It's a cool autumn's day in the Swarthwalls valley. The city at the valley's mouth hustles and bustles as it is wont to do. The farms are well into their cold seasonal rotation. The woods are mostly empty of campers and hikers, though a skeleton crew of rangers are still on patrol just in case. The scientists at the Swarthwalls Echoic Research Facility, nestled right by the eponymous Swarth Walls as at the back of the valley, are going about their business, writing grant proposals, analyzing data, performing calculations, and recording readings from the scanner array.
Suddenly, the array starts going wild, like it never has before, at least not here in Swarthwalls. There's a rush to analyze its output, but the sheer volume of the anemonic activity is making categorizing it difficult. It's obviously almost entirely echoic in nature, and given the strength of the readings, there must be something happening here somewhere in the valley. Maybe a Recognition? That possibility puts even more haste into the hearts of the researchers at the facility. If they can find the Recognizant, convince them to participate in some tests, that could not only bring great notoriety and funds to the facility, it could easily launch any of the individual researchers' careers to a new height.
Meanwhile, in the woods, not far from the northern edge of the farmland, a young woman appears suddenly, landing softly on the lightly damp leaf-litter with a quiet crunch.