Part 2

To never truly sleep is a tiring thing.  Muse went through both lives in a drowse, one life suffered more from it that the other.

Muse was not really a queen, in the strictest sense of the word.  She didn’t have a realm.  Goddess was closer to the truth, but she’d always thought that was rather pretentious.  To get the gist of what she really thought of herself, one only had to read the door of her modest cottage.  She’d painted it in a dark, sea green and written a notice on it in letters the color of dying roses.

Immortal Being in Charge of Music
Respectful Worship and Small Tokens of Obeisance Welcome
Food Items Are Preferred
If No One Is Home Prayers May Be Left In The Mailbox
No Soliciting, Please

Goddess of Music, or Muse of Verse, or Mistress of Minstrels, were among the other names she went by.  She was most often called The Muse, or just Muse.

She could play any musical instrument that had ever been made and had the most beautiful and pitch perfect singing voice of any living creature.  She wrote the most heartbreakingly beautiful songs and did it all as easily as breathing and walking.

It came with the territory.

Musicians all over the realm worshipped her above all the demi-gods that walked the earth.  They carried small statues in her likeness and brought gifts to her and prayers that she might touch their souls and give them even the smallest bit of talent and inspiration.  Muse listened to their prayers and touched their foreheads, fingers, lips, instruments, in blessing.  She never said it, but she was never sure that her blessings actually did anything.  She wasn’t entirely sure that she had the power to pass on the magic of music.

She was very young for what she was.  Immortal, but closer to the beginning of her existence than most.  Before her there had been another Muse but it was said that she had lived so long and become so powerful that she could no longer be contained in her body and became one with the music of the earth.  To the young Muse that sounded suspiciously like dying.

In her other life, she was much the same, but no one worshipped her.