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HummingBells
"Listen to the bells. They will tell you the world is out of tune long before the world will admit it."
-- Saying of the Order of the Humming Hem
HummingBells are the singing flowers of The Song Sanctuaries. Each one holds a single note for the whole of its life. A single flower is a note, a clump is a chord, and a meadow of them on a windy day is a song that no one wrote, and that never sounds the same twice.
| Core Thread | Spirit |
| Found | The Song Sanctuaries, in meadows, terraced song-gardens, and along the banks of the singing rivers |
| Tended by | SeedSingers and The Order of the Humming Hem |
| Known for | Holding a single note, and ringing in chords |
HummingBells are small, bell-shaped flowers of soft felted wool, each hanging from a curved green stem like a bell from a bracket. Inside every bell, in place of a clapper, hangs a single round seed like a wooden bead. When the wind passes, or a footstep brushes the stem, the bead swings and the flower hums.
The SeedSingers plant HummingBells with great care, sowing each SongSeed with the note it will one day hold, so that whole hillsides ring in harmony. Some of the oldest beds in the Sanctuaries were planted in rounds, and ring their melody one row after another, all the way up the hill and back again.
HummingBells are the first flowers in the Sanctuaries to notice the Void. Before they fall silent, they fall out of tune. A meadow that has begun to ring flat or sharp is a warning every one of The Attuned knows by heart. A monk of the Order of the Humming Hem can sometimes hum a failing bed back into tune, one flower at a time, before the hush takes it.
- Musical paths. Ringing HummingBells in the right order can open a path or wake a sleeping melody.
- Retuning. A meadow ringing out of tune signals that the Void is near, and retuning it is a small act of restoration.
- The Song Sanctuaries - the land where everything sings
- SeedSingers - who sow each bell with its note
- The Order of the Humming Hem - who hum failing beds back into tune
- Refrain RoundSong - Cantor of the Order, who teaches the Sanctuaries to sing in rounds
- The World of Threadbare - the lore, landscape and denizens of Threadbare
TBC
TBC