...I have several. [Some he likes for... sentimental reasons. Gast read them to him. But those aren't necessarily to his taste, and that's what Loki is asking for.

He takes a moment to settle on one, and then... It's a bit halting, at first. He's never recited a story before.]

There is... the story of the snow witch. Far in the north, there lived a young woman, the oldest of seven sisters. She was tasked one day with looking after them, and she left them playing by the spring while she gathered herbs along the bank.

After a time, she realized their voices had all gone silent, and she hurried back to check on them. Her sisters all lay drowned in the spring, and she caught a glimpse of the retreating culprit. But, the villagers did not believe her; they said that her sisters had died because of her negligence. They drove her out and cursed her to live alone for all the years that had been taken from her sisters.

As time passed, she outlasted the village. It migrated south as the winters grew harsher. They say she has never left. She turns most travellers away, but for anyone who has been to the spring, she sees its water like a bloodstain on their hands, and those she kills in vengeance for the sisters she no longer remembers.