I gasped.I stepped back.My long white skirt caught in the breeze, and my hair—still damp from the shower—dripped around my shoulders.
Aster looked just as strong and as beautiful as the day before, possibly more so in the morning light.Again, he responded to me only after I said his name to him, blue eyes dilating as soon as they met mine.
“Thank goodness,” I said, shaking off the mesmerization that followed me whenever I looked at him.“I didn’t know if you’d come back.”
I never left, he said simply, grinning at me for the first time.
Then my heart melted.With every moment we spent together, Aster became more human in my eyes, and my feelings toward him grew from fascination into a warm affection.“You’ve been here all night?I’m sorry.That must have been frustrating.”
Frustrating?In an enchanting place like this?I enjoyed it, he said, for the first time also betraying his sense of will.
“You did?”I wanted him to speak more.I wanted to know what he thought of this house.Of the beach.Of everything.
Yesterday he had been much more robotic in his mannerisms.Yes, his beauty almost blinded me.His charm as well.But he was only charming in the way an automaton could have been, or a portrait like the Mona Lisa.He didn’t want, didn’t desire.He merely accepted things and played along.
Aster didn’t answer at first.He’d retained some of yesterday’s reticence, and I wondered if I’d been too forthright in provoking him further.Maybe it wasn’t his place to tell me too much.He was supposed to be helping me, propelling me to my goal.
“I hope you kept busy, at least,” I said.“I always sleep all night.I don’t even know what this room looks like with the lights out.”
It looks like…He froze mid-sentence and shook his head.He looked away from me, shy, ashamed.I’m sorry.Perhaps you don’t know much about us.You are not supposed to ask me any questions like that, Stella.
I caught my breath, scared for the first time.
Don’t be afraid,Aster said as if reading my thoughts.You’re not in danger.It isn’t like that.
“You’re right.I don’t know much about muses,” I said.“I didn’t know if muses were real until I saw you.And I’m sorry if I crossed a line.I’m just curious.And my ignorance makes me self-conscious.And I’m sorry.”
Do you have any question about us in particular?he asked, softening.The familiar starlit sparkle returned to his eyes.
“How old are you?”
The question sounded silly, but I needed to start somewhere.Aster’s age changed the way I saw him, and the way he likely saw me.I wanted to know if he saw me as a goddess he desired to serve or if I was just one more artist out of a countless stream, a minnow pulled from a tide pool at a convenient hour of the afternoon.
Not about me,he said.I noticed just then that his lips didn’t move in sync with him when he spoke.They moved.They lined up with the words he said but still appeared detached from the words themselves.
“But I want to know about you,” I said.“How can I work with you if I don’t know anything about you?”
Really, there’s nothing to know… he insisted at first.His eyes flicked down, in the direction of my shadow.Then he looked up again.Eye contact with Aster hurt.It hit too deep, too intimate, like looking into the sun.If ever I had doubted his physical reality to be as valid as the sense of presence that I got from him, those doubts fled me now.I looked away from his eyes, at his face instead, and saw his pores and the fine hairs that grew on his cheeks and chin.
Now I walked forward.Aster’s game—and he was playing a game—became clear to me.The reason I hadn’t done any writing the day before was because I had never taken things further with him beyond simply basking in his presence.But I was the artist, not him.He was only a muse, only a figment of inspiration like an idea borne out of the middle of the night.
“About the rules that you mentioned,” I said.“Are they serious?”
Quite.
“Enforced?”
He didn’t answer.
“Are they conventions, then?”
Conventions?You could call them that.And it’s good to stick to convention.
“And that’s where I have a problem,” I said, relieved we had something productive to talk about.
Aster nodded for me to continue, equally interested in a potential disagreement.
“I don’t like convention.It means ordinariness.Depression.I realize there are things that I can ask and things that I shouldn’t, but I want to make a request.For the sake of my writing, if you’ll hear it.”
