Noah was in his second term when he heard music for the first time. Back then, Colony 14 nestled between a set of clover hills far away from any battlefield. A little farther away still nestled the training camps for early-termers. Their world ended at the steel fence left of the barracks in one direction and at the fortified gate five hundred steps in the other direction. The war was little more than a distant rumble and red sparks drifting above the northern hillcrest at night.

But someone did die. One of the engineers messed up the recalibration of a Levnis. When the machine exploded, shrapnel sliced through his arms and then his throat, killing him faster than most Agnian soldiers would have. Or so they said. Noah only saw the body after the fact.

The face had already turned into an ashen, expressionless husk for the early-termers to gawk at. Some stood to attention with vacant expressions, others shuffled forward to touch one of the red sparks bleeding out of the body into the air. Eunie tugged at Noah's arm. She said she wanted to leave. He found it strange. Before, not even utter defeat on the training ground could trip her, let alone seal her tongue.

Joran complained too, and Noah was about to give in, when the off-seer stepped out of the wrangle. Under the eyes of twenty early-termers who had never seen death before, she pulled a flute out of her pocket and raised it to her lips.

In hindsight, the song was nothing to write home about. The off-seer still underwent training. Her mentor stood outside the crowd, and she stumbled over her fingers more than once. But despite the hectic tumble of the notes and the underlying shrillness of the untuned instrument, it was music. Noah soaked the sounds in. He recorded all the ups and downs in his mind, and even eight terms later he could recite the melody, note for note, with all its mistakes. By the time the sparks changed into a grateful blue and lost themselves in the sky, Noah awed with his mouth open.

The off-seer hurried from the stage, and with her, the flute from which she drew this magic vanished from sight. But never from Noah's mind.

A month later, he heard music again. One of the instructors from Colony 14 reached their Homecoming. Up until then, the word Homecoming had passed between the early-termers as a myth, a hushed dream too delicate to put into words or it would shatter. None of them had stepped onto a battlefield, how were they supposed to imagine themselves stepping before the queen?

Half the colony gathered at the plaza in Keves castle's shadow. Night fell. Anticipation stiffened the air, and not even the overwhelming shape of the castle could draw eyes away from the pedestal where the soldier was to receive her Homecoming. In more or less orderly rows, the early-termers awaited the spectacle. Nervous chatter sounded here and there.

All noise faded when the first note of the Homecoming melody rang across the plaza. Everything else was trivial. The words, the gestures, even the sight of the queen barely registered because music replaced all other thoughts. Noah shuddered in the warm night.

The engineer in Colony 14 had received one off-seer, but here an entire group guided the ceremony. The orchestra of flutes ebbed and swelled, played the notes passed down through countless short lifetimes, but every off-seer had their unique voice when their fingers danced across the instrument. One drew the notes out softly, like a plea to the sky itself. Another filled their play with shared triumph for the homecoming soldier. It was unity and yet it was a gathering of emotions which could not differ more. It was music. The storm swept Noah up, and even though someone else kneeled on the pedestal and transformed into pure light, this music seemed made to strike him and enwrap him specifically.

He later couldn't explain the experience to his friends although, the queen knows, he tried. Marching back into the training pits and swinging his sword at other early-termers became a duty someone else performed. Half his thoughts wandered elsewhere. While he played at war, that other half strung senseless tunes together without a means to share them. Lanz hit him over the head for his inattentiveness. Eunie rolled her eyes and called him hopeless.

Noah apologised. In the next training match, he did just as badly. The world still ended at the steel fence left of the barracks, but the barrier looked small and climbable now. It was just that no one had tried to set their feet into the meshwork before.

A month later, the war did come to Colony 14.

The ash had not yet settled when the higherups declared the colony a lost cause. Rebuilding the barracks would eat up too many resources. Agnian troops might return at any moment. Search parties to dig through the rubble for husks were needed on battlefields elsewhere, and the reinforcement carriers quit the smoke-heavy sky before dawn climbed the clover hills. Colony 14 vanished from the map without a sound.

No one played the flute to send Joran off.

Huddled in one of the dim carrier compartments with course for a new colony, Noah made up his mind. He would become an off-seer. He would offer soldiers a voice when they no longer had one.

Eunie didn't get it. Lanz called the idea boring and slammed his shield into the training doll harder. Noah trekked to Keves Castle anyway. In the vast, gold-lit halls he reunited with Crys, one of the flutists who had played at the Homecoming. The off-seer uniform had never fitted a man better than him. And after Noah stumbled over his tongue and his own thoughts in his attempts to explain why the music at the Homecoming ceremony had left such a profound impact on him, Crys supported his decision. He took on Noah's training. A few days later, he placed a newly crafted off-seer flute into his hand.

Plain black wood made up the instrument. Compared to Crys' flute it was boring to look at. Would that make the flute sound different too, worse even? The thought made Noah flinch. Still he gaped when he traced the holes and the lines in the wood with his inexperienced fingers. It was so delicate, nothing like a sword. How could something so delicate create something so powerful?

"Why doesn't it look like yours?" Noah asked.

"Because it's yours. You will make it your own as you go along," Crys said. Then he showed Noah how to adjust his fingers around the flute.

For the first week, he only drew ghastly noise from the instrument. Sometimes his attempts barely resembled a tone, other times the shrillness made him want to lock the delicate, black flute in its delicate, black flute case and never lay a finger on the spring lock again. But he kept at it. He studied Crys' movements. He studied the music sheets and dutifully played note after note. Different melodies from different colonies wandered across his music stand until he could recite them all. The off-seer for Colony 30 patted him on the back once, saying they would have to invent new colonies to keep Noah occupied. But something was missing.

Agnian off-seers work in pairs. It seemed a strange tradition at first, and the books hurried to point out the strategic disadvantage of holding not one but two capable soldiers in the rear to perform the off-seeing melody. To a husk, two flutes sound the same as one. Two melodies would surely get in each other's way. Noah repeated these phrases in his head while he hunched over his book, and one finger drummed the Homecoming melody on the image of the two Agnian off-seers. Know the enemy. Dampen their spirits by removing their off-seers from the battlefield first, so the book read. Even as Noah repeated the phrases, he heard the lies in them. The pair in the book had the advantage. They had one to cover up their mistakes, to listen to each other's voices, and to understand what moves behind the notes like no one else could.

When Crys raised his flute, it was a lonely voice. When Noah joined, it was two lonely voices, and one could never hope to catch up to the other.

He could hammer the music sheets into his head all he wanted. Something was still missing.

"I'm following all the steps on the instructions," Noah said. "I know I'm not messing up the notes, but it still sounds so plain. When you play, the melodies are so much more… fitting."

"You still haven't made the music your own yet." Crys turned over the music sheet so that the blank side stared at them. "Try playing it again."

And Noah played.

He played when Eunie and Lanz had long gone to sleep, and the star-slated waterfalls around Colony 9 almost drowned out his melody. He played when the fourth-termers celebrated their first victory on the battlefield, and the flameclocks in their irises overflowed with hard-earned energy. And he still played when Crys disappeared from this world with a slash and a smile.

At some point, he lost count of how many people he sent off. There were friends, foes, and many bursts of sparks scattering across the sky like the leaves of the Alfeto Valley tree. Noah looked at death day in and day out until it clung to him, and he carried it back into his plank bed and under the covers. The songs he knew did not reach there.

So he searched for alternatives. Soon his repertoire included not just the tunes from Kevesi colonies but unique creations from fellow off-seers. When his restless fingers fidgeted after a battle, he worked on his own melodies and strung senseless tunes together once more. On rare occasions, these hours even produced something decent. The next day, he would rip the sheet with his scribbled notes to pieces, liking only the sound of paper sailing to the ground.

Crys had told him to make the music his own. But no one told Noah how. He was only halfway there.

New details embellished the black wood of his flute. Although he dragged it from one battlefield to another, he never forgot to apply polish until the instrument shone in the light of the barrack. Some nicks would not disappear. Eventually, Noah accepted them like he accepted the disappearing mark on the back of his hand that counted down his lifetime. Then he hugged the flute to his chest and breathed a wish into it. Instruments are like friends, Crys had said once. They need care and attention, but they reward every minute spend with them.

Some friendships don't last. On his mind and in the future lurked the threat that something would force Noah to put down the flute for good. Stories about off-seers stripped of their instrument and chased to the frontline found their way into his nightmares. He had seen soldiers' arms crushed under the wheels of a Levnis. One of the cooks in Colony 9 struggled to slice vegetables with the broken stumps he had for fingers. And every time the man handed Noah his plate with radish stew, he was tempted to press his own fingers to his chest. When snow glid from upper Aetia, he wore gloves while everyone else moulded the ice into ammunition with bare hands to play at war with each other. For the longest time, broken or dead-frozen fingers were the worst loss he could imagine.

Until he met her.

No one plays like her.

When Mio raises her flute to her mouth, the first movement comes with military precision, it comes with the force of a top-rank warrior. The same force echoes in her opening note. There is old, simmering resentment from days when higher-ups had chased her away from the frontline and towards this delicate instrument that could never win the war. As soon as her fingers flit to birth the second note, she forgets all that.

Duty guides her hands. No matter the situation, she steers through even the most complex melodies without an error. She has inhaled her music sheets and gives them back to the world. Not as plain ink and paper but as the distilled, true essence behind the symbols. Never less than that. On sand-lashed and salt-laden and snow-coated hills, she plays the off-seeing melody, perfectly recited, note for note. To a husk, one flute is as welcome as the other, and even a stumbled performance will change red sparks into blue ones. When no one cares, Mio still plays the off-seeing melody, and with her perfect performance, one hardly notices that the song was written for two. Agnian off-seers work in pairs. And when she plays, she gives that missing partner a voice too. Never less than that.

But sometimes Mio does veer from the music sheets. Sometimes she loses herself in the familiar songs, and one note becomes a pleading breath and another becomes an adventurous trill. In the hands of a different off-seer, these changes would sound like mistakes. But in Mio's hands, it always sounds right.

When she believes no one is listening, she lets her fingers decide the rhythm. She plays to honour Miyabi. She plays to remember the fallen. She plays to celebrate the living and all the little steps they took with her. One dip of her flute at a time, one phrase at a time, she makes the music her own. Her true voice shines through the rehearsals and the dutiful recitals.

Then Noah remembers the stuttered performance from a training off-seer and he remembers the concert of flutes bathing a plaza in pure light. When he hears Mio's voice in her flute play, he remembers why he stayed awake through countless nights to string senseless tunes together. And even if the moment never lasts, he will treasure it until the end of time.

That look on her face when she abandons all hesitation and dives in…

"What are you staring at?"

Noah jerks out of his thoughts. The flute almost slips from his grasp.

"Do I have something in my hair?" Mio asks and combs a strand out of her face. The scent of sizzling fat from Manana's dinner still hangs about the campsite. Although an occasional yawn sounds through, the chatter of the others has not yet surrendered to sleepiness.

"N-no, it's nothing," Noah says and fails miserably to look somewhere other than the gleam the setting sun puts in Mio's hair. "I was just thinking."

"With that look on your face, you must have been on the other end of the world with those thoughts." Mio leans over and pokes Noah's forehead. "Sometimes you make it way too hard to guess what's going on in that head of yours."

"I'm working on it."

"I should hope so." Mio's frown softens a little. "Should we start now? I don't want to keep the others from sleeping for too long."

She raises Noah's flute back to her lips. In her hands, the black wood looks right at home.

Noah smiles and mirrors her posture. "On it."

The sounds of two flutes spiral above the campsite, and as the voices of Keves and Agnus mingle, they make the music their own.

One day later, Noah writes his first duet.


Notes: Remember how in that one side quest Noah said he wanted to write his own music one day? Remember how he then didn't write something for Mio and himself? Well, this is just something short and sweet I thought up to distract myself from all the tragic subtext the game threw at us. Xenoblade has now made me write from the perspective of an engineer, a scientist, and a musician, and I just think that's cool. Hope you enjoyed this more montage-style short story.