The Little Queen – Nudity

Just about all the main characters in this story are women (there’s one child and a few supporting male characters and villains), and I am a male writer. But if you are expecting colorful descriptions of breasts or steamy scenes of girls making out, I’m afraid you’ll be very, very disappointed as this is actually the only nude scene in the entire novel (I suppose technically Titania must have been naked when she emerged from her egg and in the original version she steps out of a lake naked at the beginning, but the later has been changed in the revised version). Enjoy:

Back in her cottage, Jennifer had decided to take a bath as the smoke from her compact flashbang was causing her skin and scalp to itch. This was after she had spent some time examining the broken blade Kaya had left. Scrutinizing it under a microscope confirmed that it was not metal but made up of some fibrous matrix inlaid with minerals, much like a limpet’s tooth. She wondered then if it had been grown rather than manufactured, but by whom and why? Kaya hadn’t actually said it had come from the creature she claimed attacked her, but she couldn’t have made it herself, and another part of her story was confirmed when Hull intercepted the police reports about the two murders and a car overturned in a field which was registered to Kaya Cade.

Jennifer sunk beneath the foamy surface almost up to her nose. She should have listened to Kay, heard her out instead of allowing her suspicion and bitterness and anger to control her thoughts. But was she really wrong to do that? Her own experience was that Kaya was a liar and a bully and wouldn’t she have just been a fool to just suddenly trust her now? But then that had all been several years ago. They were both adults now, allegedly, and maybe people could change. Kaya had changed once before. Jennifer didn’t know the answers, and neither did Ducky. She’d fed some of the blood to the gene reader and all she was doing now was waiting to see if it revealed any more.

She was in the bath for about an hour before going to the living room to sit by the fireplace as she dried and brushed herself. The flames were artificial, but she watched them as if they were real, getting lost in old stories and legends. The kind of stories the first people would have imagined when they sat around the first campfires, tiny little bastions of light and warmth in a cold, untamed world. They would have seen eyes watching from the inky abyss all around, because there were; cats, wolves and who knew what else? All of them hungry, all of them watching, waiting for one to step outside the small sanctuary they had created, and then… Jennifer remembered that she was running through a black forest that never ended, shadows snatching at her, the wind whispering her name… it was a dream she had once. Just a dream…

“Analysis complete,” Hull said.

Jennifer blinked and shook herself awake. “Already?” She asked. She had been expecting it to take several more hours at least. Her tablet was charging on a little end table next to her armchair. “Show me,” she said. The computer had managed to find two sets of genes in the blood. One was obviously human skin or white blood cells – contamination from herself or Kaya, most likely. But the other…

“It matches no known species,” Hull confirmed.

Jennifer could tell that at glance – this pattern was like nothing she had ever seen. If this was a living thing it wasn’t related to anything that had evolved on Earth naturally. That didn’t mean it was alien, as she imagined Kaya might have then assumed. No – the other striking thing about this genome was how concise it was.

So Kaya was telling the truth. But that meant, if this was a faerie or at least something acting in the way someone imagined a faerie should, then it definitely would go after Kaya again. Jennifer jumped and ran to the phone, which usually only ever saw use when she was called about a survey she had no answers for or to be asked to subscribe to a magazine she didn’t care about but always ended up subscribing to anyway before canceling online. Now for the first time she was glad she kept it.

She dialed the number from the notebook on the old phone, before she was told the person was unavailable and asked if she wanted to leave a message. “Dammit,” she hissed out through her teeth. There was too much she needed to explain and couldn’t strip into a concise enough message. And what if Kaya didn’t receive it in time? No, she swallowed – she had to get out there.

“Hull,” she said, “can we get a location for that number?”

“Stand by,” the computer answered. After a moment he came back with, “affirmative.”

“Good,” Jennifer sighed in relief. It was likely though that the police would be doing the same and complicate things as none of them really knew what they were dealing with. For now she picked up her tablet and set Hull to block them, then told him to “get the van ready.”

“Affirmative,” he said, sending the information to her tablet. Jennifer took a deep breath, knowing at least where she was going but not what to do when she got there. First she had to make sure Kaya was safe so she started marching boldly toward the door. “Miss Jennifer,” Hull boomed again.

“Yes?”

“If you are going into town I must remind you it is customary to wear clothes.”

She looked down, blushed, then sheepishly grinned, “right… sorry.”

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