"This is true?" I asked quietly as his words faded into a silence worthy of the Cardinals themselves.

    Taurus nodded, appearing to gauge our reactions cautiously. "Do you believe me?"

    "I don't think I'll ever truly believe you," I replied, craning my neck up to the sky. The three of us had, though we did not mean it, halted our forest march in a spot where the branches above us thinned enough so we could see the sky. Clear troves of blue raced in every direction despite the fill of sleeping branches. I felt a surge of serenity as I watched the stillness, like everything was finally starting to make sense, and yet I could hardly have been more confused.

    "Listen, Elias," Taurus's whisper rushed straight to my ears, even though he hadn't moved from his spot several paces away. "What do you hear?"

    I shut my eyes and strained my ears for a brief moment. "Nothing..."

    "Don't try so hard, just listen."

    "Eli, stop this," Aldyth said angrily as she grabbed me by the arm.

    But then I did hear. It was barely a whisper of the wind or the flap of a bird's wings, but it was clear, so clear, that there was no way it could have been my imagination. "Chimes," I breathed and broke away from Aldyth's grasp. "Chimes and smoke." It was hard to comprehend what I meant by that, and some part of me knew that those sounds weren't really there, yet I could hear the ringing clear as day, the way one might hear crow cawing over an object or a mother's song as you laid down to die. It felt like a memory I had long forgotten, and it sounded like the world was made up of the single striking melody. There was no possible way it could be real.

    "But it is real," Taurus said as if he could read my thoughts. "The sound was always there. It just takes a different kind to hear it."

    "Yes," I murmured and opened my eyes. The bell tones continued to bloom towards the back of my subconscious. In fact, they weren't going away now that I had noticed them. "I hear it," I murmured. "How?"

    "How what?" Taurus, seemingly satisfied that I believed his ridiculous story, started walking again. The three of us continued down an animal trail, long worn under the feet of the forest.

    "How do I hear these things? Why me and not anyone else? Am… am I… why me?"

    "Anyone can hear music if you train them hard enough," Taurus shrugged, rubbing his left ear with the back of his hand. "And as for why you… well, we'll just have to find out."

    "Can you hear this crazy music?" Aldyth asked glumly. I shot her a look of question, but she refused to meet my eyes.

    The elf looked at her curiously, too. "Yes, but I was taught to find the signs, and even so, it's not easy."

    "Can you hear the chimes then?" I reached up my hands to massage my temples.

    "Chimes," Taurus repeated curiously. "No, now I hear... oboes." My look in response must have alerted him to my complete dismay because he quickly added, "What you hear is not necessarily what everyone else hears. It's as the stories go: the book you write is never the book others read."

    "Well..." I took a deep breath. "Then… are these sounds I hear… are they just sounds?"

    "Specify what you mean?"

    "Is this… silent sound… is it meaningless, something inside me, or is there an outside venture I fail to understand? Where do the sounds come from? How do others learn to hear it? Why me?"

    "Yes and no," Taurus replied, falling silent.

    "You are the most cryptic elf I have ever met," I decided.

    "He's the only elf you've ever met," Aldyth allowed a small smile. "Unless you've been keeping secrets from me, of course -- psht, next you'll be confessing that you hunt vaprye under the cover of darkness and slay dragons in your sleep."

    "Hardly," I scoffed.

    Taurus stopped. "Vaprye? You have vaprye here?"

    "Stop avoiding the question."

    "You ask many questions. A greater mind than my own would have a difficult time keeping up. To which one were you seeking an answer to?"

    "All of them." I crossed my arms.

    The elf sighed and rolled his oversized eyes up into his head. "Speak them again, child, and may my answers satisfy your query."

    "Does this music that cannot be heard… does it mean anything?"

    "Ah, that is an answer you must seek on your own --"

    "By Lords above, Taurus!"

    "I tease, I tease," he laughed easily, causing a new melody to overlap my conscience. Aldyth rolled her eyes and nudged me with her elbow. "But, in all honesty," Taurus continued. "There is no real way to know. This question has existed for as long as Listeners have, if not longer, and no fact has been set in stone. Some say that brajés hear the music of the heart, some say they hear the music of the world. No one really knows which it is, and some would rather not know."

    "Why wouldn't they want to know?" Aldyth asked.

    Taurus's face grew dark. "That is a question I'll let you ask the North Cardinal. Under their own law, they're obligated to truthfully answer any questions you have about yourself. But until the moment you are made a cardinal, there are just some things you cannot be told, even if you are a brajé."

    We continued walking for a span of time, contemplating all the information he had just given us. The ideas were baffling - the mere thought that the Cardinal Nations could hide their music from the confederacy, much less the magic the music brought, was simply impossible. The North Cardinal was so close, yet I had never known of the strange histories that happened just beyond its borders, nor did I want to. But now it seemed like this lonely nation would be the final chance I would get to ask the questions that had always bothered me. Why was I good at singing? What did the sound of an ax always morph into the beat of a drum? Why did Aldyth's laughter make me want to run and run and never stop?

    "Taurus?" I voiced.

    "Yes?"

    "Why did you rescue us?"

    He turned to me curiously with his eyebrows raised and his pupils dilated. "What?"

    "We could have been anyone." Aldyth caught on. "Of all the people you could have saved, why are you going out of your way with us?"

    "Because." Taurus smiled, and for the first time, the sharp teeth hardly disturbed me. "For the longest time, my life was a continuation of blood, death, and silence. Music left me as the morality left the East, and I couldn't hear a whistle much less a melody. I have been traveling on my own for as long as I can remember, trying to recover the beauty of what I once knew. But reality kept intruding in the most horrible ways, and for the longest time, music became no more than a myth. A legend that could never exist in a corrupted world such as this."

    He turned to face Aldyth and I head on, forcing us both to stop. "But then I heard it, among the screech of piccolos and raving atrixes: a new melody, sharper and clearer than anything I have ever heard before, and for the first time, I saw hope in the form of a silent symphony. And I couldn't let that music die."

A/N

Funny story, I've had this chapter written for about a week and I keep forgetting to post it....3.23.16

Edited by skygardens