The Saga of Little Derik and the Quantum Seiðkona
by Joseph "Pops" Villalobos
"YOU'RE WRONG! THAT'S NOT IN THE LORE!"
Little Derik, all of four years old, stood defiant. His chubby fists clutched a well-worn copy of Mighty Thor Adventures #103, its cover depicting the thunder god himself battling a Frost giant. His face was scrunched in a magnificent display of Viking fury, a tiny horned helmet askew on his head.
Before him knelt Thierra, the Seiðkona, the daycare's resident storyteller. Today, instead of her usual tales of giants and gods, she was attempting a lesson on... well, something very un-Norse.
"But Derik, my little storm-petal," Thierra murmured, her voice a soothing river against his roaring waterfall, "consider the wyrd of the smallest things. The very weave of existence is not always as solid as a longhouse wall."
Around her, a soft, shimmering sphere of light pulsed, revealing intricate patterns – not runes, but complex, dancing waves and particles, like a cosmic spiderweb. It was her attempt to illustrate the principles of quantum physics, a concept she'd recently encountered in a vision quest that had, rather unexpectedly, involved a journey through a crack in the cosmos that led directly to a university lecture hall.
"See?" she coaxed, pointing a slender finger, "Just as Loki can shift his form, so too can tiny particles be in many places at once, until observed."
Derik’s eyes, however, were fixed on the glowing orb. He pointed a trembling finger at the swirling light. "That's not in Snorri! Thor doesn't do that! He hits things with Mjolnir!" He jabbed his comic book for emphasis. "It says so right here! He fights Frost Giants! He doesn't make wiggly lights!"
Thierra sighed, a wisp of smoke curling from the faint embers in her distaff. She understood Leif's struggle. His generation, the first to grow up with the newly written Eddas and Sagas widely available, were becoming Lore Purists even before they could tie their own bootlaces. The ancient Völvas, whose visions and direct communion with the spirits had birthed that very lore, were being slowly supplanted by the printed page. Knowledge, once fluid and living, was becoming a rigid dogma.
She had tried to explain how the sagas themselves were once the UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis) of seers and skalds, passed down and eventually codified. How the universe of Odin and Thor was far more expansive and mysterious than any single scroll could contain. But Derik, in his tiny, earnest way, represented the growing rigidity. He saw the gods only on the glossy pages of his comic book, and not in the beating heart of the world around him.
"Derik," Thierra said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "do you think the first skald who sang of Midgard's Serpent had it written down for him? Or did he see it? Did he feel the world-ending struggle in his very bones?"
Derik paused, his brow furrowed, the scream momentarily forgotten. "He... he saw it?" he whispered, clutching his comic a little less tightly.
"Perhaps," Thierra nodded, her eyes twinkling. "Perhaps he learned to observe with his heart as well as his mind. For knowledge, little one, is more than just data. It is the wisdom that guides the intellect, the knowing that comes when you truly feel the world's breath, even the wiggly bits." She gestured to the shimmering quantum field.
Derik looked from the glowing physics demonstration to his comic book, then back to Thierra's calm, wise face. He still loved Thor. But perhaps... just perhaps... there was more to the thunder god than just smashing. Perhaps even Thor had some wiggly, quantum secrets he wasn't sharing in the comic books.
He lowered his comic book slightly, the beginnings of a new kind of wonder dawning in his eyes. The screaming had stopped. For Thierra, that was a small victory. The lore was vast, but the universe, and the human heart, were vaster still. And perhaps, just perhaps, little Dwrik was beginning to learn to read both.
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