Jake hangs around the Promenade people-watching and thinking up ideas for stories. His eyes land on a mysterious woman from far away. Meanwhile, Lwaxana Troi shows up in Odo's office, crying and pregnant! She explains that she's on the run from her husband, a Tavnian, who treats her like his possession and means to take her newborn son away from her.

At the replimat, the mysterious woman notices Jake writing and introduces herself as Onaya, and she's got a thing for artists. She's helped many artists unlock their true potential, including a famous Cardassian architect. With a generous helping of erotic subtext, she offers to help Jake with his writing, and he agrees. Jake cancels on a trip with his father and Kasidy Yates to keep an appointment he makes with Onaya. She gifts him a pen and tells him to start writing in a stream of consciousness. He does, and ideas start pouring out of him. Unbeknownst to him, however, Onaya is draining his life force as he writes.

Lwaxana is bummed and, being a telepath, bumming everyone else out at Quark's bar, so Odo comes in to distract her. She manages to invite herself into his quarters and is amazed by his shapeshifting furniture. Odo provides a shoulder for her to sleep on (turning himself into a pillow and blanket) and later plays hide and seek with her to keep her occupied. But her husband, Jeyal, finally arrives. Odo confronts him, but Jeyal won't be dissuaded from exercising his custody over his son. Odo hatches a plan to marry Lwaxana in a Tavnian ceremony to transfer custody of her child to him. But in the process, he'll have to convince Jeyal that his love for Lwaxana is genuine.

Jake is writing page after page, but he's slowly getting the life drained out of him. Onaya keeps cautioning him to slow down, but he keeps writing, and she keeps feeding. He finally takes a break and collapses at the replimat. Bashir takes him to sick bay and notes that his brain is in a critical state. Onaya abducts Jake from the hospital and takes him to a secluded spot near the reactor core to keep writing.

Odo and Lwaxana go through the Tavnian marriage ceremony, but his stiff proclamations don't convince Jeyal. Odo then talks about how Lwaxana accepted who he is and helped him feel pride about himself rather than shame. Jeyal accepts the marriage and leaves. Lwaxana thanks Odo heartily for helping him and announces that she's going to take the next ship to Betazed. Disappointed, Odo suggests she stay until she gives birth. She tells him that, even though he's started to enjoy her company, she knows he'll never love her like she loves him, and that will ultimately cause their friendship to sour, so she's got to go. Odo accepts this, and they depart, though still officially as husband and wife.

Sisko arrives back on the station and tracks Jake down. He finds his son near death and forces Onaya away at phaserpoint. The psychic vampire defends her actions saying that although she kills artists, she gives them immortality through their work. This fails to impress Sisko. She starts to dematerialize, and Sisko tries to phaser her to prevent her from escaping, but it has no effect. She floats off the station as a shimmer of light. After recovering, Jake is reluctant to take credit for the amazing writing he did while under Onaya's spell. Sisko argues that the words are already inside him. He just needs to figure out another way to get them out. Jake is convinced and signs his name to the unfinished novel, ''Anslem''.

Not to be confused with the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E22Muse Muse]]".
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!!Tropes
* ComfortingComforter: Odo turns his hand into a blanket for Lwaxana.
* ContinuityNod:
** Lwaxana recalls [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E6DarkPage the death of her daughter]] while walking with Odo.
** Odo's LoveConfession (below) makes reference to [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E17TheForsaken the time he and Lwaxana were trapped in a turbolift together]].
** The book the Muse is drawing out of Jake is ''Anslem'', the critically acclaimed book that was first brought up in the future alternate timeline portrayed during "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E03TheVisitor The Visitor]]", complete with a closeup of Jake writing the title on the manuscript.
** Onaya mentions "Tarbolde," an alien artist quoted in the original series episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: Onaya feeds off the creative energy of artists, killing them while they create their greatest work.
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: While Onaya makes it clear their relationship is to be purely chaste ("Whatever you're thinking, put it out of your mind. You're here to ''work''.") her interactions with Jake come across a lot like a sexual predator grooming a naive teenager.
* EmotionEater: Onaya feeds on psychic energy while simultaneously stimulating an artist's creative ability. It kills them, but leaves them with a final masterpiece.
* EnergyBeing: Onaya is ultimately revealed to be a creature of psionic energy who has assumed a humanoid form. At the end, she reverts to her true form -- a glowing ball of light -- and disappears right through the station walls.
* HeManWomanHater: This is evidently a fundamental part of Tavnian culture. Not only are the sexes strictly segregated, each not even learning that the other exists until they are sixteen, but wives are considered their husbands' property. Jeyal firmly insists that he intends his son to be raised "by men, not by the pampering foolishness of women", and later, when telling his now ex-wife how much he will miss her, tells her that she was "my most treasured possession".
* KarmaHoudini: Onaya gets away scot-free after nearly frying Jake's brain.
* LoopholeAbuse: Odo realizes that according to Tavnian law, custody of a woman's male child goes to her "husband," not the father, so he marries her to take custody away from the father.
* LoveConfession: Though Odo tries some hollow platitudes to satisfy Jeyal, he doesn't buy it. So Odo lets it fly from the Changeling equivalent of a heart.
-->'''Odo:''' Before I met her, my world was... a much smaller place. I kept to myself, I didn't need anyone else, and I took pride in that. The truth is, I was ashamed of what I was, afraid that if people saw how truly different I was, they would recoil from me. Lwaxana saw how different I was... and she didn't recoil. She wanted to see more. For the first time in my life, someone wanted me as I was. And that changed me forever. The day I met her is the day I stopped being alone. And I want her to be part of my life from this day on.
* MostWritersAreWriters: "... the notion of this exotic, beautiful, older woman who comes to you and gets excited by watching you write is like the most ridiculous idea! Only a writer would come up with that." Ronald D Moore [[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Muse_(episode) Memory-alpha]]
* TheMuse: Onaya is a fatal kind, preying on her subjects while unlocking their artistic abilities.
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Odo to Lwaxana when she changes plans to go back to Betazed to have her baby instead of having it on the station. It's less about romantic love and more that Odo is very lonely and Lwaxana gives him someone to take care of. Lwaxana recognizes that he's in love with Kira, and gently rebuffs him, saying that she doesn't want to make him fall for her. She wants him to be happy.
* PsychicNosebleed: Jake gets them while Onaya is feeding off his creativity.
* ShoutOut: Onaya mentions Creator/JohnKeats and Catallus, two poets who died before the age of 30.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Deanna Troi's half-brother is never brought up again, despite her appearances in the TNG films, ''Voyager'', and ''Picard''. He is only finally named and appears in the ebook ''The Insolence of Office'' (in the ''Slings and Arrows'' miniseries) and in two of the Marvel's [=DS9=] comics, as well as a short story and novel which take place during the Dominion War.