Once upon a time there was a dog named Tobia who lived in a house full of noise. Not bad noises, mind you. Normal ones. The television talking to itself. The phone ringing even when no one felt like answering. Chairs scraping. Pots chasing one another in the kitchen.
Tobia listened to them all. He had large, attentive ears. But what he was truly looking for wasn’t noise. It was silence.
Every evening, when the house slowly settled and the lights dimmed, Tobia went outside and sat beneath the old fig tree. He closed his eyes and waited.
At first he could still hear things: a distant car, a gate coughing somewhere, a spoon falling in some far-off kitchen. Then, little by little, it arrived.
Silence.
It wasn’t empty, as humans often believe. It was full. Full of wind moving gently through the leaves—and if you listened carefully, it wasn’t just blowing… it was playing. Full of breaths slowing down like long notes held softly in the chest. Full of thoughts finally sitting still, lining up like notes on an invisible staff.
Tobia knew that inside silence lived a tiny music. A music carried by the wind through the branches, trembling in the grass, entering the heart and, quietly, composing.
He had no paper, no pencil, yet he still wrote. He wrote inside himself. Every breeze became a note. Every pause became space. Every heartbeat kept the tempo.
That is why he made an important decision: someone had to guard silence, because humans often left it behind without noticing.
One evening he found a glass jar near the hedge. He washed it with his tongue (not the most scientific method, but it worked), and when silence arrived, he gathered it. You couldn’t see it, but Tobia felt it slip into the jar like a soft light.
It made a tiny sound. “Plin.”
From that day on, every evening he filled the jar. And whenever the house grew too loud—arguments, rushing footsteps, doors slamming—he would push the jar into the living room and let it fall.
“Plin.”
Silence spread through the room like a light blanket. People stopped. They breathed. They looked at one another. Someone would stroke Tobia’s back without even knowing why.
One night, the little girl of the house followed him into the garden and saw him sitting under the fig tree.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Tobia didn’t answer. He simply closed his eyes.
The girl sat beside him. At first she heard nothing. Then, gently, the wind moved through the leaves. And within that delicate rustle, something began to play. Not loud. Not clear. But alive.
She whispered a small “ah.”
Not just any “ah.” The kind that understands.
From that night on, the jar was no longer needed. Silence had found another guardian.
And Tobia could finally fall asleep a little earlier.
With music in his heart.