To him, Vanessa was shadows. This ideal had nothing to do with the partition now between him, the penumbra that existed within. The poet in him thought that this must be what the heart felt like from inside a body, light glimpsed through the slats of eyelids, secrets and voices on the other side, something pretty and fond just beyond skin… or, in this case, beyond the partition. Opiates made folds of his eyes, Victor had difficulties with darkness because the pupils were too drugged to expand. He squinted through habit, but there was no worry in him now that he'd found her. It was her. Vanessa, the kindest and gentlest apparition to ghost through his dead life.
Thoughtfully, he withdrew his notebook from the bag he'd brought. He did not mind the idea of sitting here all afternoon, or as long as Vanessa would like, but he didn't want Mina to continue in her worries. So a quick note was scripted, and he frowned while he wrote, listening to Vanessa.
"You mean… an afterlife? The kinds spoken of in... these places?" His voice did not relay condescension, as it might have with anyone else who'd asked such a thing.