nexus_crossings | a new journal is full of possibilities

There are few things Atreus loves more then listening to the stories of others and writing them down. Okay, okay he definitely loves his parents more. That's a given though. Also wolves are cool. He sure does love wolves. He's quite convinced he'll prove his father wrong one day and teach himself how to turn into one but that day's sadly a long way off probably.

Writing in a journal though! Back to that! He loves writing about his adventures and and every tale he comes across, and he's wanted to write down his findings of the Nexus too... but he thought it'd be appropriate to have a separate journal for here. There were so many people from so many different worlds! He figures it'll be really easy to fill up a lot of pages really fast.

That's when he discovered the stationary store. Which is probably one of his favorite places he's found here so far. Dozens of different journals in different sizes in so many colors with so many pictures on the covers. And the writing tools! Markers, pens, colored pencils! In any and every color he could possibly imagine! There were other even more ADVANCED materials like stickers an washi tape but he was honestly starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

So he ended up leaving with a truly epic looking journal with a wolf on the cover and a small package of pens in an assortment of colors. He's investigate the other materials more thoroughly later.

As he walked he flipped open the journal. The pages were empty and pristine. There's a bit of a thrill whenever you look at blank pages like that. What will eventually fill them? He knows the first thing at least. He selects a pen and writes in runes 'Tales from the Nexus' and smiles to himself. That feels right. Not to just... get those tales!

"Excuse me!" he hails a friend or a friendly looking stranger, or just someone INTERESTING looking as they pass by, "Know any good stories?"

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Matt Murdock needs not see the child waving him down to know he's being spoken to, though perhaps Atreus might not realize that at first, with his eyes hidden behind wine-dark glasses. He pauses nonetheless, his face not quite pointed completely in the youngster's direction, but unmistakably paying attention. "I know a few. Are you collecting them?"

That sounds like the ruffling of empty pages, and he can smell the pungent aroma of fresh tooled leather and the milder scent of ink. What's on the pages, of course, he can't really guess, but context clues seem to lean that way.

He looks curiously at the glasses, not necessarily because he's made any kind of connection or assumption. He's just not overly familiar with that kind of accessory and they look useful. The dark glass looks like it could block out the brightest of the sun's rays at mid day. Some kind of... sun glass.

"I am!" he nods enthusiastically, smoothing a hand over the journal's cover, "I've got a few from people already but there are still plenty of blank pages just begging to be filled!"

Matt smiles a little at the child's enthusiasm. "That's kind of them. Is there a particular kind of story you're looking for?"

There are so many to choose from, though Matt would be willing to bet that adventure tales are high on the youngster's list of priorities.

"Something from your world! I'm trying to take advantage of the fact that there are people from entirely different realities around here," he explains, "Real stories are the best I think. Not that I mind fables and such either... but you know they say fact is stranger then fiction sometimes."

"They do say that," Matt agrees, faintly amused. He tilts his head a little. "Let's find a place to sit down, and I'll tell you a story or two."

If the boy already has somewhere in mind, then Matt will follow, but otherwise he'll take the lead, using his white cane to sweep the ground in front of himself. He can navigate perfectly fine without it, but it does take concentration, and he has to decide on a story to tell in the meantime.

Once they're seated somewhere, he folds the cane up and tucks it into his pocket. "So, a real story... a very long time ago, mankind had become wicked, and God decided to destroy his Creation and begin all over again. But there was still a righteous man named Noah, and his sons and their wives, and God decided to save them. So he commanded Noah to build an ark, an enormous boat, and fill it with pairs of every kind of animal he could find, and then take shelter aboard the boat himself with his family. And once Noah had done so, God sent a great storm that rained for forty days and forty nights, until the waters covered the entire world."

"When the storm stopped and the waters began to recede, the ark came to rest on top of a mountain, and Noah sent out a dove to try to find dry land. Each time he tried, the dove could not find a place to land, until one day it came back with a new olive branch in its beak, and Noah knew that the danger had passed. He let the animals out of the ark to roam the world again, and built an altar to thank God for seeing them safely through the flood. And God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign that he promised never to flood the entire world again."

His pen glides across the page, dutifully recording the story. Though his original giddy excitement for it all has dampened slightly and a bit of a frown is tugging at the corners of his lips. And when it's done, he stares at the page and taps thoughtfully on it.

"So I have several questions," he finally says after a moment or two, "Firstly, what's this jerk's name?"

Atreus almost wants to say Odin. That level of paranoia definitely seems like Odin's MO, but he's pretty sure Odin can't make it rain like that.

Matt may be blind, but he can still sense the shift in the boy’s mood, his excited heart slowing in pace a little with the telling. Interesting. Even more interesting once he starts asking questions, and Matt’s eyebrows go up. “Who, God? That’s usually what we call him, or the Holy Father. Some people call him Jehovah, or Yahweh.” That’s without getting into the additional titles and monikers associated with Jesus, but that’s a whole different story, isn’t it?

"That seems unnecessarily complex..." he was hoping for one name! Not a handful. But he can't let himself get sidetracked! He'll go with Jehova because that sounds less pretentious to say aloud then just 'God' or 'Holy Father'. He's not sure if that's better or worse then Odin sometimes insisting on being called the 'All Father'.

"So. This Jehova. What made him think there was only one good person in the whole world? That seems kinda unlikely," he frowns. What about babies? Babies weren't wicked they were just small and dumb and hollered a lot but that wasn't their fault, "And it sounds like he must have killed a lot of animals. Animals aren't wicked! If they attack it's just because they're scared or hungry."

Matt smiles and shrugs. "I suppose it might be." Two thousand years of evolving tradition would be, wouldn't it?

The questions are a bit more difficult to answer, of course, and while Matt is a good Catholic who was raised by nuns, they're still fairly weighty to answer. "Those are good questions. I don't know if I have an answer. Catholics believe that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but also that his reasons are not always clear to us humans down on Earth, and we may not understand until after we die and go to Heaven."

a new journal is full of possibilities

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