When Muses Attack!

A/N:

Sandra – oh, I’d like to send him over. Believe me! Beware of what you wish for because you will most certainly get it! LOL!

Naira – Yeah, I know. It’s very odd, isn’t it? I think he’s afraid that no one will appreciate him as much as he needs to be appreciated and admired.

Kathy – Hey, that don’t stop him. He’ll show up at your place of business. Trust me. Usually at the worst possible time. LOL! Now why in the world would you wish to plague all of humanity with him? Wow! Hawaii! I’m jealous!

Titania – Oh, he is very emotional although he usually hides it pretty well. As long as his massive ego gets stroked he can be very sexy. When he’s not annoying the piss out of me. LOL!

Littlelooney – well, thank you, hon! I’m glad you are being entertained by my tale of woe! ;-) Believe me, I was never a fan of his, either. Didn’t know him from Glorfindel until he showed up one day and started haunting me. Weird, that!

~~~

“Would you like to tell me about it?” He asks one day as I’m sitting outside gazing moodily at the sunset.

“No,” I reply. He’s the last individual I’d spill my guts to – especially about something like this.

“Is it Steve?” He says the name distastefully. I can almost picture the lip curl.

I snort. “No. And, unlike you, I do not want you to continue guessing. Let it drop,” I advise him. “If I want to talk about it, I will.”

Silently he slides up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it slightly. That’s the last straw and I burst into tears much to his horror.

He retreats and eyes me suspiciously as I continue to bawl helplessly. I finally manage to get up and walk into the house, blindly fumbling for a dishtowel. After the tears are under control he follows me. But he still doesn’t quite understand what caused my outburst and stays well away from me.

“It’s nothing,” I sniff reassuringly. “Just PMS.”

“PMS?” He asks curiously.

“You know, that time of the month,” I say lamely. I can tell by his look that he still doesn’t understand. What can I say without spelling it out for him?

“Never mind,” I sigh. I’m just not up to explaining it to him. “It’s just one of those things.”

He’s not buying it.

“One of those GIRL things,” I amend.

“Ah,” he says and nods, immediately understanding. Females are just as mysterious to him as to any other male. That’s good to know. It just might come in handy some day.

“Would you like me to leave?” He asks anxiously. Probably afraid I’m going to become a blithering, drooling, bawling idiot again at any moment.

“No. I’ll be ok,” I assure him. “Unless you want to. I doubt if I do any writing if that’s what you’re sticking around for.”

He shrugs indifferently.

I sigh heavily and sit down in the floor with my back against the couch. He wanders in behind me and lights some incense and a candle then flops on the couch behind me. We sit in silence for a while.

“I don’t know if I can do this, dude,” I say softly.

“Why not?” He asks after a few minutes.

“I don’t want to hurt Legolas,” I admit quietly and close my eyes. Now I’m going to get it.

He snorts but doesn’t light into me like I expect him to. I turn to look at him. He’s laying sideways on the couch gazing intently at me.

“Just say it,” I moan.

“What would you like me to say?” He questions, raising one of those perfectly arched eyebrows at me.

“I told you so,” I say in disgust. I do my best impression of his voice, “I told you that Stevolas would ruin everything! I told you not to see him! I told you! Now he’s ruining my story!”

“He has not ruined anything,” he admits grudgingly.

“No?”

“No. Not yet,” he warns. “As you have told me repeatedly yourself, Steve is not Legolas.”

I blink a few times in shock.

“OK – who are you and what have you done with Mr. Wicked?” I demand.

He chuckles. “You were doing fairly well berating yourself. I did not feel the need to add to your misery,” he says.

I grunt. “That’d be a first,” I say ruefully.

The eyebrow shoots up again. “What would you like to happen?” He finally asks.

“A happy ending,” I admit.

“Why is the ending I have shown you not happy?” He questions smugly.

I scowl darkly at him.

“Perhaps you could make it happy,” he suggests.

“How?” I demand.

I’ve been agonizing over this for weeks now and I just can’t see a way to make it happy all the way around. But life isn’t happy, right? Which is what makes it all the more frustrating. Fantasy should be entertaining and light, shouldn’t it? No one wants pain – there’s enough of it in real life. We want to be entertained to forget about all that “bad stuff”, right?

“Oh, I am not certain,” he muses. “Perhaps you should watch one of your favorite movies. How do they end happily when things seem so dark?”

I narrow my gaze at him. He has something in mind, I can feel it but he’s not going to spit it out. He wants ME to find it and he’s hoping I won’t.

Now I could burst into tears again and guilt him into telling me outright and I’m sore tempted to do so. It would certainly serve his arrogant ass right! But I can’t. He’s given me something to chew on – something that has gotten my mind off of the pain and on to a possible solution.

Mentally I curse him. He knows me too well, I think. He wants me to write but knows I won’t as long as I’m in this state of agitation.

“Perhaps you should ask yourself ‘what if’,” he suggests. “What are all the possible outcomes? What would happen if?”

I sigh and lean my head back against his thigh to stare up at the ceiling as I consider his words. I don’t want to do this. There are too many “what ifs” and the great majority of them unpleasant.

“Legolas is blissfully ignorant, Mel,” he reasons. “Only you will know of the possible pain. He never has to know. All he will know is the outcome you write for him whether painful or not.”

I sigh again. “I know. That doesn’t make it any easier, tho.”

“Are you frightened?” He teases hatefully. “Would you rather Legolas feel the pain to spare your own?”

I backhand him in the gut causing him to grunt. “Never!” I hiss, rolling over on my knees to face him.

“Then perhaps you should start thinking of ways to ‘save him’ instead of pouting about it,” he purrs challengingly.

“I think I will just do that!” I say and get to my feet, walking into the kitchen.

I begin rooting through the cabinets and drawers, pulling out all of the silver and putting it on the kitchen table.

“What are you doing?” He asks in confusion as he joins me.

“Thinking,” I say and begin to meticulously polish every bit of silver in the house.

He watches me curiously but doesn’t speak.

“It helps me to think,” I say softly after about an hour. “Maybe it’s the repetitive movement. I don’t really know.”

I polish long into the night as he patiently waits. I finish all of the silver in the house and still have no suitable path for Legolas to follow. This is going to be much more difficult than I thought.

“You’re not helping,” I accuse him, placing the last fork back in the drawer.

He shrugs. “You are the one who refuses to accept the inevitable,” he says matter-of-factly.

I give him an evil look. “I refuse to cause Legolas any more pain than absolutely necessary. And if it takes me a year to figure out how to do it, I will!” I tell him emphatically.

“If it takes you a year then that’s just one more year of enjoying my presence,” he smiles horridly.

“Shut up!” I snap viciously.

The thought of spending another year in his clutches is almost enough to make me say to hell with Legolas’ pain! Certainly it cannot compare to the torment I’ve suffered at the hands of Mr. Wicked!

~~~