"squeak squonk HONK squaaaark" went the horn, before Taran - in desperation - yanked it out of Nodwydd's hands.

"You can't play that, Noddy!" he cried, clearly in pain. "Gods, the bugle is NOT supposed to sound like a goose in the mating season!"

"But...but..." spluttered Nodwydd, as his siblings glared at him, "Gwynt won't let me play the piano, and Daear said she'd hit me if I tried singing again..."

"I'd be right in line behind her on that one too," growled Taran, rubbing at his ears. "Noddy, face it. You're tone deaf, for Hyne's sake. You didn't hear anything wrong with that horn at all, did you?"

"I can learn!" cried Nodwydd, near tears. "Everybody else plays something or sings or both, I can learn too!"

"No, Noddy, you can't," sighed Taran, less edgy now that the dissonance had stopped, but no less firm. "Everything we've tried to show you, you just don't get. You can't even tell if something's in tune, for Hyne's sake, and how are you supposed to play it if you can't tell whether it's in tune?"

"And if I ever hear you trying to whistle again, I'll blow your breath down your throat," growled Gwynt. "Your whistling should be banned by international treaties."

But Nodwydd, tears streaming down his cheeks, refused to give in. "I'll learn, you'll see," he told them. "I can play with you guys, really. You'll see!" At their frank "We'll believe it when we see it" expressions, though, he turned tail and ran.

He wasn't a great lover of music - that wasn't what bothered him. But in the evenings Rinoa often set them a musical game, as it was something at least most of them could do without damaging anything or anyone, that kept them more or less in one spot. Nodwydd didn't mind the not being able to play, but he did mind being the only one left out. Even Rinoa wouldn't let him play anything she hadn't tuned first for him.

Well, that let him in on the music lessons, as those were with sheet music, but the game in the evening was all improvisation - and even with a tuned instrument Nodwydd couldn't manage to make a melody, never mind a harmony. He was left out, very obviously - even his father would occasionally play with them, though he never sang.

It was only Nodwydd who couldn't do anything at all. And he was so focused on that he didn't notice he had company until he bowled the other over. He skidded to a stop and tried to blink enough tears away to see who to apologize to.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" came his grandfather's gentle voice, and with it an offered hug. "What's got you so worked up?"

Nodwydd couldn't reach higher than Laguna's waist, but he hugged what he could reach hard enough to make Laguna glad he was already dead and didn't need to worry about little things like breathing. It made it a little easier to catch what Nodwydd was apparently intent on explaining to his belt buckle.

"...'n Taran said I was tone-deaf n' Gwynt said he'd blow my breath down my throat n' Daear said she'd punch me..."

Eventually Laguna managed to convince Nodwydd they should sit down. He let the boy ramble on as he rocked him back and forth, letting Nodwydd cry into his shirt and murmuring meaningless soothing sounds until the tears slowed to a stop. When the crying had descended into occasional sniffling, Laguna risked lifting his face from Nodwydd's black hair long enough to whisper, "Think you can tell me about it now?"

"They won't let me play with them," said Nodwydd into Laguna's chest, in the sullen tones of a boy worn out with crying. "Everybody else can play something or sing but they won't let me play with them. Grandpa why won't they let me play with them? They even let Daear play but they won't let me!"

At the rising tone in Nodwydd's voice, Laguna gave the boy a squeeze and started rocking back and forth again. It wouldn't do either of them any good if he went back into hysterics. "What did Taran call you, again?" he asked, carefully. "Tone deaf?"

"Yeah," mumbled Noddy. "I'm not, am I? I can hear just fine."

"Being tone deaf has nothing to do with whether you can hear, Noddy," said Laguna gently. "It means you can't tell one note from another, especially if they're fairly close on a scale. You wouldn't, for example, know an A from a D-flat, if someone played them."

Nodwydd pulled his head up from where it was tucked under Laguna's chin, and stared him right in the face - scowling a scowl fit for Squall. "I can find them on the paper! When Mom hands us the sheet music I can find them and play them just fine."

Laguna sighed. He hated having to tell the boy this - especially since it was Nodwydd, the one most like himself. "It hasn't anything to do with notes on paper, Noddy," he said sadly. "It has to do with notes in your head. Trust me, I know. Kiros and Raine both made it very clear. Hyne, they never even let me sing in the shower if they could hear me. It seems you've inherited more than just my good looks, Noddy, and I'm sorry for that. If you're tone deaf you just can't play musical instruments without sheet music and an electronic tuner to keep the instrument true."

Normally reminding Nodwydd that they were a lot alike made the boy smile - the Pride positively doted on their grandfather, at least as much as their personalities permitted, and Nodwydd as the one most like him basked in the reflected glory. But right now, being Laguna's grandson was not the best thing to be. "I can't play with them?" he asked, wide green eyes bright with tears again. "Ever?"

Faced with the prospect of a grief-stricken Nodwydd - and a much wetter shirt - Laguna thought incredibly quickly. "No, no, I didn't say that," he reassured. "I just said you couldn't play musical instruments."

Nodwydd pulled away, hurt at the denial. "Well, what else is there? Unmusical instruments?"

"Well...yes," Laguna admitted. "In a manner of speaking. I suppose it could work in theory, anyway, and there's nothing else to try..."

Nodwydd put his hand on his hip in a creditable imitation of Squall in a sour mood - doing well enough that Laguna tried very hard to keep a straight face because laughing would probably insult the boy beyond repair. "Talk sense, grandpa," he ordered sternly, and Laguna almost lost his battle with the giggles. "Can I play with them or can't I?"

Once he was sure he could talk without laughing - having to bite his tongue fairly hard in order to do so - Laguna asked, "I don't know. Can you dance?"

Noddy's Squall-imitated pose dropped into one of pure confusion. "Dance? Grandpa, what does dancing have to do with making music?"

Finally, finally, Laguna could let the laugh out of its cage. "Nothing and everything, Noddy. I can't play a single note, but I can dance - and I bet you can too. And if you can dance, and you want to, I think there's one instrument group you can play. Even if you're tone deaf."

Nodwydd thought about it, his ten-year-old face so deathly serious that Laguna was having trouble hiding giggles again. Finally he admitted, "I don't know if I can dance, grandpa."

Laguna got up and took Nodwydd's hand, leading him back to the 'place' he lived in within Griever's realm. "Well, that I can definitely help you with. Hyne knows I had to go to enough formal dances while I was President of Esthar. Boring things, they were, too. If Zell hadn't been giving me a running commentary of what he thought of the dignitaries I swear I would have died of boredom."

"Zell's fun," declared Nodwydd in the tones that said this was high praise. "He can do all sorts of neat things. I saw him kick one of those little hackeysack things around for four hours without dropping it last week!"

"Here we are," announced Laguna, fishing around in his closet and eventually producing an old CD-boombox. "Now just let me find that CD...I know they gave me one, stupid dinner went on for hours..."

Nodwydd examined the CD-player with the air of an archaeologist. "Why d'you have this old thing, grandpa? Mom or dad could wish you a new one any time."

"Not worth bothering them over," replied Laguna, half-buried in the junk in his closet. "They pulled the room wholesale out of my memory, and it's got everything I need in it. Trust me, I don't miss the things in my Presidential suite. Ah! Here it is!" he crawled backwards out of the closet and sat down on the floor, with his back up against the open closet door, and waved a CD case in one hand. "This is a selection of traditional Estharian folk dance music," he declared happily. "Terrible stuff for the most part, but I do remember the dances, and it's about all the instrumental music I've got in here."

Nodwydd took a seat on the bed and swung his legs. "Why's it got to be instrumental?"

Laguna grinned. "Cause instrumental's more likely to have the bit we need on it, that's why." He pulled the CD out of its case and put it carefully in the player. He flipped through a few songs quickly before he found one he liked. "Okay, Noddy, pick a nice clear spot to stand on, and we'll see how this goes. Track info says this one's ten minutes long and it sounds like about what we need, so we'll start here."

He came to stand over by Nodwydd, and took his hands lightly. "Okay, here's how it goes. You step like this, and then this, and you turn like this..." As the music played, Nodwydd quickly picked up when to move and how to move, so that the two of them danced in perfect time by song's end. Hitting the repeat button, Laguna then had the boy lead him through the music - offering no hints as to when or how to move. He made no mistakes. Laguna had chosen a simple dance - the only way to screw it up was to have no sense of rhythm, and it seemed that Nodwydd had it. When the music stopped, he was almost gleeful. "I danced, grandpa, I danced! This means I can play with the others, right?"

Laguna ruffled the boy's black hair. "Seems like it," he said, "but I'm no musician. Tonight we're going to talk to Rinoa, and see if we can't get you started on the drums."

Nodwydd was surprised. "Drums? But they don't count, you just hit them!"

Laguna nodded. "Exactly. So it's kind of hard for even a tone deaf person to mess up when playing them, as long as you can feel rhythm and tempo - which we've just proved you can. If you can't sense rhythm and tempo, you can't dance."

Nodwydd slanted a Look at Laguna. "Can you play the drums, grandpa?"

Laguna winced. "Um, no..." noticing Nodwydd's rapidly-descending-towards-crestfallen expression, he hastily added, "But I bet I can learn, the same as you. I just never had a reason to try, before."

Nodwydd excitedly grabbed Laguna's hand in the inhumanly strong grip only Squall's children had, and started dragging him purposefully to where Rinoa was. "We can play drums together, grandpa. That'll show Daear!"

"Nodwydd - I sort of need my hands if I'm going to be holding drumsticks," said Laguna carefully as he was bent nearly double while the little boy dragged him. "Mind letting go, please? I promise, I'll practice right alongside you until Rinoa gets a migraine and Squall threatens to run his gunblade through the drum kit - really, I promise!"

Rinoa was relieved and pleased that Laguna had hit on an alternative instrument for Nodwydd to play, and was more than happy to instruct them in the basics - teaching Laguna more than Nodwydd so that the older man could continue the boy's instruction while she worked with the other five in the Pride. It was humbling to say the least to be learning music alongside a group of precocious, hyperactive ten year olds, but the look of pride on Nodwydd's face when Rinoa finally called on him to set the beat for everyone else to play to was worth it - even though he could already hear Kiros' acerbic comments about running off to join the Drum Corps of the Galbadian Army in the back of his mind.

It was definitely worth it.