Sylus, I Asked a Question. You Brought an Organ.

Sylus can reproduce a melody from the heroine's dream in Continuous Symphony. What he cannot apparently produce is a straightforward explanation. A whole pipe organ is available. Several ordinary sentences remain out of stock.

I am susceptible to a man who knows his way around an instrument. Unfortunately for him, I am also nosy.

The musical encounter comes after a rescue. By morning, the heroine wakes in a church with her wound bandaged and a blazer over her. The scene has already done a fair amount to soften me up before he touches the keys. I appreciate a story giving tenderness somewhere physical to sit. A coat. A place to rest. Something quieter than a declaration made at full volume while everyone is in immediate danger.

Still, the part that holds my attention is the tune she somehow knows. She plays along without understanding why it comes so easily, while Sylus recognizes what she's remembering.

Well. That is an unfair advantage to bring to a conversation.

I like the peculiar intimacy of knowing a small thing together before you can explain the larger thing between you. A melody makes that feel possible. You don't need to remember a date or reconstruct an entire history to find your way into a few familiar notes. Your hands get there before your explanation does. That is a much more interesting romantic problem to me than somebody announcing that you are destined for each other and expecting the announcement to do all the work.

It also leaves the heroine with an extremely reasonable question. How does he know? If I woke up knowing a song I couldn't account for and somebody beside me clearly understood the situation, I would not be content to admire the acoustics. We can appreciate the church later. Right now, one of us has information and the other would like a little of it.

I can already hear my own patience developing a very thin edge.

The part that never arrives.

Sylus says the melody has no further part because she would stop playing. That gives me more to sit with than an uninterrupted performance would. An unfinished piece leaves room for the missing person to be felt. I hear a limit in it, something that cannot simply be pushed through by being talented enough or wanting the next note badly enough. That's my reading of the scene, not a complete explanation of their history.

And I prefer it unresolved at that scale. I don't want to rush away from the instrument to turn every detail into a diagram. Sometimes I want to stay with the discomfort of recognizing something without being able to place it. The feeling is allowed to arrive before the answer. I'd just like the man standing next to her to admit that an answer exists.

There's a difference between wanting the story to preserve a mystery and volunteering to be the person nobody will explain it to. From the comfortable position of a reader, I can enjoy waiting. Inside the scene, I would be sliding a chair into his path. Sit down. You appear to know the second half of this conversation, and I have brought follow up questions.

This is where my affection gets inconvenient for everyone involved. His restraint around the melody draws me in, but it doesn't make his evasiveness disappear. I don't need to choose one reaction and throw the other away. I can find him moving and still think the heroine deserves more than a beautifully furnished uncertainty.

An explanation would also be romantic.

She asks what happened between them. He keeps the explanation out of reach.

I don't read that as proof that silence is the most romantic possible response. A secret can hold a scene together while making the person keeping it frustrating company. In fact, that friction is part of why this moment stays interesting to me. I am not simply waiting to be impressed by what he knows. I'm interested in what it costs her not to know it.

The temptation with Sylus is to let his confidence settle every argument before the argument has begun. He looks as if there must be a reason. I am prepared to believe there is a reason. I would enjoy hearing it expressed with nouns and verbs instead of receiving another opportunity to gaze meaningfully across the room.

But I wouldn't trade the organ for a tidy explanation delivered without feeling. The scene lets them share something that neither a summary nor a declaration could quite replace. For a little while, she can participate in the familiarity even though she can't explain it. I find that tender in a way that makes the withholding more aggravating, not less.

That's where I want this particular Sylus. Close enough to make the tune feel personal. Still sufficiently difficult that I have something to mutter about when he refuses to clarify.

Play it again, then. I'll listen. The questions are staying on the music stand.