A Melody-Beast is a shape drawn in moving colour and sound: a fox made of a running fiddle tune, a great slow whale of a cello’s low notes, a flock of quick bright birds that are a children’s song. Its body is translucent, a ribbon wound into a form, shimmering in the colours the Studio gives sound, a blue that hums, a red that tastes of copper. It is always playing. Its size follows its music, and a loud one fills the room.

They drift through the air of the Studio, among the floating easels and broken instruments, and do not leave it. A Studio where much music is made holds many.

A Melody-Beast follows the feeling of its tune. A lullaby curls up beside a sleeper; a march paces; a dirge circles a listener and draws them down. They are drawn to listeners and to other music, and two may tangle into a discord that hurts to hear. They have no thought of their own beyond the song.

Their music works on those who hear it as strongly as the feeling that made it: calm, grief, joy, rage, or a madness that cannot stop hearing. A Melody-Beast can be quieted by a stronger, steadier tune.

A Melody-Beast lasts as long as its music is held. Unfinished, it frays into scraps of tune and fades; one that its maker finishes can last a long time in the Studio, singing the same song.

Musicians come to the Studio to hear their own tunes take shape, and some have learned more from a Melody-Beast than from any teacher. A careless or grieving one can make a Melody-Beast that will not let them leave.

Musicians who have been to a Studio say a tune heard there stays in the head for life. Some believe a Melody-Beast can be carried out in a crystal or a shell; what comes out is the tune, not the beast.