Harmonium

Nothing about Grace's life ever suggested he would be a musician. He'd never dreamed of being a rock star growing up. Never started a garage band or spent a year as a Roadie skipping between concerts. 

Molecular biochemistry didn't offer a huge amount of time for all that. And honestly he never had the desire to. 

Not that he didn't like music. Who didn't like music? Music was great to study and grade and experiment by. Made a man feel like he wasn't alone... in his one bedroom apartment... all the time. 

But it was different now. Music was a language. Not in the ephimeral, metaphysical way that world class musicians described it. At least not to him. It was an actual language. He could hear the words, stories, histories, in each tone. The way it threaded through the lives that were centuries long. The chimes and hums that meant a whole life, all its knowledge, all its hopes and dreams, fears and beliefs all wrapped together into a harmony.

Alright, maybe it was a bit more ephemieral than he could admit. 

Now... now the world felt... discordant. It felt noisy. Clashing and crashing and tone deaf. It left a hollow ache in his chest. In the space where a bell had been hung and rung in a xenological song until the notes of it were etched into the marrow of his bones. He felt empty. Missing the music that had made the world real to him. 

He really couldn't have predicted that an ancient, minature keyboard he paid seventeen dollars for at a garage sale would make all the difference. 

A few online videos on how to clean, tune, connect to a laptop and Grace cautiously plunked a few keys while his eyes stayed glued to a transcript. He didn't try to learn to play specifically. That defeated the purpose. He remembers each note by heart. He wasn't trying to make music. He was teying to replay a conversation. So he plunked each key, the closest to the note he remembered. Slowly. Word by word. And each press of the key his laptop recorded and complied. 

He lost track of time, but the closer to the end of the conversation the faster his heart beat. Anxiety. Hope. Fear. All wrapped up into one. The way the anticipation that could creep up and strangle him before finding out if an experiment succeded or failed. 

He tapped out the last note, hesitated for a long moment with his hands twisted up together. Then he pulled the laptop closer, cues up the series of notes he'd just made, and carefully hit 'play'. 

The words came through. Just like he remembered. The complexity of a whole world knit in between the notes. 

A sob caught in in his throat and Grace slapped his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound coming from deep in his chest, straining to listen. Eyes crushed shut and tears spilled over his cheeks. 

The bell in his chest rang softly in tandem, brought back to life, hearing its match again in the harmony of Erid.