Musician by
Thyme Willowbrook, on Flickr
Muse has a new character and a new backstory to go along with his new face, eyes, and wig. One of these days imma flesh it out into an actual story.
A faerie musician who has no name and no voice, who can weave threads of music into fantastic garments. Very popular with the faerie courts (and with the ladies. And with the men...) until he spurns the advances of a faerie queen and she curses him to be trapped in the body of a doll until someone can learn to see him beyond his physical appearance and set him free.
He can enter dreams and inspire with his music, but a lot of people fear him and call him haunted, claiming they can see life in his eyes. He is passed from owner to owner and finally abandoned, until a young struggling musician finds him, brings him home and he inspires her to start composing again with the beautiful melodies he gives her in her dreams. She names him Muse and he decides to keep it as his own.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that his help comes with a price. While he gives her music, he takes her strength and vitality, slowly draining her life as his power grows stronger. When he realizes that in order to free himself he may very well end up killing her, he immediately stops visiting her dreams. Because he has no voice, he cannot tell her the reason and she is crushed when she no longer receives the visions of her Muse.
She settles into depression and stops composing again. And although her health slowly returns, her will to live seems lost. Muse is devastated that he’s done this to her but is powerless to stop it or to explain the circumstances.
This continues for several months until one day the girl gets drunk and holds the doll and stares into his eyes, and confesses to him that she misses him and only wants him to visit her again, that she KNOWS he’s real and she knows his visits were slowly killing her, but she would be willing to die if it means that he would just visit her one last time, give her one last melody, because she loves him.
This is enough to finally lift the faerie queen’s curse and he sheds the guise of the doll and changes back into his true, living self.