The sound was close, but unfortunately, close with an instrument might as well be a mile away. There was the swift sound of the slammed down piano cover, followed by the inevitable squeak it made as it was hesitantly pulled back. The keys made music, just like they had been for the past hour, and just as before, the shift from natural to sharp ended in failure. A slurry of unhappy noise filled the piano room. The slam of the foot pedal, keys, and an unfortunate fist all mixed up in displeasure like snow in the crooks of a city street.

“You know Mama will rip you a new one if you break that piano. I would shift my little temper tantrum onto something less breakable if I were you.”

The Musician narrowed her eyes at her brother, letting her mouth tilt into a bulldog-like frown.

“What’s the point? I can’t play this stupid thing anyway!” she barked back, slamming the lid over the agonizing piano keys. “It’s just a stupid waste of time, and I hate it! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!”

Her words turned a wash of fuming red which bled into her face, and she covered it with her sheet music, continuing to declare her hatred for the poor instrument.

She would have likely continued on forever, telling the world just how much she despised music if her brother hadn’t hoisted her up, and sat down in her place on the stool, setting her on his lap.

“You focus way too much on it being perfect, Pianoforte.” he laughed, rescuing the sheet music from his stormy sister’s fists.

“But I-” she tried to start, only to be flattened by her brother’s start to the song.

“If all you focus on is perfection, all you’ll have is a bunch of mistakes. What good is that?”

His pinky finger slipped off the proper key, but he played on, letting his freshly shaven jaw rest on his sister’s cast iron hair.

The Musician listened to him play, breathing in the scent of his aftershave and clean hair, and the red hot anger slowly cooled.

She watched as his big, nail bitten hands waltzed across the keys, and she placed her own on top of them. She could feel the rough, green-gray fabric of his uniform against her back, but she tried to ignore it, just focusing on their hands, and the sound of a song.

“Do you have to go? Why can’t you stay home with us?” she whined suddenly, her eyebrows crinkling up with emotion. 

“Well, yeah Pianoforte, there’s people out there in the big ol’ world who are threatening yours, and your Ma, and sisters’ safety. What kind of big brother would I be if I didn’t try to keep my precious girls safe?” he smiled, tripping over a sharp note.

“You’d be one who did not abandon us.” The Musician pouted, snatching his hand off the keys, and hugging them to her face.

Her brother sighed, feeling salty tears drip into his palms.

“Don’t be so sad, Pianoforte. We’ll see eachother soon. I promise. And before then, I’ll write home to you and the girls.”

“Every week?” the little girl croaked through his fingers.

“Sure, heck, if you keep playing, even if you make mistakes, I’ll write everyday. Do you think you can do that while I’m gone?”

The Musician almost wanted to say no, but she couldn’t bring herself to shake her head.

“Fine, but only if you write every day.” she huffed, looking back up at him with the heartbreaking expression one makes when they’re trying to freeze your face into their memory. It was the sad little face you make when you’re saying goodbye for a very, very long time.

“Of course, Pianoforte. Every single day until I come home. I promise.”

Those letters were the only reason that blasted instrument was ever played. The house was already stuffed to the brim with noise. People were always coming, and going. Making plans, sharing bad news, looking for extra rations, or fleeing from the air raid sirens.

All anyone ever seemed to do anymore was bring crisis after crisis to the door.

Every week, the letters would come in, sometimes with doodles, or postcards, and never without the words “Dear Pianoforte, I hope you haven’t been stopping at your mistakes.”

The old cigar box that held them was already overfilled, spilling over onto the piano, and bullying the musician into practice.

War was an exhausting thing, and it was a wonder the world didn’t collapse a few weeks in.

The brother quickly learned that in many places, it in fact did.

The enemy cities they held didn’t seem much like enemies the more they stayed. They were all just as worn as the soldiers were, if not more.

Close to the 17th month, The brother found himself in a strange paradox. As his squad was helping to move medical supplies to the enemy hospital, the sirens went off.

The soldiers had neer heard that sound before. They had never felt the fear of their hero’s might, but the city had.

There was a mad dash for the shelters, but the soldiers did not run. 

“These supplies are expensive, don’t you dare leave any.” he ordered, tossing packages to his subordinates and friends.

After they collected everything up, they walked over to the houses still standing by the railway tracks, and found the closest basement. By some strange stroke of luck, it was almost completely empty, except for a couple, and their son of maybe nine.

As the soldiers walked down the steps, the father shouted something, loud, and full of fear. Both people were as white as sheets, and tried to push the soldiers out, and up, continuing to speak in their foreign tongue. 

“What the hell-Aki, what are they rambling about?” one of them said to the translator. Just as he was about to open his mouth, the brother understood. 

He barely had enough time to turn to his comrades, the brothers he had soaked in battle with, and laughed away pain with, before his mistake did its damage.

The sound was so loud that it was silent, and the pain so sharp that it was numbing.

When the soldier came to, it was so quiet, he swore he had gone deaf.

Light filtered through the dusty air, and the first thing his eyes allowed him was the fruits of his folly.

The motionless arm of a soldier stuck out from the debris, as still as the rubble around them.

Sharp, wet pain blossomed out from every fiber of the soldier’s body, and he tried very hard to close his eyes, and wake up either at home, or not at all.

Someone nearby let out a small sound. One of those violently delicate noises that tore your pride to shreds when you heard it.

It was the enemy boy from a moment before, half buried under rubble. The soldier’s ego wailed, and he looked away. Perhaps if he laid in the darkness long enough, it would all go away, and his soul would return home.

The Soldier thought of his mother, and sisters. The little triplets, and Pianoforte hammering away stubbornly despite almost endless perfectionism, all because of a precious promise he had once believed to be unbreakable.

The brother couldn’t bear it any longer. He tore his bleeding body from the ground, and crawled, for there was no way he could even dream of walking. He crawled like an infant to the tear filled enemy boy.

In those slow, weeping moments, the brother came to a solemn conclusion that when a man must crawl to a child, there are no longer “the enemies” and “the heros” of war, but simply an amassed collection of broken, bleeding beings. 

When the boy saw him, he started to howl in slurred, terrified, words. He cried for his parents, his beloved protectors, and failed to come to the realization that they couldn’t hear, and those who could hear him could not understand a single word of his plight.

Yet, in the end, the soldier was a brother at heart. He could see death creeping into the boys’ punctured, and crushed little frame, and could hear it spurting from both of their lungs.  He didn’t need language to see a lost little boy with life set to a timer.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be okay, just calm down.” he breathed, ruffling the boy’s filthy curls with a smile.

The boy tried again to speak, and sit up, searching for his anchors, but his pale little body slipped back against the brother in weakening resolve. All he could do was sob, speaking a truly universal language.

“Hey-hey. It’s okay, don’t cry.” the brother pleaded in that chuckling way safe, warm people seem to.

“I-I need your help little buddy. Can you help me?”

The boy heard the tone of a friendly request, and managed to pause, dizzily looking up at him with pure, bloodshot eyes.

He responded with a question, and shaky, but calmed breaths.

“Well,” the brother winced, pulling a piece of paper, and a snapped pencil from his breast pocket.

“I need you to help me write a letter.”

The day the brother came home was quiet. People came, but only to pay solemn respects. The despondent silence continued into the weeks, then months. Mother slept awake with an empty wash over her body. The triplets’ seemingly endless chatter was turned down into mumbles, and the musician, without her letters, left the piano room to become a forgotten storage space.

Then one gloomy day, just after a raid, the musician received a small envelope.

It was plain white, and held nothing more than a dingy piece of paper. The musician turned it over, and found that hidden in the filth was writing, along with a weak drawing of a songbird.

She felt her legs carry her to the piano room, and the words tumbled from the paper.

Dear Pianoforte, 

I don’t know when you’ll read this, but I want to say I’m sorry. I was wrong about this war. It was not a noble fight, but a violent squabble over terrible things at the expense of those that should be valued most. I’m sorry I broke my promise, and that I wont see you again for a while. I would give anything to see you girls again. Not many people can keep going after something like this. They halt, and cry until their bones turn to ash. But, I’ve made a mistake that you must play past. It’s an awful, unfair thing to ask, but I am a selfish man, and will beg it of you anyway.

Please help the others move on best you can. Keep playing, and please don’t stop when you trip up. You will bleed, and you will cry, but please don’t stop until you’ve finished your song.

I know you will do great things, and I’ll be waiting for you once you’re done.

Love,

Your big brother

Beside the doodle of the bird, sloppy writing formed the words “¡y de Jessie!”

The musician barely knew what to make of it. She sat down on the piano stool, her head stuffed with trouble, and played.

She played off time, and missed some notes. She felt wildly uncomfortable in her role as the eldest, but she still played on.

The sound was far from perfect, but it wasn’t a chore. As the pain and joy came and went in waves, it became simply the sound of music. Even if it was far from beautiful, in the end, it was a song. An enigmatic, wonderful little song called life.