On James Street in Hamilton, there is a little bar where the thinkers go, where steelworkers put up their boots and poets slosh around pomegranate verses on the walls. This is The Brain.
Transcription
Have You Ever Asked… Why The Brain Has… A…
PINECONE
What is the pinecone? — Why A Pinecone?
Do you hear them in the pinecone?*
Then Come Close…
A long time ago before the Giants went away, before steel chimneys burped smoke over the lake, there were these little creatures no bigger than your hand, who made their homes in pinecones that grew on hornleaf trees. These little creatures were Wisps, and they haunted the forests here before the city was built. They'd float their pinecone houses at Albion, at Felkers, at all the waterfalls that run through here. At night their little choirs would stand on the pinecones and sing infant Giants to sleep. And if you gave them gifts of honey and red stolen cherries, they would grant you plenty of good luck.
But they are all gone now.
They left with their good friends, the Giants. They have been gone for such a long time. The forests and waterfalls miss them. They miss their pinecone houses.
Only one pinecone house remains. The one you see encased in glass behind the bar. The bartenders are sworn to the secret. But I can tell you why it's there. When the time is right, when the city needs them most, the Wisps sleeping in that pinecone will wake up, break the glass, and sing for their fellow Wisps to return. That will be a very happy day.
If you listen very carefully and are very quiet, you'll hear them snoring.
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