Last-Word Finches

Overview

Last-Word Finches are the small grey birds of the Whispering Trace. They perch along the paths the dead's Echoes walk, and they sing what each Echo last said in life. Mourners who come to the Trace to speak with the dead sometimes find the finches have the words they came for.

Appearance

A Last-Word Finch is the size of a sparrow, plump and soft, its feathers the grey of old ash, faded at the edges as everything on the plane is faded, with a dim sepia wash on the breast. Its beak is short and thick, its eyes dark and dull. It perches hunched on the bare branches of the skeletal trees and hops along them slowly. It has no song of its own. What it sings is a thin, faint human voice, the voice of someone dead, saying a few words, over and over. A tree full of finches is a murmur of last words. They smell faintly of dried flowers.

Habitat and Range

They live along the paths of the Trace, in the skeletal trees of its misty forests, on the broken walls of its ruins, and in its graveyards, in small flocks that keep to one stretch of path.

Behaviour and Temperament

When an Echo passes along a path beneath a finch, the finch takes up the Echo's last words and sings them, and other finches along the path take them up after it. They sing each set of words until the Echo is forgotten by the living, and then that song fades from the flock. They are tame and dull and pay no heed to travellers.

Abilities

They hold the last words of the dead, and only the last words: not a story, not a secret, only what was said at the end. A strong memory among the living keeps a finch singing a voice for generations; a forgotten one is gone in a season.

Life Cycle

They nest in the hollows of the dead trees, and the chicks are silent until the first Echo passes beneath them. Their lives are short, and a dead finch fades on the branch until it is gone.

Uses and Dangers

Mourners come to hear them, and sometimes hear what they hoped for, and sometimes not; a last word may be a name, a curse, or a request for water. That is the finches' only use and their only danger: the grieving who stay to listen to the same few words, over and over, risk the plane's Fade. The Echo-Walkers are said to lead mourners to the right flock and then lead them away.

Lore and Belief

On the Material Plane, at cemeteries and battlefields where Grave-Gates open, a small grey bird that perches by a fresh grave is believed in many places to carry the dead one's last words, and the family listens for them. Ordinary finches are meant, and sing ordinary songs. The belief that the Trace's finches lie, singing words the dead never said, is common among travellers and false: they repeat exactly.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Natives of the Planes