Conversations With Sebastian

He catches me dancing about the house, Jane Eyre in hand.The comings and goings of Sebastian are the color of inspiration, the sound of ideas being born, and yet he's such a dour thing. "You're a bloody romantic," he states with hefty incredulity, as though that were a mystery that nobody had discovered before him.
"I am." It is an accusation worthy of conviction.
"Mad as a hatter."
"That, too."
"Mad as a hatter with work to do, which she is ignoring."
"I," I state, coming to rest, "have been reading nothing but James Joyce for days and much as I love Joyce, had Eveline met Edward Rochester she'd have left Ireland without a backwards glance and I deserve some candy, Sebastian, some high-fructose corn syrup for the soul. Besides, there's a movie out and I need to refamiliarize myself with the text if I'm to do a proper comparison."
He's not having a word of it. "Bloody romantic."
I glance at him. "I'm going to write you into a grand romance someday, you know."
"You will do nothing of the sort."
This deserves sitting down for, and I match action to situational propriety. "I will."
The problem with Sebastian is he doesn't want to be written into anything. The problem with Sebastian is that writing him into anything would be tantamount to forcing him out of my brain and into the world, never to return, and I've put so much subconscious effort into his creation that he has gathered enough reality to himself that he can argue with me. The problem with Sebastian is he has no intention of going out into the world. He wants to stay where he is.
"You won't. You'll never do it justice."
"I might."
"Who, then, would my lady-love be? Describe the woman. Jane Eyre solemn, Elizabeth Bennett fiery, Beatrice stubborn? Would she have a measure of Skidge's insanity, a drop of Sarah's insecurity, a handful of Deek's Zen strangeness, or would you actually be capable of thinking up something new?"
"There's no such thing as new." I study him.. "It would have to be epic."
"I deserve epic, do I." The tone is scathing.
"I think so."
"I don't." He stretches, and the movement serves to take the fight out of the moment. "Leave me be, creator-mine. I do more good where I am."
It is a long pause before I say what I'm thinking, what we're both thinking, what has to be said. "I could write a story about a figment who refuses to leave the mind of his creator, for fear of what reality may do to him."
His stance shows something of the weary melancholy that has nothing to do with me; my creation has taken to becoming, and the separation is as eerie as it is inevitable. "My dear, you are already doing that."
He knows writing will come of this. It's only a matter of time.

That's about as metaphysical as I'm willing to get today.