There are three tenets of Songbirds from which everything is drawn: Love, Death, and Hunger. Hunger is the absence of Love from Death, and the absence of Death from Love. In much of Songbirds there exists the ramifications of Hunger.
Death
Death killed Love with the Lunar Lance. She is ashamed of her actions, because she can’t and won’t bring Love back. In fact, the presence of Love in the shadow of Death only brings her further ownership over her lover. With jealousy being the named factor in the killing, despite Death hiding in the moon from shame, she might not have it any other way. Because while Love is in Death, she can control her, and everything she does goes through her, even so far as bringing back the wayward souls of Songbirds from the endless caves. Love brings them from Death, but Death is still in control. It is where she wants to be.
Death has a representative in the form of a white fox: Chronos and Inari. They are both depicted as white foxes in the text, and they fulfill similar roles. I believe they are the same. Chronos takes a year of your life to serve you, as the ruler of time, while Inari, as an aspect of Death, drags you into the endless caves where one spends eternity after death. She is a servant of death, as is Chronos, who hastens your journey to it. Twins of the same coin. Volfe, the Pact-bearer, is the bloody wolf, and in his depiction too is the white fox of Death.
There is also the consideration for the abundance of Death in the world, even with her slumber. The dead rise from their graves and refuse to settle without the assistance of Songbirds (Love and Death). This is reminiscent of folklore the world over, where those who died in tragedy, such as suicide, murder, drowning, and even the killing of witches and unbaptized children. These deaths often result in the appearance of some sort of vengeful spirit or wraith around the circumstances of their deaths. It is because of the circumstances of their deaths that they are not able to move on. The abundance of Death appears in dungeons and caves. Without light, one may be consumed by her entirely, entering the endless caves of death and never appearing again.
Love
Love made Death jealous. Her story is written in the Fortunes, from The Maiden to The Red Moon, of the tumultuous relationship between lovers. They ebb and flow, only ending in Love’s murder in The Red Moon. Only those who love so closely can hurt each other as they did, and it is not until the end of The Red Moon and the beginning of The Sun that the Songbirds come, as the birth of Songbirds corresponds with the death of Love. This is also shown in the presence of the red moon pools from which they awaken: The Red Moon is the beginning of Love’s end.
What followed the death of Love was the rising of Hunger. For without Love and Death in equal measure (which creates Life), only Hunger comes, and with neither, there is nothing but Hunger, or nothing at all. Love created the Songbirds, though through her new lens of Death. She finally understands her lover because of her death, for only the dead can understand Death. In the Twilight she makes her mirror for the Songbirds. The Songbirds exist in the state between Love and Death, and they awaken hungry as Love has plucked them out of Death, and there is an abundance of her within them. Love, then, places herself in every one of these children of Death. In fact, she still loves Death, and it is because of this that she has created these Songbirds. If there were no Songbirds, the spirits that come about because of their unsettled deaths would overcome the world. Even in death, Love cares for her lover.
The Songbirds, then, are born from Death, and live through Love. This is evident in the way the Songbirds remember their lives. The Fortunes they receive, as reflections of Love and Death’s story, change as if rippled reflections of each other throughout the Songbird’s life. Where the Songbird came from, and how they grew, remains a part of them, even if the body they awaken in is not their own. What Fortune one receives at birth is reflected in their childhood, and then their adolescence, molding this Songbird into what they become after their death. Some have death written into their fortunes. For a Songbird to be loved may be worse than never being loved at all.
Hunger
With Death’s sequestered moon and Love’s disappearance, Hunger reigns. Everything is hungry, because nothing is balanced. Every thing hungers for another thing. Blood, life, death, love, the hunt, the thrill, knowledge, answers, or even something as banal as food, though it is not to be misconstrued that any of the previous could not be food.
Even Love becomes hungry, for in her death, she is not just Love anymore, but hidden behind the veil, and she alone is not enough to overcome the living Death. Vampirism is presented as Love’s curse, but they still hunger, and their hunger is tainted by the abundance of Love within them, upsetting the equilibrium that Songbirds must strive to maintain.
When a spirit goes without a body for so long it grows sour. When it stays within the body for too long it grows hungry.
A Songbird, as a spirit within a body, often grows hungry, and it feeds this hunger through various means. Food, drink, pacts, sex, magic. Do they want to fill their stomachs, or can they not survive without doing so? When the hunger consumes you, where do you go?
Hunger is navigated through base animal instincts as much as acquired knowledge. What is learned and known is as important as what is intuited and felt, and what is known will affect what is felt and vice versa, and a Songbird’s life is measured again both by what they feel and what they know.
The Empire in the book of Songbirds is placed in its pages but is never fully explained. The Empire stands to assure that everything will be the same, despite nothing ever being the same as it was. Where the Empire lays between the past and the future, not quite reaching the present, Songbirds lay in the present. Guns and plate armor, air-ships and part-time jobs, it is easy to initially mistake the setting of Songbirds as something fantastical, but it lies outside of time as much as it finds a place within it. Magic exists within this book not as a fight against the future, but in stride.
What makes Songbirds is the give and take between Death and Love, and the Hunger that results from these forces. The titular Songbird, as a unique creation of them, wields the balance like the knife in their hand that they use to return the abundance of Death into the arms of Love. While Love may never return to life, it is because of Death that the Songbirds carry their eternal burden.