Xaviers!

Frustrated by the almost fruitless search this afternoon, Haley was sprawled on her bed, occupied with her phone, her fingers flying across the keyboard intermittently as she replied to various texts, emails, and social media posts. Still, her mind couldn't shake the dead end her and Nailah had seemingly reached today, and she set her phone down next to her with a frustrated sigh, rolled over slightly until her head lolled backwards off the edge of the bed, and she stared at her roommate's side of the bedroom.

Miriam didn't seem to like her much, and so they more or less kept their distance, neither one really spending much time in the room when the other was there. Haley thought the girl needed to get over herself, and maybe just make her shields better if Haley's telepathy just so happened to leak sometimes--it wasn't her fault she was terrible at it.

She squinted her eyes at the wall--what the hell was that new addition? It looked like a map, with bits of string tied all over it? She flipped over and rose from her bed, walking slowly over to the map while staring intently at it.

The map is of Maldon and the surrounding area. Two of the intersections have notes added, one a partial translation of some kind of runes talking about something called Yggdrasil, the other photographs of a sprawling painting of a tree that's been redone and added to by numerous people. On just one of the lines Miriam has added a brief note pointing out the location of the Raven's Crest in Chelmsford. A bunch of lines intersect on the school while one of them goes off across the ocean where it intersects with another one above the water outside Maldon.

As Haley is staring at it the door opens and Miriam, still wearing the same dress as the night before, steps into the room.

Haley jumped a bit as the door opened, and she stepped back from her examination of the map. She noticed almost instantly the telltale signs of a probable walk of shame, and a smirk crossed her lips.

"Hey Roomie," she said cheerfully. "Date went pretty well?"

"You could say that, yes." she says almost cheerfully. She seems to be in an unusually good mood. She doesn't even gripe at Haley about snooping around on her side of the room!

Haley grinned, "Good for you, hottie!"

Her roommate's uncharacteristically good mood was throwing her for a loop, and she was conflicted--should she risk aggravating her and ask about the map, or should she just keep her distance and finally have some peace in the room while they were both present.

She moved back and sat on the edge of her bed picking up the phone and trying to act normal. "Just noticed your new decoration. It looks really cool."

Miriam makes a bemused face at Haley and raises her eyebrows. "You have some really weird sense of taste then." she says, dropping her purse on her bed and sitting down to take off her heels. "It's investigative, I suppose. I took it from some weirdo who buys into the whole supernatural thing."

"Yeah?" she asked, curious, "you doing some sleuthing on the side too?"

"I suppose. Somebody messed with Wanda's head at the club to god knows what end. The owner is a little... eccentric. Accommodating to an extent but with some weird ideas about the guy who did it. Like keeping a wooden stake in the same drawer as that map eccentric. I thought maybe she's crazy enough to keep track of the weirdoes she thinks are creatures of the night or somesuch, but instead this. Whatever... this is." she says, gesticulating at the map. "All kinds of people have been poking their heads out to spout about this mythical non-sense so I figured I owed it to Wanda to at least look into it. Not that much's come of it."

"That's fucked up...is Wanda okay?" she asked.

"But it's also like. Super weird just how much...like weird shit happens around here. Nai and I are looking into some weird shit we sort of fell into after we rescued this old guy from being jumped."

"She's alright, but she doesn't remember what happened that night. I tried digging it up but it was just gone. And people being terrible isn't weird. What's going to happen to that guy when I finally find him will be though."

"Let me know if you need help. I'm not bad at revenge against skeevy guys." Haley replied.

"And the old guy getting jumped wasn't the weird part. It was his book of like. Magic shit that was weird. He also had this book hidden like...in a pocket dimension or some shit."

Haley frowned, "And Nai and I fucked up, and didn't act fast enough, and the old guy went off on his own and now he's dead, and I have no idea where to go next. "

Miriam frowns. Now people were getting killed over all this non-sense and she'd somehow stepped right into the middle of all these lunatics.

"You're not buying all this magic stuff, are you?" she asks and it probably comes across as her frowning at that notion instead of the news about somebody being killed.

"In the past semester I've been flung into an alternate dimension, have seen a friend turn into a werewolf, there's a girl here who talks like she's from The Hobbit or some shit, and oh yes, I died in an enormous explosion only to...suddenly not be dead. Is magic really that unreasonable?"

Miriam rolls her eyes, mainly because she doesn't have a good response.

"Then I have a great deal to have your chakra alignments checked and your crystals de-clogged for just a hundred Pounds." she scoffs.

Haley grunted in annoyance. Why couldn't she and her roommate just agree on something for once? "Whatever. Listen, do you care if I take a picture of this thing? I'm grasping at fucking straws here, but it feels like it might help Nai and I find what we're after....whatever the hell that is."

"Go right ahead, maybe you can make more sense of it."

Haley pulled out her phone and snapped several pictures of the map from various perspectives and distances. "Thanks Roomie."

"Just let me know if you figure something out."

"You too. Shit could be all connected."