The Attuned

The term used for Threadlings of the Song Sanctuaries. Born into a world of sound and song as natural to them as the air they breathe.

Born singing, in tune with the rhythms of the world, the Attuned are the proud peoples of Song Sanctuaries. Among them are the SongSmiths, architects of music who bind Spirit into Song; the SeedSingers, who coax the living world into being with nothing but sound; and the hallowed Order of the Humming Hem, whose temples rise on the region's quiet verges and whose monks travel far beyond it, humming at the edges of the Weave. While many other Threadlings visit, and indeed live in the Song Sanctuaries, only the Attuned call is home. Born singing, in tune with the rhythms of the world, they are said to truly resonate with Threadbare in all it's complexity. The name is a core part of the people identity from the weaving to the unweaving of their lives. A SongSmith is Attuned. A SeedSinger is Attuned. The brothers and sisters of the Order of the Humming Hem are Attuned. The word sits above all their callings and regardless of all their differences.

Like all Threadlings, the Attuned move through the five generational stages - Patchling, Stitchling, Yarnling, Threadling, and Weaveling. "Born singing" is a regional grace laid over that universal pattern, not a replacement for it. An Attuned Patchling is a Patchling still; they simply hum in the cradle. An Attuned Weaveling, whose thread has gone deep into the fabric of the Great Weave, is often the keeper of the oldest songs - melodies so ancient that to lose the singer is to lose the tune entire, and to lose the tune is to lose everything the tune remembered.

Other creatures choose to live among the Attuned. Hushrooms, sensitive to the vibrations of the world, thrive here. Wisps drift between the terraced song-gardens, playing on the invisible melodies as gulls do on thermals. And somewhere in the deep groves, when the light is failing and a melody goes unfinished, a traveller might catch a few bars played by the Musician though no two accounts of that meeting have ever quite agreed.

"Two voices that disagree still make a harmony."
-- Old saying among the Attuned

Born Singing

To be Attuned is to be born already in relationship with sound. Attuned infants hum before they speak; their first cries are said to fall, more often than chance allows, into the key of the room they are born in. Where other Threadlings across the world take experience and shape it into story through speech and memory and the written word, the Attuned do the same work through melody. Their histories are sung rather than written. Their grief is sung. Their arguments, their courtships, their laws and their apologies - all carry a tune, because for the Attuned a thing not sung is a thing not fully said.

This is the deep expression of Spirit that defines their homeland. The Attuned do not merely make music. They are people through whom the world's Spirit passes into audible form.

The Three Callings

Most Attuned find their life's work in one of three traditions, though the borders between them are soft and many move between:

The SongSmiths - architects of music, who bind Spirit into Song and give it lasting, structured form. The SeedSingers - agriculturalists of sound, who sing the living world into growth. The Order of the Humming Hem - the hallowed order that carries the Attuned song to the fraying edges of the Weave.

The Attuned and the Wider World

Beyond their homeland, the Attuned are recognised at once. They are the ones who answer a question with a melody, who will not sign anything they have not first heard sung and are able to sing themselves, and who fall quiet - truly, carefully quiet - only when they fear the Void is near enough to hear.

"A tune half-remembered is not a tune half-lost. It is a tune half-kept. Sing the part you have."
-- Old saying among the Attuned