Go to bed, Muse!

[elfs]

Muse came to me last night around four in the morning. She was bouncy. "I had this great idea for a story!"

Bleary-eyed from dealing with the cat and the kids, I glared at her cheerful, ineffable expression. "You'd better have a solution for how to screw over Caprice after she's been rescued in chapter six."

Muse bit her thumb. It's her "No, not yet," expression. "Don't you want to hear my idea?"

"Muse..."

"There's no sex in Caprice's story!" she wailed. "Her uncle was a real hottie. How can you write something like this with no sex in it?"

"We haven't written straight bang-out porn since Midpoint," I said. "Every story's been about something else."

"Yeah, but... there's still good sex in everything we do. Look at Miao!" I did. I probably shouldn't have encouraged her, but I'd recently re-engaged the stage-two proofreading toolchain and run Miao through it. She probably thought that meant it was safe to start throwing more SF sex opera stories at me. "My idea is a Sterling story," she cooed. She outlined it for me.

I lay back on the bed and sighed. "It's wonderful, Muse. Not sure about the ending, but the two sex scenes are well-planned." She grinned. "But not until December, okay?"

"But-- "

"No," I told her. "We'll do a precis tomorrow. And then back to the Starr mines."

Her eyes grew wet and huge with disappointment. "But, I thought we could do something with it."

"We can, eventually. But until I'm rich and famous, we can't do anything at all about it right now."

She nodded, disappointed. "Okay," she sniffed. "Fine. See you in morning, grumpy."

"G'night, Muse."