Planet
Sirbal
The singing dunes: a desert where each dune holds a note, and where the wind plays without pause a music heard from orbit.
Sirbal is a desert of fine sand, without sea or mountain. Its peculiarity comes down to one detail: the sand of Sirbal is made of hollow grains. When the wind passes over them, the dune sings.
One note per dune
Each dune of Sirbal holds a different note, according to its height and the shape of its crest. Since the wind blows across thousands of dunes at once, the planet produces one immense, slow chord that shifts as the dunes move. The Arazians recorded it: it has never repeated itself twice.
The listeners
A small Arazian station sits on Sirbal, manned by a handful of researchers called the listeners. Their work is to write down the planet’s song, day after day. Some claim to recognise a structure in it, like a very long sentence. The court of Oravaya Prime does not take the idea seriously — but keeps funding the station.