Unfinished Business

The White Queen (Maylor)

Sometimes Roger didn't knew if she was real or not. Could've been a fantasy, an illusion. Something out of a dream.

He'd heard her first, rather than seen her. The delicate sound of strings being strummed, resonating throughout the forest, in the dead of the night.

Any sane man would've turned on their heels and ran for their lifes in fear of the Fair Folk. But not Roger.

He let himself be charmed by the sound, let himself be taken away. Walked without even knowing where he was headed, hypnotized by the sound of the music.

Soon enough he found himself on a small clearing, where moonlight shone down and illuminated the sweetest sight Roger had ever seen.

She was magnificent. Beautiful, yes, delicate too. But he could feel the power she held within. She was all but a porcelain doll.

A slim figure sitting under an elder tree, with curls of dark thick hair that reached the floor. Her pale skin seemed to shine, concealed mostly under a long sheer dress.

The instrument on her hands was none Roger had ever seen, long and stringed with gold, body decorated in blood red. She played with mastery, humming softly to herself.

As her song came to an end, he tripped and fell to the floor, revealing his presence to the ethereal stranger.

She rose to her feet and approached, staring him down with soft hazel eyes. He feared for his life, but she merely helped him up and dusted off his coat, not saying a word.

He muttered a 'thank you', scared to look up, but she forced him to do so. She was much taller than he was, thinner too. And much stronger, he could guess, in ways he knew nothing of.

'Your name', she demanded, and he felt compelled to answer almost immediately

'Roger Taylor'

She studied his appearance for a moment. He knew he wasn't exactly presentable right now, and felt slightly ashamed of it. She made him want nothing more than her approval, something unusual for him.

'Don't come back here', she finally ordered, and seemingly disappeared on thin air.

Suddenly he was alone, with a shiver down his spine and a red guitar with golden strings on his arms.

Roger shook his head, turned on his feet, and made his way back home, confused and scared but inevitably attracted to the mystery of her.

It had been months of that, and Roger still couldn't shake the memory away.

The red guitar laid on a pedestal in his studio, quiet. He'd tried playing it, to no avail. No sound came from it. He'd given up on it.

He'd almost given up on her, too.

No one in town seemed to know anything about a tall pale woman of long dark curls and hazel eyes, nor recognized the guitar as any model ever made, although he got many offers to buy it. He denied them all.

Jim had warned him about the fae when he first arrived, and he wished he would've listened. Wished he had never heard that song.

She consumed his thoughts, his every waking hour. God knows how many botched crowns he'd placed, how many cavities he'd clumsily filled, trapped on his daydreams and memories of her when he should've been paying attention to his job.

He'd looked everywhere, and no person or book told him anything. So he'd searched for a replacement.

Ladies of pale ivory skin and long dark hair, curly or not, became a frequent sight on his bedroom for a few weeks, but none of them were ever enough. None of them were her. And while they sated his body, his mind kept going back to the delicate sounds, the gentle command of her voice, the tingle of her powerful presence on his skin.