Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 18)

(They're good paintings but I'm fascinated by the boldness. Like lad, you did that pose already)

Gaius considered it. Minute details were difficult. "You didn't have curtains," he said after a pause.

(Haha boy knew what he liked)

She tensed. “Whoa.” She didn’t like that at all. “That’s freaky.”

(Guess so, if it's people reclining in bed or in chairs surrounded by many people plus dogs and one woman in blue for some reason)

"Like I said. I try not to impose, but things come to mind without my meaning them to."

(Odd… crush? Is it the same woman?)

“It’s not your fault,” she murmured with a nod. “…Now you know it’s not that great when a god chooses you. It’s… distressing.”

(No; I think Filial Piety: The Paralytic depicts an old man while The Beloved Mother depicts a young woman. Could be the Paralytic is an old woman, though.
I think it says something about love and piety reaching you at the peak of your life and toward the end, but I'd need to study both paintings more. That's just me thinking off the cuff.
It's the being surrounded and in the same lighting that really intrigues me)

"It's maddening," he said emphatically. "Physically painful and mentally agonizing. I can't gather my own thoughts for more than a few moments."

(Nice!)

She grimaced and nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry… mine isn’t that bad… but I still have to deal with never knowing when your relatives are going to poof into existence in front of me. So… I understand a little. It… feels like an invasion of privacy.”

"They're persistent," he agreed. The image of his father, draped in his dressing gown with his spectacles perched precariously on the end of his nose, flashed into his head uninvited. How frail he looked, so unlike the imposing force of will he had been in life. Was this how Ky saw him? It was, he knew. Good.
"Did you notice when you became a herald?" he asked for the sake of conversation, pushing the answer away before it came to him.

(Ohhh shit is he gonna see Michael in her memories?)

“What do you mean?”

(He might do)

"Was there a noticeable change, or did you just start seeing ghosts one day?"

She hesitated, considering. “If there was a change first, I didn’t notice it. I thought they were real to start with.”

"Then why is it like this for me?" This time he did let the answer come; it was a simple one, and infuriating. Every god was different.

“I mean you got picked by a different god,” Ky said. “Strithr was different with Jerica too. I think they just kind of do what they want.”

"I know. I just wasn't expecting...I wasn't expecting it to be as intense as it was. I wasn't expecting it at all."

(You know I just had a sudden moment of clarity on how wildly different career paths you and I have chosen lmao
Fish have these teeny tiny bones in their skulls called otoliths and every year they get an additional ring on them kind of like tree rings so you can tell how old a fish is by looking at it’s otoliths
The problem is they are a fucking PAIN to deal with lol
Like they’re super tiny and then we’ve got to sand them using sand paper to get down to the center to see the rings. And if we can’t then we burn them on a hot plate to make the rings more prominent.
So I have spent my whole day sanding otoliths and just had to toast one and it struck me that that is very different from looking at paintings lmao)

“Yeah… it’s a little concerning we were both visited in the same night. I wonder if Jerica was, too.”

(That sounds extremely intensive but also extremely poetic. I'm gonna write down otoliths in my lil notebook!
But you're absolutely right XD. There'll be tedium in my day too, though, as far as museum curating goes. There's a lot of paperwork and law stuff involved. And I'll have to figure out how to authenticate a piece or have someone authenticate it for me...yuck.)

"I suppose we should ask her afterward. Or I could find out now."