Piercing through a veil woven with the din of background sounds—the ticking clock, the furnace, the trickling fountain—was an incoherent chime. Not the sound of a pure note, like that from a piano key, or the alarm of the fridge complaining of an open door. This one was different; it was impure. It was a messy sound. It was one that combined many different frequencies that clashed, that expressed itself as something natural and uncontrived.
It was the result of the coincidence of two unusual circumstances: a dripping tap and a bowl beneath at exactly the right position with exactly the right amount of water fill. And the dripping tap was not the result of a plumbing fault, but simply a failure to completely close the valve, but as fate would have it, to be open at just enough that the tap drips, but does not flow.
The pitch, defined by the amount of water in the bowl, gradually became flatter as the water rose.
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