subconsciousness did at least. I believe I've seen and delved deep enough." she says and tries to find the mental groove she left on her descent.

"NOT STAYING, THEN? PERHAPS THAT'S FOR THE BEST."

It's not that easy at first. Like walking into a room and forgetting what you came there for. 'Up' and 'down' are so relative here that it takes a moment before she can lay a mental hand on it, but eventually she does.

"If I so I will never leave and if I am to pass on one day I'd rather it not be buried in metaphors about battles and ravens."

As Miriam retreats from Sam's mind, she hears the voice faintly behind her. It sounds suspiciously like...

"...LYING DEMEANS US BOTH."

"Oh bugger off you malnourished pest..." she mutters in the real world as she withdraws from Sam's mind, momentarily confused about her whereabouts and the exact line between reality and metaphor.

"...beg pardon?" Sam asks, opening her eyes.

"One of your 'beasties'." she says in a tone that does not require actual air-quotes. "Down in a giant chasm that's opened up in there." she points at Sam's head.

"I'm sure there's some sort of joke to be had about that."

"It claimed to be passage to the afterlife and your subconsciousness agreed enough that it was hard to not be dragged down into it."

"Are you alright, then? You don't seem that shaken."

"I'm fine." she lies. "It was just your subconsciousness and neuroses feeding off of my... hang-ups."

"So it seems like you didn't see anything that was too far from explainable."

Miriam gives a slight shrug. "That's... up to interpretation, I suppose. You certainly seem to believe it and the deeper into metaphors and the Astral you sink the less I feel like what's real or imagined is a questionable distinction. If there is an afterlife you very well might have dug a path towards or maybe even into it. Whatever it is, it was nothing but an empty void to me. Endless oblivion. Though the skeletal raven in your head was very insistent on that simply being how it appears to me. Obnoxiously insistent." Miriam's not quite clenching her fists, but Sam can tell that right now her mind is a steel trap. Tense and strained from trying to keep a stiff upper lip.

"Well, if my worst problem is I've got an obnoxious metaphor living in my head then I'm laughing, aye?"

"An additional one you mean." she snarks. "Look I don't know how 'real' any of this is, but at least some part of you believes in it and is touching on something that's beyond just you. Maybe it's your personal backdoor to the Astral or maybe you've touched on some kind of... dumping ground for errant impressions left on the global consciousness of mankind or I don't know. But external or internal, I think it'll do what your subconsciousness thinks it should."

"You know, you're remarkably skeptical for someone who is an actual-factual vampire."

"I've had rabbit ears grow out of my head as well, does that mean I should believe in the Easter bunny?" she says in a blatant attempt at deflection.

"I'm just saying, there's more out there than surly metaphors."

"Maybe. Perhaps even probably. Does it make you feel better to think your mind is somehow tethered to a literal heaven and hell?"

"Not especially, but ignoring it and hoping it'll go away hasn't worked so far."

"Okay that's... a fair point. Wish I could tell you more but I was a little concerned about diving into what looked like utter non-existence to me."

"And I'm not asking you to, Miriam. I'm just... it's bloody frustrating knowing something's 'off' about you, aye?"

"It is, but for what it's worth, it didn't seem like something that was wrong."

"Maybe it isn't, then? Maybe I'm just picking at scabs?"

"You said yourself you didn't feel anything was wrong, that's bound to color what's in your head. It was certainly new in how prominent it was in the landscape, whether or not it was there before. A river disappearing beneath a giant tree. It's impossible to tell if that would have developed on it's own, if it was sped up or entirely new. It's integrated as if it belongs either way."

"I've seen the tree, at least."

"And now it holds a more dominant place in your mind. I don't know if that's bad, but it certainly seems like your girlfriend is not a fan."

"I don't know. She didn't seem to be making a judgment there. She's just... well, I guess she's a little harder to read sometimes, since she got a bit more wolf in her."

"Yeah right. That just means she didn't want you to think she was making a judgement."

"I'm not going to put words in her mouth here, Miriam."

"I'm just saying, in my experience what people say and what they think rarely line up entirely." Miriam shrugs.

"She's... well, she's more straightforward than a lot of people. Just a bit... nonverbal, sometimes."

"Well I imagine that's not a huge problem for you. And you probably shouldn't take any relationship advice from me anyway."