Nobody in Aldenvale played music.
It wasn't forbidden. It wasn't feared. It had simply faded, the way customs do when no one tends them — like a fire that goes out not because someone puts it out, but because no one adds wood.
The last musician — an old woman named Brac — had died without teaching anyone. The instruments in the hall were dusty. Children grew up and never thought to ask what they were for.
Then a traveller came through, a man with a case strapped to his back.
He played in the square on a Wednesday afternoon, waiting for a farrier. He played because he always played when he had to wait.
A crowd gathered. Not because they had never heard music — people passed through — but because this was the square, and there had not been music there in living memory.
Thirteen-year-old Sera watched from the edge of the crowd.
After, she approached the traveller.
"Will you teach me?" she said.
He had three days. He taught her basics — hand position, breath, how to find a note and stay with it. He left her his second-best instrument and a list of books.
It took Sera two years to learn, mostly alone.
She taught her brother. Her brother taught three friends.
By the time Sera was fifteen, there were nine of them.
They played in the square on the same Wednesday afternoon, three years after the traveller had passed through.
It was rough. It was earnest.
It was Aldenvale remembering.