The Muse Who Defected

When Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin saw the girl in a white dress with black hair at the ball, the poetic fire in his heart began to burn. The countless words in his mind became a snowstorm sweeping through winter, rewriting his life into a dazzling, brilliant starry sky. At that moment, Pushkin knew he had found the muse of his soul. When Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova met the black-haired poet who couldn't understand the word no and couldn't be driven away, she had to use all the self-restraint she'd learned in a lifetime of good breeding to hold down the volcano about to erupt in her chest. From the moment she learned his surname, Natalya, whose soul had long since changed, knew: this man was absolutely not an option. But time flowed on, twin lives entwined, and love and desire turned to ashes. What remained was the body. The soul was forever free. Wings grow on the muse. No one gets to decide where she belongs! - "I refuse to spend my life as a sacrifice to your poetry." [A reader's guide] 1. Set in nineteenth-century Tsarist Russia. I've tried to make the writing accessible to readers from China. 2. This is not a historically orthodox account. It's an alternate, fictionalized timeline. I'm not an expert in world history, but I'll do my best to recreate the era and its historical background. I'll try to correct any mistakes readers point out; everything else is creative license. 3. History, consider yourself warned. As for the canon pairing... *smiles* Let's see who gets hold of the pen. Either way, it's a happy ending! 4. This is a story of "self"-redemption. 5. There's emotional growth, politics and culture, revolutionary wars... Um, this part is still undecided. 6. I started writing on a whim. After being away for a while, I'm a little rusty. I hope everyone who comes across this enjoys it. 7. May the world love you, gentle reader. The blurb is rough and our meeting is rushed, but I hope the story won't be half-hearted. Theme: The most precious person in the world is yourself.