"You didn't go away. You were supposed to be gone after all this was over." It's hard to glare at a character who keeps morphing before your eyes. My fault, I know.

"I offered ... I could have walked out of the story forever, into the proverbial sunset." There's a mischievous grin and he crystallizes into the incarnation I actually like. Damn.

"Reverse psychology! You tried that on my narrator. And she fell for it. What did you write to convince her, anyway?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." The grin edges into a smirk. Now he's just being irritating for the hell of it. He can't write better than me, or at least he can't prove that he can, and he knows it. It's axiomatic.

"Still mad at you." I settle for arms sternly crossed. "I didn't let you be the protagonist and you still managed to steal the story, at the eleventh hour."

"Actually, I think it was the twenty-seventh day."

"Wiseass."

"You're just annoyed that I did turn out to be a more interesting character after all, and that now you really do have to write a book about me and let me narrate, only now it's going to have to be the sequel to the one you already wrote."

He's not completely wrong. "No, I'm annoyed because I still don't know what your deal is any more than I did before, so I still can't write your story -- but in the meantime, I've lost my grip on the story I was writing before, while not gaining a grip on yours. So I'm sitting here, as the putative writer, utterly gripless."

"I notice those other two aren't hanging around anymore."

"Oh, they're around. Just not as pushy as you."

"Their loss."

But then I'm struck by a sudden sense of worry. "Or maybe they're mad, and not talking to me. I've been told that maybe I'm not the kindest writer to my characters. So you, you'd better be careful what you wish for, you might not like it when you get it."

He dismisses this with a wave. "I can handle it, whatever you decide to do. You can't get rid of me that easily."

He's still here. I know he's right. But I still don't know what his point is.

Grrr.