Fragment #4 - The Novelist: Part 4

Antoinette has had me drifting ever eastward through Paris since I arrived. Now I know why. Over the last three days she’s been taking me to the Paris Est (east) train station. She’s still trying to find her way to Provence. What I don’t know is if there’s an easy way to her destination from here. She’s proven her ability to survive; something I gave her early on in my first story with her, but can she entice people to accept a late-middle-aged male companion as they travel? Her vivacious enthusiasm and openly sexual manner might have worked as a young woman, but how can she possibly manage that as a man more than twice her own years?

For that matter, how will Jon react to such a lifestyle? Antoinette is the only sexual partner he’s ever known and through her teaching is much more comfortable about being affectionate in public--with her. But he resides in my head as well, and he’s never been with another woman--much less a man--for anything stronger than simple friendship. He accepts her personality for what she is, but he never had to live her life.

Of course, the others in my head have no problem with this idea. Isan-ira is the Matriarchal head of an interstellar empire while her husband, Shal-ir has lived in a matriarchy all his life; Earth’s male-dominated society is completely new to him. And the other alien? Rhiann’s history is female-dominated simply due to the fact that females outnumber males by almost fifty to one! So such consideration is hardly a problem to anyone but Jon and myself. Still, she’s managed to take me this far...

I still puzzle as to why I’ve let them do this to me. They’re all just figments of my imagination; aren’t they? When I left the States to visit France, I made the excuse that I needed to research Antoinette’s home for a later novel continuing hers’ and Jon’s adventures. I intended to visit a number of different capitals and the countryside around to present a believable world for their travels. But somehow Paris and Provence have dominated my thoughts. Antoinette is influencing me far more than a simple character in a novel.

This frightens me somewhat. Am I going insane?