Paper is dead without words

Ink idle without a poem

All the world dead without stories

Without love and disarming beauty

Thor always found a fascination with Midgard. It was so different to Asgard, yet so similar. There was a simplistic beauty in the way Midgardians and Asgardians ran their lives. A child was born into the world, they'd take their first steps, they grow, learn, play... one day maybe even fall in love. Each child a master of their own fate.

When Thor was a young boy, he enjoyed story time. He loved hearing about the battles and monsters fought in past and brave warriors whose names were celebrated in song. Thor would often go out and reenact those battles in the form of play, along with his brother.

In his teen years, Thor hated sitting in a classroom learning about history. The way he saw it back then is that it was in the past, therefore, it was unimportant. He didn't realise at the time but the history they tried to teach him reflected the very stories he so dearly loved as a child. The stories that built his world. Looking back on those years, Thor could see how ignorant he was.

As an adult, Thor could see the importance of history. It was just another form of storytelling and with each passing day, that story was written into the pages of his own memories.

As a god from another world, it would be so easy for Thor to look at the bad things on Midgard. All the violence, the sins, everything about humanity; it would be so easy for him to focus on it all and yet he didn't. He could see the beauty in everyday life on Midgard. Thor could see it in the way two lovers would light up whenever they were near each other; hear it in a child's laughter as they played. Even just watching somebody tending their garden. A life, caring for another life that could not take care itself.

Yes, there was ugliness in this world but there was beauty in it too. Each life had their own story to tell. A page written in someone's history. All of these stories... these lives... they were all leaves of the great tree Yggdrasil.