He was neither the first nor the last.

His melody caressed people just as his mother had once soothed him with her lullabies.

Before he had seen even eight springs, he began imitating every melody, listening to the sacred symphonies of nature.

He knew the songs of his people.

He tried to sing them.

He tried to capture that hidden note that so skillfully slipped away from him.

It would not yield itself to him.

As the summers of his youth passed, a young woman gently awakened something within him.

She stirred a new melody in his heart.
Yet the one true note remained hidden from him.
He played the fiddle and guitar.
Had he been able, he would have played the fanfares as well.
His melody was filled with joy.

Sorrow wrapped itself around his heart when the woman he loved left him for another.

Then came joy.
Then laughter once more.
Another woman.
Another cask of wine.

When darkness quietly spins its thread, it does not take long before the heart becomes entangled.

The woman he loved suffered, for she had lost their child.
Grief consumed her, and she slipped away from his hands.

He departed for distant lands.
Far from melody.
Far from harmony.

Then came the melody that draws every voice into silence—
drawing every song into the depths.
Into emptiness.

He wandered the world without the light of dawn.
No longer did he seek tenderness.
No longer did he hide the pain upon his face.
No longer.

One day, while the sun danced lazily across the sky, a longing found him.
A true longing.
A longing of the heart.

The scent of ripened fields.
The scent of home.
Even from afar, they drifted toward him, awakening memories long buried within his broken heart.

He did not hide.
He did not run.
He gathered his belongings and journeyed home.
The world down in the valley was no longer the world he had once known upon the mountain.

The man had returned home.

In an old tavern he found his guitar.
The first one.
The old one.
He sat upon the hillside.
With the palm of his hand, he gently caressed its worn body.
Then, almost in a whisper, he released a melody from the depths of his heart.

Soft as silk, the true note finally slipped from his lips.
Quietly, he began to sing.
Quietly, he began to live.
Without glory.
Without applause.
Only with his melody.

When summer slowly surrendered to autumn, the southern wind brought a woman into his life.
She was strong.
She was resolute.
Yet she was gentle as a bird.
She would not allow herself to be captured.
He did not wish to frighten her.
He did not wish to lure her.
He did not wish to leave her.
Nor to lose her.

When fear reached into her very bones, she fled to him without knowing why.

There, a melody awaited her, gentler than the finest veil.
His voice was like the passing of warm southern winds.

In the winter of his life, black birds came to sing his final song.

He did not leave.
Yet neither did he remain.

He placed the note of his autumn into a pair of little hands.

Now another child wonders how to hear that melody.
How to sing.
That note.
That symphony of the heart.