Dodoreimei gripped his perch and the haft of his Songcaster just so.

His voice joining the private choir within its hollowed core and echoing back through his fingers. He could feel the public songs as transmitted by the art of wide and sheared light that was repeated and shaped in a round through the throngs of the people.

The songs of the far hunters and traders. The Vykerlinfri as some of the Deepsmiths of the Exalted Order of Weavers and Smelters called them. Or the greater and lesser sisters as he heard the strange and tumultuous Concordancey of Bakers Yeofolk and Butchers.

His own country and clanfolk among the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers simply referred to them as the names.

Littlest Singer and Gatebearer.

For reasons known to non but perhaps the eldest of the people the names were a reversal of expectations. The great beast was the Littlest Singer.

Even though she was vast enough to see the glint of her individual eyes at this distance without the aid of a tracking glass!

Any less holy creature of that scale would have been a very dangerous interlocutor indeed to try to hunt.

It would have called down the wrath of the wood as well.

And that was before you learned of the terrible magics and power that she was bestowed with.

If legends were even half true a single tine of those feathers would strain a hundred of the strongest beasts of burden to either shift or slow in its course.

And while the Gatebearer was in comparison practically insignificant she was by no means a creature to be trifled with. Laced with deep cunning.

A primal and ancient example of the near myths of a sisterhood of outsider monsters.

Visitors wondrous and terrible that came to the woods along many ways and conveyances bearing ancient forbidden relics and burning wounding promises in even the might of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council.

The Gatebearer was one of these ephemeral foreign forces. A creature whose song could reach into every secret place inside and curdle it. Who it was said were the progeny of a great mother tree with branches that could encircle the sky.

That could stride into the dens of the fiercest and most untamable of beasts and breath charms and sweet chains with but their ethereal and intangible voices.

It was these stories and more that he sang both into is Songcaster in the deep secret privacy of his own voice and the outer voices of the choir.

It was said that the Gatebearer would hear every song sang in the procession no matter how it was given. And that upon her arrival the songs were to be sung.

To the great wood wrath to beg for the passage of their holy guests.

To each other to celebrate and praise the fortune that this generation would be the golden and blessed ones that could witness the great feasts and festivals that turned forth a new age.

To themselves all that they had been told and knew and dutifully learned about the sisters. Every story, every fanciful tale, every musing and imagination and joke.

There were bards who spun and recited ballads in preparation of this momentous occasion for generations never to see their songs told.

And also too in the secret and quiet depths of one's own Songcaster one was to sing a personal and quiet and solemn song of welcome earnestly between only you and the fae creature that even now rode into your ancestral home bringing magic and wonder and the deep otherness of the great outside.

He took his time in the song with the stoic endurance he had trained for long perilous hunts. Drink and fresh breath and food and mind heightening spices and vapor mingled and sizzled everywhere.

Children far too young for the perils of being out of a creche had been brought in clear bottles to witness this moment nevermind how the light outside of a warm parent stung their eyes and almost certainly would hinder their training as adults.

Dodoreimei could not muster affront to the callous care of their parents though.

Even though his seniority as a Grand Novice should have forced him to scowl.

He and all of them knew the feverish excitement of this time!

The Pact was going to be renewed!

He had never thought he would live to see the day of a coming of the living myths and legends.

He knew only a few individuals in the other nations that all had their finest prepared around in the welcoming rings for the arrival.

But he could feel a deeper kinship now with all of the people then he ever could have imagined before.

In this heavy joy what difference was it if you were an Esteemed Mason and Joinery Exalted Triumphant or a Tooth borer Supreme in the Bright Sky Scourer Wings?

The old feud between the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers and the Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh seemed at least right in this moment petty.

After all were they not all of them the people?

The stories that had raised him in the right and proper way of living was shared between them was it not?

Perhaps changed and honed by the elders and masters of each craft and way but still rooted in the same holy thing.

The lullabies that had brought him rest and comfort in his parents throats as a naked and fragile wriggler had been sung much by the parents of those around him.

It was a kinship with all folk that filled him now and a realization of just how much had been feeding into this.

He had grown knowing vaguely it was part of the wording the hunting parties always sang when handing off the fruit of their wanderings to the relevant nations and clans.

It was part of the whispered rhyme that you sang before heading out into the perils of the far canopies.

In their dozens and dozens of names known publicly and the thousands of secret guild monikers beneath.

These two beings were there in every word of every act of every life.

And now they were here!

For all of the people they had arrived for this generation!

They two were here and he had lived to see it!

If he had young who were yet not ready to be long under the light outside his brooding pouch he would probably have bottled them and held them aloft to see too.

His children and their own down generations would speak in awe of this day. A day of legends made real again!

So for them and all those before him that had never lived to see this.

And perhaps for this procession he could forgive the old slights and betrayals of the shifty Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh and their unseemly ways.

For all those after that would only have the warm glow of this moment passed on to them.

They were right now a united and undivided people.

With an exaltation together united and joyous in a great song.

And so Dodoreimei poured his voice into the voices of the people all around him.

He sang.

Into himself and out into all the millions of voices of the cheering clouds of the People who stood the vigil of the welcoming procession even though it would be several shifts before the great duo properly arrived.

And then the real celebrations and procession would come and the Grand Middle Apprentices would come out from their hidden councils and trade crafts to honor the arrival.

Then up through the skilled hierarchy the procession would grow.

Almost as exciting as the arrival was that he would even get to witness the songs of the illusive and nearly legendary Lower Experts!

Not even of his own nation had he met a Lower Expert, and it would not end there!

Dodoreimei was a Grand Novice and as such he had been able to claim this shift of singing, giving him enough time to rest and recoup and return for another round.

In time for the Lower Experts, and then recoup and attend his duties.

Rest and recover again and if he strained the procession of Least Masters!

That would however be too much and he would have to rest deeply.

But if the procession was as it was written and had been proclaimed to every single person among the people of every clan, order and nation he would have time.

Time to witness the last stage of the procession.

When the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council would receive the arrival and sanctify the renewal of the pact in person.

He would get to hear their voices, a thing it was said only masters ever experienced outside of these miraculous times.

He sang strong and with all of his heart all through his shift.

And then when the time came he retired his place to rest and recover in time to meet his schedule.

This was a moment only once in a hundred generations.

He would not shame all who came before or after in missing the peak of it because he was over eager at the start!