They are the Choirmasters of Faery. The literal Un-sung. Melodies come to them in tight, ravelled packages and leave deconstructed through bright beaks. Exit confounded through blazing nostrils. Fall to the ground in shards.
The broken remains are collected and scribbled down by the maestros, then played with the backwards, hobbled artistry of the fey. They limp back to us in the pre-dawn, garbled and sad, displaying their pieces, desperate for a rendering. And the codebreakers? They tease out the strongest strains and pipe the old tunes, and they come back to us, altered but true.