Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 9)

(Sometimes haha I am this weird mix because I have six siblings where I can be mid-chaos and completely and totally block everything out and focus on reading/whatever and then other times I'm able to tune back into a convo almost immediately/listen to multiple ones at once haha but yes I definitely do get hyper fixated on things sometimes. I'm assuming you do, too?)

Ky huffed a sigh. Three years was too far away. "Is the winter solstice soon? And have there been any atypical storms up here this winter?"

(Absolutely. I read less nowadays but it still happens)

"The winter solstice is in the middle of the long night," he replied. "No atypical storms yet; just run-of-the-mill blizzards."

(yeahhh same -- I saw something that was like if you used to be a voracious reader as a child but now you only mindlessly scroll Twitter and TikTok it means you've found a more efficient way to dissociate and that haunts me xD)

"Mm." Ky looked back at her notes, a bit put out. "Trolls are active when there are big events going on -- earthquakes, things of the like. They notice before we do... as I understand it."

(I try to take that with a grain of salt; I'm getting back go reading since college started and it has been great!)

He nodded. "Right. And there's nothing going on climate-wise." He pushed his piece of paper forward. "I've documented spikes in troll activity based on the roughly estimated years these stories were told. We just have to cross-examine that with stories of the gods, now."

(Nice! I'm glad to hear that! I actually was completely opposite haha I remained a heavy reader until college and then just got so massively burnt out from all the academic reading that I stopped reading fiction entirely except for proof-reading the sparse novel writing I did haha I got back into it during my gap year after undergrad, then grad school has destroyed it again. But I am DETERMINED to read a book again. Soon. I have two from the library currently -- one I read back in high school and which people liken my novel to that I want to re-read and another that seems interesting... if I could focus, that'd be great...)

Ky looked down at her own paper with a blush, suddenly feeling very bad about herself. How was he so much better at this than she was? Figuring things out quickly was her one and only virtue. The singular thing she was good at. And apparently, she was trash at this, too.

It felt childish to offer her scrap of the puzzle now.

"That makes sense," she agreed.

(Start small! Read some nostalgic stuff)

"We can start here." He pushed another of the volumes towards her.

(True... my favorite book series actually came out with the final book mid-grad school and I haven't had the focus but I want to re-read all the books in a row leading up to that so it's fresh. So that is also my aspiration before I may eventually return to grad school life)

Ky nodded and leaned forward to take it, resolved to be more useful this time. She glanced back at her paper. It really did feel like adding a twig to an already-thriving campfire. And yet on the off chance he didn't already know this, she supposed she should include it.

"...I found two cases of standing stones." She looked down at her paper, too embarrassed to look up and see the disapproval. "They didn't have anything to do with trolls or Seers, though. So... don't know if they're relevant."

(That's a fantastic idea! What series is it?)

"What were the symbols?" he asked, scanning his own book. He was already writing rapidly.

(The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner! It is so wildly underrated and almost no one knows about it but it's phenomenal. I rarely re-read books and I've re-read some of those books like four times now. Highly recommend!)

"Uhh, a, uhh..." She was bothering him. Wasting his time. She looked down at her notes. "Seal... and a fish. They seemed to coincide with a religious ceremony -- but I couldn't quite understand the context of what."

(Ahh cool!! I think I've heard of that!)

"Only the two?" His brow furrowed. "Mm. The fish is a salmon, symbol of Frugra--fertility. The seal is the symbol of Lograela, who represents the sea. So maybe that's a sailor's birth rites. The children of honored seafarers of the coastal tribes were often born in water ceremonies, delivered into hot springs."

(Oh nice! I admire her writing style a lot -- the characters are just incredible and her foreshadowing is amazing. Although I will say, as a Turner fan-enby lol I turned towards her for guidance on how to end chapters because that is the absolute bane of my existence and gets critiqued a solid 85% of reviews I get on me either dragging things out too long or cutting it off abruptly, so I looked at what she did for her chapter transitions, and almost every single one ends with the MC going to sleep. So. Not super helpful xD but works for her, seeing as I didn't notice that until I was looking lol)

Nothing at all about anything he said made sense. She blinked, trying to process it all. "Are there any creatures of legend from the coastal tribes that may be relevant?"

(That's really smart though; looking for examples is how we writers improve, right? I started reading Raymond Carver to understand how to end short stories.)

"There's a man in the water--Halviord Sack, something like that--who lures children out toward the water and then stuffs them into a bag to take into the sea with him," Gaius mused. "And there's a benevolent spirit who helps fishermen find their way back to shore."

(ooh nice!)

"...huh." Ky considered that for a moment.

"Think you could convince Halviord to stop eating children, too?" Pratik mused, glancing at Ky.

Ky snorted. "I can't be expected to befriend every legend out there -- I doubt they're all as easily reformed as Rönn."

"I don't think he has as human of a backstory, either. Rönn and Stone Mother used to be part of society, at least. I think Halviord Sack is simply a monster." He paused. "Then again, who knows if anyone bothered to talk to him?" He turned back to the books. "So standing stones are representative of the gods--we know that. But has there ever been an instance in which all sixteen symbols appeared together?"

"Do they all know each other?" Ky asked.