There are two Trees. When they're both active that's the Mingling; they cycle.

Ah. Of course. What natural behavior this is for trees. How could I not have guessed.

They're not natural, the Valar built them.

That would be why I couldn't guess, then.

I take it the creators of the world are not active where you're from.

To the point where there is substantial disagreement on all of their traits up to and including reality.

We manage substantial disagreement with them standing right in front of us, he says, so that does not surprise me. Want to try running down the hallway while I sing?

I may out of habit start with a brisk walk but yes.

He starts singing. He has a rather stunning voice, and it carries, and the hallway's well-designed for it.

He can briskly walk! Were he an Elda he could be racing through the treetops.

He laughs, and speeds up, and finally breaks into a jog and then a run.

Magic songs are great, aren't they? You should hear someone with a talent for it.

...What, you don't have one? I revise my estimate of the exceptionality of my voice.

I have no discernable talents except for being likable and solving problems competently. We are a people of talents and everyone was very disappointed in me. Now my little brother, he can sing.

Well, if you ever feel like having people compliment you on your voice and not be disappointed at all have the Valar send you where I come from, I guess. I think you sound spectacular. Also look at how I'm not falling over, that's also very impressive.

You don't have to have the voice of an Ainu to make the magic work, no. I'm glad it works for you! So I can teach you the song and then you can sing it as you go if you need to move carefully.

Cool. I don't know how to read sheet music in the first place so the fact that you undoubtedly have different notation won't in its own right slow me down, although learning the lyrics by rote will be difficult.

I assume they are written down somewhere and I can have that somewhere copied for you, or if you teach me your alphabet I can write it out in that. I'll tell the royal libraries to get us a copy of that and to look for precedent in snake-monsters, though I'm not optimistic on the latter front. I wonder if you could get some of the benefits just by humming it as you go?

What, nobody tested that? Presumably people who start out more graceful than me can go fast enough with the song that they'd have to worry about swallowing a bug or something and might want to consider humming if it does work.

No, they have, and the answer is it works sometimes, generally diminished, depending on the talent of the singer and possibly their experience with the particular song. So I just don't know if you will be able to do it.

Ah. Well, I think I'm about average for my world and on my world you could draw crowds, I might not be able to get it to work at all, but I would certainly like to try. If it works without lyrics maybe it could go in a hurdy-gurdy and an automaton could play it for me all the time.

Sorry, what?

Do you not have hurdy-gurdies? They're cylinders with little - He attempts to send a mental image. Pick things arranged on them, and you set them next to a series of differently tuned pick-able musical pokey bits, and then the cylinder turns and as long as it does it at a constant rate it'll play the song on it in a loop.

We do not have that. I will suggest it to someone as something to attempt.