In the very very very very very old days, the gods didn’t like people much, almost as much as they don’t like them now. So they kept to themselves, all alone in their palaces on the tops of the mountains, and watched the humans scurry and shiver in the dark and cold. Sometimes they threw lightning at them for fun.
It was in the middle of one such long, chill night that Three Crows walked into a human town and also a human face-first. It was hard to see where you were going.
“Ow!” said the human.
“Sorry,” said Three Crows. “Hard to see around here at night. You ever thought of putting up lights?”
“What, like putting the sun and moon on a string?” asked the human. “Seems difficult, I don’t think we can do that.”
“Nah, I mean like, fire.”
“What’s ‘fire’?” asked the human.
Three Crows tried to explain fire, but it was really hard. Back then humans didn’t have a lot or know about a lot of things, so most of the things she could compare them to weren’t helpful.
“It’s sort of like a lot of little stars, except it eats sticks and bites things,” she said.
“Woah. Can we have some?”
Three Crows considered this. On the one hand, the humans were asking her to steal a special treasure from the tops of the mountains where the gods lived, and she didn’t know them that well. On the other hand Three Crows was very nearly a god herself and so knew that they were jerks.
“Hey, why not?” she said.
It was a long walk up the mountains. The cliffs were steep, but that’s not a big deal if your fingers are strong; and the winds were fierce, but hairy people can push through that; and the way was guarded by many terrifying and ugly monsters, all of which Three Crows was on a first-name (and sometimes pet name) basis with. Finally, she came to the kitchen window of the palace of Fire, which she broke with a rock and let herself in through.
“This one looks good,” said Three Crows, selecting a particularly shiny flame.
It was around then that Three Crows realized she hadn’t actually brought anything to carry fire back in, but she was very nearly a god herself so she made up a new way to carry fire on the spot and hustled it out of there.
It was a little complicated. The trick was to get the fire out of your hand before it could be burned, then put it into your other hand.
“Hey, learned something new today,” said Three Crows. “’Juggling’ is just ridiculous enough to be a good name for this.”
She was so pleased she didn’t look where her feet were going, which is particularly important if you don’t have eyes in your feet, which she didn’t.
“Woah! Shucks.”
The fire flew out of her hands, bounced off a rock, down a cliff, over a river, through a marsh, and landed safely in the middle of the human village.
“Oh, okay.”
Three Crows relaxed a little and took the rest of the trip down the mountain real slow. She even made up a few humming tunes for the trip, about how clever and incredibly handsome she was. Unfortunately, by the time she came to the village nobody wanted to listen to her. They were all busy running around and waving their arms and hooting.
“Hey,” said Three Crows, “want to hear a hum?”
“Aaaugh! Oh nooooooooo! Aiiieee!” said the humans.
“They aren’t THAT bad. They’re about how clever and incredibly handsome I am.”
“Everything’s on fire!” wailed a human. “We don’t have a lot or know about a lot of things, but everything we have and know about is on fire!”
“Put it out,” said Three Crows.
“How?!”
“Throw some dirt on it.”
“We don’t have shovels yet!”
“Oh. Throw some water on it?”
“We don’t know what that is!”
“Ah, fudge,” said Three Crows. “I guess I better help out.”
So Three Crows ran up the mountain this time – and with no breath to hum with, which annoyed her – and passed the cliffs and the winds and the monsters without even enough time to say hello, making many of them very put out. She knew she’d have to apologize later, and that made her cross. She HATED apologies, at least when she wasn’t getting them. It made her so annoyed that she kicked a hole in the palace of Water, pulled out a nice fat current, and threw it down the mountain without looking twice.
“There,” she said crabbily. “Job done.”
And she stomped back down, apologizing through gritted teeth the whole way.
It was a long way to stomp, which gave her time to notice things, like when she stopped stomping and started splashing.
“Aw, pumpernickel,” she said. “Not again.”
And indeed it had happened again. The village was now a lake, and it was filled with extremely splashing and drowning humans.
“blorg,” they burbled at her. “blub, gasp, cough, sputter, boggle.”
“Fine, fine, fine, fine,” sighed Three Crows. “Gosh darn it.”
So she walked past the cliffs and the winds and the monsters – who accepted her (now much more contrite) apologies – and let herself in to the palace of Dogs using the key under the mat, where she stole a set of paddles.
“Here,” she said when she got back to the (patiently) drowning humans. “Do this with your hands like this.”
And they did. And just like that, they weren’t drowning anymore.
“Thank you,” they told her.
“Hey, it’s fine.”
“Except our entire village is still flooded.”
“Well, aren’t we hard to please?” said Three Crows in a somewhat insincere and snotty voice.
“Not really.”
Three Crows sighed in a needlessly dramatic fashion and walked off again.
This time, she was thorough. She checked every palace, looked under every bed, opened every cupboard, pried into every vault. In total, she stole bailing, dam-making, sailing, stilt-walking, parasailing, kayaking, windsurfing, canoeing, canal-making, surfboarding, ditch-digging, surfboarding, inner-tubing, and when her arms were full she gave up, stuffed it all into a palace, stuffed all the other palaces into THAT palace, and hurled the whole thing down the mountain, making it roll very nicely.
Then she took a nap before heading back down because man that takes it out of you.
When Three Crows finally made it back to the human village, she was pleasantly surprised. The knotted-up ball of palaces and manses had completely displaced the water from it.
“Hey,” she said. “How’s it going now?”
“A goddamned mess, fuckface,” said a nearby human. “Why don’t you piss off?”
“Woah,” said Three Crows. “Those’re some impressive words. What are they?”
“Swears,” said the human. “The gods have gifted us with them. They finally found someone they hate more than us.”
“Is it me?” asked Three Crows.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Wow,” said Three Crows. “I’m very humbled by this.”
“Go away.”
And Three Crows did.
But not before helping herself to some of the juicier swears. She figured they owed her that much.