Conversation with My Muse

This is my reply to a writing challenge hosted by Myths of the Mirror. It was simple: Post a conversation with your muse. It made me have to think long and hard.

“I need to do the dishes,” I say and get up from my desk.

“Okay,” he says, stretching and yawning. Spectre’s black spotted tongue stretches almost to the floor before it wraps once around his pink tipped nose before he curls it back into his mouth as his back arches and his fuzzy butt wiggles in the air before he follows me into the kitchen.

“You’re supposed to tell me to finish this scene,” I tell him, looking down as the sink fills with water.

Brown orbs bulging from his sockets no longer see, but still they focus on my face as he stares up from the corner patch of the tile floor. “That’s up to you,” he says.

As my hands plunge into suds and heat, he rubs his head against my ankle. “I’m sorry if I didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.”

“Just wish I knew what happened to her boyfriend,” I say and place a dish in the drying rack.

He pushes his forehead into my foot, so I bend and pick him up. Cradled in my arms, he reaches his wet nose to my neck. “It’ll be all right. You’ll find him when it’s time to find him.”

The dishes wait, enjoying their long hot soak. Spectre doesn’t mind when I hold him with one arm to pour myself a cup of tea. He knows a cup of tea means it’s time to sit and talk. I settle on the couch and shift him in my arm. He harrumphs and stretches his plump belly along my forearm, resting his head against my breasts. We both snort as comfort settles over us.

Words flow from my breath as though he’s still with me, “I think he’s dead.” 

“That’s too bad,” Spectre says. The lids of his eyes cover half his fathomless orbs. 

“My WIP group will be pissed I killed another character they liked,” I say, and scratch his head.

Spectre rubs his snout up and down my blouse until I find the right place on his snout that needs scratching. “But it’s the right thing to do,” he says.

I know he’s right, but that doesn’t stop a tear slipping from my eye.

Spectre’s eyelids blanket his beautiful, unseeing eyes.

Though his body no longer warms my arms as he sleeps, his eyes are always in my mind’s eyes, reminding me to follow the words.

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