X is for NOT WHAT YOU MIGHT THINK

"I hate the sun because it gives light to see the world but not enough for the lost to see the way home." 
- Meilori Shinseen

Freud sneered at Mark.  

"So, Twain, you, too, must be damned, for you are imprisoned within Meilori's walls as am I."

Mark snorted, 

"Not so you'd notice.  Why I visit the apartment of the boy here so often, I know exactly what he will say to X -- Xena."

Mark smiled wide.  

"Why I am rather partial to that filly's corset and long legs myself.  The boy has a virtual shrine to her on one of his bookcases: 

autographed photos, metal statues, porcelain statues and ... bust."

Mark waggled his eyebrows.  

"I imagine you have something suggestive to say of that last word."

Freud kept silent, turning to me with a raised eyebrow, and I shook my head.  

"To me, hers is a story of redemption, of striving to balance the sins of the past by helping the hurting of the present."

Stretching out the word into three syllables, Freud said, "Really?"

I shook my head again, saying, 

"But tonight I would not have said 'Xena.'  What I would have said is that X brings to mind: 

Crossing Out, Crossing Lines, and Crossing the Rubicon."

Mark sighed, 

"I recall old Ovid saying to me: 

'We mortals always strive for the forbidden and wish for the impossible.'"

Freud nodded, "Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me."

He turned to me.  

"Unexpressed emotions do not die.  They are buried alive.  And like the undead of whom you write, they dig their way out later in uglier ways." 

Mark said, "Well some of those ways Wyrd just spoke of here were sure enough ugly."

Freud turned to me.  "You say nothing?"

I sighed, 

"I didn't live in your shoes, sir.  I am not God to judge -- and I don't have the job qualifications to step into His place."

Freud snapped, 

"Bah!  When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance of living a normal and healthy life."

Mark Twain drawled, "Unless they are your wife and sisters."