I first woke up deep underwater, wrapped in kelp, as an adult. Yup, exactly as I am now, except that for who-knows-what reason I could breathe underwater. I stretched, and the kelp released me, and then I walked on the ocean or seafloor, pulled as if by fate toward the shore.
It was morning when my head first broke the surface of the water. Sunrise. Looking back, this now feels symbolic, and at the time the only thing I thought of was the sky like a painting, the sun emerging with me as a welcome into existence. The sky changed colors as I walked, getting lighter as more of my body was exposed to the world.
The water splashed on the shoreline, gently, the tides themselves waving to me. It smelled like saltwater, like beginnings, like magic. Everything sparkled, and I breathed in inspiration, and I breathed it out. It trickled throughout my naked body.
“Hello?” I ventured to the abyss.
“Hello,” the abyss responded with multiple voices like wind chimes.
I was no one. I had no name and no personal history. I was a creation of collective consciousnesses, of artists and writers and dancers and musicians throughout millennia, with no stories of my own but with a rich collection of stories in my bones, of those who had come before and would come after, for we were each other and always would be.
A woman approached me on the shore. She wore a simple but elegant dress in a deep purple, almost black. Her hair was halfway in an updo.
“It’s so good to see you, muse,” she said to me, her smile wide and friendly, but far too calculated to appear trustworthy. “I have just the mission for you,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“I need you to go to New York City and to inspire as many people there as possible. Make them make art. Make them want to make art. That’s what you exist for, right?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s all I exist for.”
She smiled wider. “So, go,” she said, stepping forward to place her hand on the side of my face, softly, like a lover or a parent to a child, I couldn’t quite decide. She took her other hand and ran it over my eyelids, gently pulling them down, then said a word in an ancient language to me, and that was all.
That was it.
That was my entire existence up until I landed in that New York City alley.
Fuck.
The memory came to me, short and terrible and gut wrenching, in a moment. It was horrible and wonderful, the validation that I was really and truly no one, and that everything I had done—or not—in my brief existence was in accordance with the reason they had sent here me.
I felt in that moment that I would die, and it was bittersweet to know that I’d done as I was supposed to. I’d served my purpose and then some, even if that purpose was short-lived and debatably assigned by someone who was themselves terrible. I knew, too, that death was really nothing, just a way of transitioning back to the gods realm, and there I would be reborn, endlessly, eternally.
But, fuck, I’d be lying if I said I was at peace with the idea of losing my memories and starting over.
It didn’t matter, though, did it? Here I was, dying as no one, my purpose fulfilled.
The problem was that it had taken me very little time to transition out of being no one and into being someone, and the men who had fallen in love with me were not prepared to let me die so easily.
They found their willpower again. Somewhere. Jack was the first this time, or at least the first I noticed, the words to an ancient song floating through the air and wrapping me in his embrace. I searched for him, and found him watching me intently, singing like this was all he was ever meant to do, and perhaps it was, really, perhaps now he only existed to sing and to love me and maybe that was enough.
Noah was next, his words layering with Jack in a way that, had it not been magical, I would have guessed was planned and practiced. He spoke in English and French, reciting the poem he’d written me and things I had never heard.
And, finally, Ryan. We’d come full circle, hadn’t we: he’d been the first one I’d seen make art in the New York City streets, and now he was the last one I would see before I died, this time spraying images of me, over and over, into the air with devotion, with focus, like a prayer.
This was everything I needed to go peacefully. I’d come into this world as no one and crafted myself in lies and stories, and somehow in the mess I’d become someone worth caring about. I’d leave three heroes behind, heroes just like those in the tales, and the new iterations of muses would have my story among the rest of them to guide them, to help them pursue their own purposes.
And that would be everything.
That would be enough.
I gave in. I let myself feel the ending, and I let myself feel peace.
The men weren’t having it, but my acceptance of it, ironically, was the exact thing they needed to gain the advantage. When I no longer felt the despair—when I no longer fed the sadness that threatened to overwhelm me—the black mass had lost its power. They pumped the same inspiration into me that I’d spent so long giving to them, this time calling on the reserves surrounding them.
Friend. Dear reader. Goodness gracious, this was the first time I had ever gotten a taste of my own medicine, and it was absolutely delicious.
I knew, consciously, what was happening. But it didn’t matter. The flow of inspiration bypassed my logical brain and went straight to my cells, to my heart, to my gut. One moment I was full of despair, ready to die, and then there was... a little voice. Tiny, at first, deep in my head, like a subconscious nagging, nearly. It grew stronger by the moment, making my head so busy the despair had nowhere to go. It was forced out.
Everything would be okay, it told me, followed by: everything is going to be wonderful. It filled my mind with ideas of future travel, of future performances and paintings and songs, of things I could do and become. I saw a future New York City that was everything amazing about this one amplified, and it was like it had laid a road map out before me. I knew exactly how to get there from where we were and how to make the best of the fact that our supernatural, divine presence had caused so much destruction. I knew not just how to reestablish order, but also how to make it better, more inspired, and more exciting than everything currently was.
Just like that, I blinked, and all the beautiful things in my mind overshadowed all the terrible things that had just been there, and I was not ready to face death, I was only ready to take the first action that would lead to the ending we all desperately needed.
I blinked again. My head cleared out, and I watched most of the inspiration that had been in me sink into the ground. I had a feeling of purpose, of forward action, but I could focus. Finally.
I looked around. All three of my men had come to a stop, growing silent and motionless as they stared at me. I looked from one to another, their faces in at least as much awe as I felt.
And that was all there was to it.
We’d won.
If I were a standard storyteller, this would be the part where I tell you I became a good person, repented for my lying ways, and we then lived happily ever after.
And, to be fair, that all happened, but not the way you’d think.
I feel like I can best encapsulate the way this story ends with another story, if you’ll bear with me:
Once upon a time, a muse was dropped into New York City as a blank slate, as a no one. Along the way she met a musician, a painter, and a playwright, and together they took down a goddess of chaos.
And the muse grew a soul.
Epilogue
You didn’t think I would end it all there, did you?
No, absolutely not. We haven’t even gotten to the happily ever after, and that’s the most important part of this story, isn’t it?
(Okay. It’s not. I digress.)
Some long months after our showdown with Eris, me and my three men had almost seamlessly transitioned into a day-to-day life of...
Well, mostly art and sex, if I’m being honest.
Ryan
and Noah collaborated on a comic book series, and I had pulled just enough strings with my connections to secure its publication through a prominent company. I’d also secured its advertising budget, and I was pretty sure I could pull off making it into a bestseller. Turns out with the right connections and enough money, most lists like that can be rigged.
Who knew, right?
Nothing in life was certain, because as much as no one can trust me, I’m still a lot more honest than many deities are. Yeah, that’s the sad truth: I have a direct line to the gods and I still have to remember that they’re probably blatantly lying to me the majority of the time.
But they had told me some things, and among them? They told me that one day that comic would become a movie franchise, and that it’d be enough for us to live on for the rest of our lives.
And, well, in my case, to start an arts nonprofit. Because I really was dedicated to artists, all artists, not just the three who knew how to press my buttons and what I liked after they’d shoved me against a wall.
But, anyway.
We were getting drunk on the balcony of our fancy high-rise apartment after the afterparty of the comic debut release. It was beautiful and blissful, a reminder of what it’d been like those first few nights with Ryan, that first date with Noah where we’d chatted about wine, and, well, Jack sat in the corner watching us until I begged him to pull out his guitar and sing me a song.
I was happy.
Later, Jack kissed me like the world had ended, and maybe in some ways, it had.
After we were together—and I mean, together-together, not the fickle fighting and fucking we’d started with—Chambered Lies broke up. He said he didn’t care, that he was ready to move on with his music, and it was a partial lie. He cared, and it broke his heart, but it was time. The band’s success had been entirely due to their ability to transform pain into song, and he was running low on his pain supply these days. He was working with a label on a solo brand, and he wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but I overheard him practicing on occasions when he thought I was out, and his new work was the most beautiful love songs I’d ever heard.
Noah never mastered the ability to create consistently, and that was okay, somehow. In that he made it work for him. He traveled around the world more than ever, though, sometimes alone, sometimes with one of my other men, sometimes with all of us. And, sometimes, just with me. The shift was his own kind of beautiful, his work just as inspired as ever, but the breaks between his projects were no longer time spent in self-loathing, and that was its own kind of improvement. He still, somehow, managed to make more, and eventually he managed to meet the right people and get his work on the right desks to make a steady career out of it, his chaotic nature as an artist as an aside.
Ryan kept a low profile. Mostly, he finally admitted to himself that it wasn’t prestige or recognition that he wanted from his work, just someone to appreciate it. Plus, he worked quickly, and loved the process more than the product. He spent several years spraying canvases on the street, selling them en masse for small amounts of money, but touching way more lives than he likely would have managed had he focused on gallery work. It was more his style, anyway, as he said he connected more with people he met randomly, and I believed him. That didn’t stop Jack from trying to set up a digital presence for him, though, since he was Ryan’s number one fan.
And, finally, me?
I just continued causing chaos and spreading inspiration on a whim.
I told fewer lies, though.
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About the Author
Edeline Wrigh is an eccentric storyteller with a penchant for swearing, drinking too much caffeine, and spending more time with cats than people. She writes fantasy, romance, and love stories without happy endings from her house in the Midwest. When she’s not putting words on paper, she’s busy up-leveling her martial arts game or taking in stories in any way she can.
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Copyright © 2020 by Edeline Wrigh.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
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Confessions of a Muse Page 13
