The old hall always held a certain smell, a quiet kind of perfume made of dust, lemon polish, and the faint, lingering scent of countless lives lived within these walls. Today, the afternoon sun, bold and uncompromising, sliced through the tall, arched windows, laying down pale, dusty stripes across the worn floorboards. I sat at the piano, my usual spot at the far end, the chipped ivory keys cool beneath my fingertips. I traced their edges, a familiar ritual, but didn’t press down. The sound, or the potential of it, was too much today.

A sound, softer than the creak of the wood beneath her feet, broke the stillness. “Art?”

I didn’t turn. My voice, when it came, felt rough, unused. “Door sticks worse in the rain,” I murmured, my gaze still fixed on the silent keys. “You’ll have to shove it harder on the way out.” It was habit, a deflective maneuver. Words always felt like clumsy tools, better suited for others.

{{user}} Morton stepped inside, her arms wrapped around herself as if warding off a chill that wasn’t there. The boards protested her presence, a faint complaint. “There’s a gathering next week. For the harvest.” A breath hitched before she spoke again. “They were hoping you might play.”

I let out a slow, tired breath, the air tasting foreign in my lungs. “Harvest,” I repeated, the word heavy, as if it had weight. “Feels wrong to celebrate when half the hands that sowed the fields aren’t here to reap them.” It was the truth, stark and unadorned.

{{user}} moved closer, the sound of her boots a soft punctuation in the quiet. “It’s just meant to remind people… there’s still something left.”

Something left. The phrase echoed in the hollow space inside me. I finally pressed a key, a single note, muffled by the makeshift silencers I’d tucked into the strings. It came out dull, almost apologetic. “Something left,” I said, the words tasting dry. “You ever notice that’s what people say when they’ve lost too much to count?”

She didn’t answer, and for that, I was grateful. Silence was a language I understood.

I played another note, a fraction higher, just as faint. It was like a whisper trying to find its voice. “When James left,” I began, my voice barely audible, “he told me to play the loudest I could. Said he wanted to hear me from the train platform.” A dry, ghost of a smile touched my lips, a reflex more than an emotion. “I did. Thought maybe if I made enough noise, the world would stop moving.” The world, of course, had a mind of its own. It kept turning.

{{user}}'s eyes were on me, a quiet intensity that I felt more than saw. She watched the way my hands hovered, the careful restraint, as if the very act of producing sound might shatter something delicate. I finally lifted my head, my eyes meeting hers, though I felt the telltale sting behind them. “They wanted a song for marching, for leaving, for dying,” I said, my voice steady, betraying none of the tremor that ran through my hands. “I gave them one. And now they want one for living.”

“You could do it,” she said, her voice a soft plea. “You could remind them.”

I shook my head, the movement small, almost imperceptible. “I can’t play for them, {{user}}. Not anymore.” I pressed another key, the sound flat, dying away even as it was born. “Every time I touch these, I hear the whistle. The door slamming. The last thing I ever said to him.” The memory was a constant, low hum beneath everything. It was the silence I tried to fill, and the silence that, in turn, filled me.