November 24

Pyro leaned his head on his left hand while he idly roamed the NaNoWriMo forums with his right. He was stuck and he hated being stuck. He especially hated that his fight with Rogue should have given his muse plenty of fodder for future scenes, but instead the opposite seemed to have happened.

This was why he hated unsolicited feedback.

There was a light knock at his door. Pyro gave a sigh and right-clicked on the next post that looked interesting to open it in a new tab.

"What?" he asked.

"It's Wanda, can I come in?"

"Whatever."

Wanda opened the door and closed it behind her. Pyro continued scrolling through the forums.

"Hey," she said as she walked over. "How's the story coming?"

"It's not."

"Writer's Block again?"

"Yep."

"I'm sorry," Wanda said, peering over his shoulder. "Anything I can do to help?"

Pyro just gave a long suffering sigh in response.

"Well," she said, realising that was all the reply she was going to get. "I guess this explains why there wasn't anything new on the blog yesterday—"

"I'm not updating it any more," Pyro cut in.

"Oh."

"Never should have let people read it in the first place," he went on irritably. "Muse killers."

"Oh... right..." Wanda said slowly. "I guess I offer you an apology. I kinda was the one who gave Rogue the link and password."

Pyro didn't reply.

"So if there's anything I can do to make it up to you..." Wanda trailed off and sighed.

She felt a little bit bad about everything. She didn't imagine Rogue would get so upset, although in hindsight Wanda realised that Mirabelle had far more raunchier scenes than Alaina had so far.

"I didn't realise you and Rogue were that close," Pyro said, his eyes still on the forums as he opened more links up.

"We just have similar tastes in books and movies and stuff," Wanda replied with a shrug. "We bumped into each other going to see the same movie last year and it sort of spiralled from there."

"Hmph."

More silence fell. Finally, Wanda placed her hands on his shoulders.

"How about I take you out to lunch?" she asked before he could tell her to rack off. "We can go anywhere you want, my treat. A change of scenery's bound to help the muses, right?"

Pyro thought about it for a moment, then gave a shrug. He may as well take her up on her offer. He wasn't getting anything done at the moment.

"Okay," he said.