Happy New Year, everyone!
Before getting to the heart of things, I wanted to wish you all a wonderful year ahead. May your projects come to life, and may you find as much emotion in reading this story as I do in writing it.
Before I ask you any questions, I want to be completely honest with you: I'm fully aware that what I write can be seen as a bit of bullshit—and I'm okay with that. Art, and especially music, isn't objective. One person equals one interpretation, whether "true" or "false," and in the end, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it's valid for you.
Your opinion truly matters. We're reaching a turning point in the story, and I'd genuinely love to know:
Do you like the direction the story is taking?
Does the more introspective, musical narrative style work for you?
I'm really curious to read your thoughts. Don't hesitate to tell me how you feel about Yaz's evolution and whether the pacing feels right.
Once again, happy New Year—and thank you for being part of this musical journey.
Falling_Feathers
Cello Suite No. 1, Prelude, Bach
_________________________________________________________________________________________
The cello arrived in June, when the light had finally remembered how to be warm.
It was taller than Yaz. That was the first thing he noticed. Standing upright in its case, it reached past his shoulder, past the top of his head, into the space where adults lived and children did not yet belong. The wood was a deep reddish-brown, darker than the violin, richer, the color of something that had been growing for a long time before it was cut down and carved into this shape.
The woman who brought it was nothing like the other teachers.
Elena Vasquez was soft where they had been sharp. Her voice was low and gentle, a murmur rather than a declaration. Her hair was silver-streaked black, pulled back in a loose braid that hung over one shoulder. Her eyes were brown, the deep brown of earth after rain, and when she looked at Yaz, she seemed to see not just what he was but what he was feeling, the things beneath the surface that he had learned to hide.
"You are so young," she said. It was not a judgment. It was an observation, the way you might observe that a tree was tall or that the sky was blue. "And they have given you so much to carry."
She gestured to the Practice Room. To the guitar in its corner, the piano against the wall, the violin in its case, the drum practice pad stacked near the door. Five instruments now, if you counted the cello. Five languages he was learning to speak, five ways of saying things that words could not hold.
"The cello is different," Elena continued. She opened the case, revealing the instrument's curved body, its elegant scroll, its four strings stretched from tailpiece to pegs. "The cello is for the things you cannot say. The things that live too deep for words, too heavy for the other instruments. When you play the cello, you are not performing. You are... excavating."
Excavating. Like digging. Like finding buried things and bringing them to light.
"How do I hold it?"
Elena smiled. The smile was warm but sad, the smile of someone who had seen many children learn many instruments and knew what the learning cost.
"You do not hold the cello. You embrace it." She lifted the instrument from its case, positioned it between her knees, angled the neck against her shoulder. "It rests against your chest. Your heart. When you play, you will feel it vibrating. Like a second heartbeat."
She drew the bow across the strings.
The sound that emerged was not like anything Yaz had heard before. The guitar was bright. The piano was full. The violin was sharp. But the cello was deep. It came from somewhere low and ancient, somewhere beneath the floor, beneath the building, beneath the earth itself. It filled the Practice Room and kept filling it, a tide that rose and rose without ever cresting.
"This is Bach," Elena said, still playing. "The Prelude from his first Cello Suite. He wrote it three hundred years ago, and it still sounds like it was written yesterday. Like it was written for whoever is listening, right now, in this moment."
The melody was simple. Rising and falling, like breathing. Like the rhythm of a heart that was working to keep going even when going was hard.
"It sounds lonely," Yaz said.
Elena stopped playing. Her eyes found his, and something in them shifted. Recognition, maybe. Or understanding.
"Yes," she said quietly. "It does. The cello is the loneliest instrument. One voice. One resonance. Playing to a room that may or may not be listening." She held the bow out to him. "Would you like to try?"
The summer changed while Yaz was learning to play.
June became July. The light stretched longer each day, the sun setting later and later, painting the sky in colors that Yaz watched through the window of the Practice Room when he was supposed to be practicing. The orphanage grew quieter in the summer. Some children went on outings, chaperoned trips to parks and beaches that Yaz was never invited to join. Some children were adopted, their beds emptying overnight, their names erased from the roster as if they had never existed.
Suki was still there. But something was different.
She was distant in a way she had not been before. During meals, she sat at the far end of the table, talking to children Yaz did not know, laughing at jokes he could not hear. During outdoor hour, she stayed on the other side of the yard, kicking a ball with a group of older kids, not looking toward the fence where Yaz stood with his fingers threaded through the chain-link.
He told himself it was nothing. People were busy. People had their own lives, their own friends, their own concerns. Just because Suki had understood him once did not mean she was required to understand him forever.
But something was different. He could feel it the way you feel weather changing, a pressure shift in the air, a heaviness that settled into the space between things.
"Your friend," Elena said one afternoon in late June. They were taking a break between exercises, Yaz resting his arms while Elena retuned the cello. "The girl with the dark eyes. You watch for her during outdoor hour."
"Suki."
"She seems... preoccupied."
Preoccupied. A word that meant busy but also meant something else. Something harder to name.
"She has visitors," Yaz said. "A family. They come to see her sometimes."
Elena's fingers paused on the tuning pegs. Her face did something complicated, a flicker of emotion that was there and then hidden.
"Visitors," she said carefully. "How often?"
"I don't know. Often. More often than before."
The silence stretched. Elena's hands resumed their work, but slower now, more deliberate. The cello produced small sounds as she adjusted the strings, notes that were not quite music, just the raw material from which music might be made.
"The cello teaches patience," Elena said finally. "It teaches you to sit with what you are feeling, to let the feeling fill you before you try to express it." She looked at him, her brown eyes soft with something that might have been pity, might have been recognition. "Whatever happens with your friend, remember that. Let yourself feel it. All of it. The cello will hold it for you."
The news came in July.
Mrs. Okonkwo told him, the same way she had told him about Anya's firing, with that careful voice and those careful eyes that did not quite meet his.
"The adoption is finalizing," she said. They were in the hallway outside the dormitory, the walls pressing close, the light from the window making her orange headwrap glow like something on fire. "Suki's family. They've completed the paperwork."
Yaz's chest did something strange. A tightening. A falling. The feeling of stepping off a stair that was not there.
"When?"
"Soon. Next month. They're very excited." She paused. The pause was full of things unsaid, things that pressed against the inside of her mouth like words that did not know how to come out. "I thought you should know. Since you two are... were... close."
Were. The past tense. As if the closeness had already ended, as if the leaving had already happened, as if Suki was already gone and Yaz was just now receiving the news.
"Can I talk to her?"
Mrs. Okonkwo's face flickered. A shadow of something. Guilt, maybe. Or fear.
"Mr. Thorne has suggested... minimal contact. During this transition period. He says it's best for your focus. For your development."
Minimal contact. The same words used when Anya was fired. The same careful language that meant stay away, that meant do not get close, that meant the connections you make can be taken from you at any time for any reason.
"But she's my friend."
"I know." Mrs. Okonkwo's hand found his shoulder, warm and heavy. "I know, Yassine. But this is... complicated. There are considerations."
"What considerations?"
She did not answer. Her eyes finally met his, and in them he saw something he had not seen before. Something like shame. Something like regret.
"Practice your cello," she said. "Elena says you're making excellent progress."
She walked away. Her footsteps faded down the hallway, leaving Yaz alone with the news and the silence and the knowledge that his friend was leaving and he was not allowed to say goodbye.
Thorne mentioned it once.
It was a Thursday, one of his regular visits, and he was sitting in the chair in the corner of the Practice Room, watching Yaz practice the Bach Prelude on a child-sized cello Elena had provided for the lessons. The melody rose and fell, the bow drawing sound from the strings, the vibrations traveling through the instrument's body into Yaz's chest like a second heartbeat that was not quite his own.
"I hear your friend is being adopted," Thorne said when Yaz finished.
The words were casual. Light. The way you might comment on the weather or the color of someone's shirt.
"Yes."
"That's wonderful news. A family who wants her. A new life." Thorne's hands were folded in his lap, his gold watch catching the light. "You must be happy for her."
Yaz did not answer. He was not sure if he was happy for Suki. He was not sure if happy was even the right word for what he was feeling.
"It's difficult, I know," Thorne continued. "Watching someone leave. But you have to understand, Yassine, that some doors open for some people and not for others. Suki's path is different from yours. Simpler. Less... extraordinary."
Less extraordinary. As if being extraordinary was a gift and not a cage. As if the lessons and the instruments and the contract were things to be grateful for, things that made being left behind somehow acceptable.
"What about me?" Yaz asked. "Will a family come for me?"
Thorne's smile flickered. Just for a moment. The mask slipping before it was replaced.
"Families have come," he said. "But we've explained to them that you're not available. That you're in the middle of something important. Something that requires focus and stability."
"You turned them away."
"I protected your development." Thorne's voice was smooth, patient, the voice of someone explaining something obvious to someone who was not quite understanding. "Adoption would mean leaving the program. Leaving the training. Starting over somewhere new, with people who wouldn't understand what you need." He leaned forward, his hazel-green eyes intent. "I delayed Suki's adoption too, you know. Briefly. To give Mrs. Okonkwo some... perspective. But Suki doesn't have your gift. Suki doesn't need what you need. It was better to let her go."
Delayed. For leverage. The words slid through Yaz's mind like something cold.
"You used her."
The words came out before he could stop them. Direct. Accusing. The words of someone who was starting to see something he wished he could unsee.
Thorne's face went still. The warmth drained out of it, replaced by something harder. Something that had always been there beneath the surface, waiting.
"I made a decision," he said quietly. "For your benefit. Everything I do is for your benefit, Yassine. I hope you'll remember that."
He stood. Adjusted his jacket. Checked his watch.
"Practice the Prelude. Elena says you're almost ready for the full piece."
He left. The door closed. The Practice Room was quiet.
He used her, the Maestro said. The voice was present but changed. Quieter. More uncertain. To control Mrs. Okonkwo. To keep her compliant. And now that she's served her purpose...
He let her go, Yaz finished.
The cello waited in its case. The bow lay across the music stand, patient and silent, ready for whatever Yaz needed it to hold.
Suki left on a Tuesday in August.
Yaz was not supposed to know. The departure was scheduled for the morning, before outdoor hour, before the other children would be awake and asking questions and making the leaving harder than it needed to be. But Yaz knew because he had been watching, because he had been paying attention, because he had seen the bags being packed and the paperwork being signed and the family's car idling in the parking lot, engine running, ready to take her somewhere else.
He found the note in his locker.
It was small, folded tight, tucked behind the smooth stone he had kept there since Song 1. The paper was torn from a notebook, the edges rough, the handwriting careful and round, the letters pressed hard into the surface as if Suki had wanted to make sure they would not fade.
Keep counting. Keep making. I'll listen.
Eight words. That was all. Eight words to summarize everything they had been to each other, everything they had shared, every moment of understanding in a world that did not often understand.
He held the note in his hand. The paper was thin, almost weightless. It seemed impossible that something so small could contain so much.
She left something, the Maestro said. The voice was gentle now, trying to reach him, trying to find the part of him that could still be reached. Not just the note. She left proof that connection is possible. That someone can know you and care about you and want you to keep going.
But she's gone, Yaz thought.
Yes. But you still have the note. You still have the memory. Those things are real too.
He folded the paper back up. Tucked it behind the smooth stone, where it would stay safe, where no one else would find it. A secret. A tether. Something to hold onto when everything else was letting go.
That night, Suki's bed was empty.
Yaz lay in his own bed, the forty-seven tiles above him as familiar as his own heartbeat, and stared across the dormitory at the space where she used to be. The sheets had been changed. The pillow had been fluffed. Everything was clean and ready, as if no one had ever slept there, as if the years of nights had been erased as easily as chalk from a board.
He could not sleep.
The Practice Room called to him. The cello called to him. Bach called to him, three hundred years dead and still reaching through time to say something that needed to be said.
He slipped out of bed. The floor was cold beneath his bare feet. The hallway was dark, the lights off, the orphanage holding its breath in the hours between one day and the next.
The Practice Room was unlocked. It was always unlocked now, Thorne having decided that access was important, that creativity could not be scheduled, that a prodigy needed to be able to practice whenever the inspiration struck.
The cello waited in its case. Yaz opened the latches, lifted the instrument out, positioned it between his knees the way Elena had taught him. The wood was cool against his chest. The strings were taut beneath his fingers.
He began to play.
The Prelude. Bach's solitary meditation, three hundred years old and still bleeding. The notes rose and fell like breathing, like the rhythm of a heart that was working to keep going even when going was hard. The cello's body vibrated against his chest, a second heartbeat, an echo of the one that was missing.
He played and he stared at the doorway. At the hallway beyond, the one that led to the dormitory, the one that led to the bed that was empty now, the bed where a new child would soon sleep, the bed that would forget it had ever held Suki the way the orphanage forgot all the children who left.
His eyes burned. His throat ached. Something was trying to come up from inside him, something wet and desperate, something he had learned to push down a long time ago because crying did not help, because tears did not bring back the things you had lost, because sadness was just another cage you had to learn to live in.
But the cello. The cello could cry for him.
He leaned into the bow. Drew it across the strings with everything he had. The sound that came out was not just notes. It was grief. It was loneliness. It was the shape of a girl who counted cracks in the ceiling and understood without being told and left a note that said I'll listen even though she could not stay.
A sound from the doorway.
Elena stood there. She was still dressed, as if she had not slept either, as if she had known somehow that this night would require witnesses. Her face was wet. Tears tracked down her cheeks, catching the dim light from the hallway, evidence that she was feeling what Yaz could not let himself feel.
She did not speak. She did not tell him to stop, or to go back to bed, or to save the practice for the morning. She just stood there, watching him play, crying the tears that he could not cry.
When he finished, the silence was thick. Heavy. The silence of something that had ended and could not be brought back.
"That was beautiful," Elena whispered. Her voice cracked on the word. "That was the most beautiful playing I have ever heard."
Yaz looked down at the cello. At his fingers on the strings, the calluses that had formed, the hands that had learned to speak when his mouth could not.
"She's really gone," he said.
"Yes." Elena stepped into the room. She knelt beside him, her hand finding his shoulder, her touch warm and solid. "She's really gone. And you will miss her for a very long time."
"Will it get better?"
"I don't know. Some things get better. Some things just get... different. Smaller. Easier to carry."
She stayed with him in the Practice Room until the sky outside the window began to lighten. They did not talk. They did not need to. The cello had said everything that needed to be said.
The new child arrived three days later.
His name was something Yaz did not bother to learn. He was small, younger than Yaz had been when he first arrived, his face round and wet with the constant tears of a child who did not understand where he was or why he was there. He slept in Suki's bed. He cried at night, the thin, keening wail of someone calling for a mother who was not coming.
Yaz listened to the crying and felt nothing.
That was the strangest part. The emptiness. The place where the sadness should have been was just... hollow. As if something had drained out of him the night Suki left, as if the tears he could not cry had taken something else with them, something essential, something that made him feel like a person instead of just a body going through motions.
The lessons continued. Elena came every week, patient and gentle, teaching him the rest of Bach's Suite, the movements that followed the Prelude, the dances and meditations that Bach had written centuries ago for a single voice to play.
"You are different now," Elena said during one of their final lessons. It was late August. The summer was ending. The light through the window had started to change again, losing its warmth, preparing for another season of gray.
"Different how?"
"Quieter. More closed." She set her bow down, looked at him with those brown eyes that saw too much. "The cello is teaching you to hold your feelings. But holding is not the same as releasing. Be careful, pequeño. If you hold too long, the feelings turn into something else."
"What do they turn into?"
Elena was quiet for a long moment. Her hands rested on the curve of the cello, protective and gentle.
"Stone," she said finally. "They turn into stone. And stone cannot make music."
She reached out, adjusted his grip on the bow. Her touch was warm, almost maternal, the touch of someone who cared even though caring cost her something.
"What Mr. Thorne calls protection," she whispered, so quiet Yaz had to lean in to hear. "Be careful, pequeño. Cages can be made of gold."
She said nothing else. But the warning lived in the air between them, a gift and a burden all at once.
The fence felt different now.
Yaz stood there during outdoor hour, his fingers threaded through the chain-link, the diamond pattern pressing into his skin. The families walked past. The children played in the yard behind him. The world continued, indifferent, the way the world always continued.
But something had changed.
Before, the fence had been a boundary. A marker between inside and outside, between waiting and living, between the life he had and the life he wanted. He had stood here imagining what it would be like to cross it, to walk through that gate, to step into the world beyond and become part of it.
Now the fence felt like something else. Not a boundary. A wall. A statement. A reminder that the people who left did not come back, that the connections you made could be severed without your permission, that even the ones who understood you could be taken away.
She left something, the Maestro said. The voice was distant now, harder to hear, as if it was speaking through layers of something thick. Not just the note. She left proof that connection is possible.
And then she was gone, Yaz thought. That's what connection gets you. That's what caring gets you. They leave. They always leave.
The Maestro did not respond. Maybe there was no response. Maybe the truth was too heavy for even an inner voice to carry.
Yaz let go of the fence. His fingers ached where the metal had pressed into them. The diamond pattern faded slowly, blood returning to the skin, the marks disappearing as if they had never been.
He walked back toward the orphanage. Toward the Practice Room. Toward the cello that waited for him, patient and silent, ready to hold whatever he brought to it.
Behind him, a new family walked past the fence. A mother and father and a small child on the father's shoulders, all of them laughing, all of them together, all of them unaware of the boy in the yard who was learning what it meant to be left behind.
That night, he played the Prelude again.
The new child was crying in Suki's bed. The small, helpless sounds of someone who did not understand what was happening, who only knew that the world had changed and the change was terrible.
Yaz understood. He had cried like that once, years ago, when he was small enough not to know better. When he still believed that crying could bring back the things you lost.
But he was eight now. And eight was old enough to know that crying did not help. That the tears, when they came, were just another form of waiting. Another cage made of water and salt and the hope that someone might hear you and come.
No one came. The crying continued. The night stretched on.
In the Practice Room, alone with the cello and the memory and the note hidden behind the smooth stone, Yaz played the Prelude until his fingers ached. Until the bow grew heavy in his hand. Until the music had taken everything he could not say and turned it into something that could exist outside of him.
Her bed had a new occupant now. A small boy who cried at night the way Yaz had cried years ago.
But Yaz did not cry. He had forgotten how.
He held the note in his pocket and played the Prelude until his fingers ached, and the cello wept what he could not.