Stories for Odin - 1

These are stories I make up for Odin as he falls asleep. Usually he asks for specific features (eg "something I've never, ever, ever, ever heard before" or "the one where butterflies turn into dragons, but only with me and Dada"). I take it from there.

The Spider of Saturn
January 2018

(Inspired by the recent ending of the Cassini mission)

Along the visible rings of Saturn there lives a creature made of energy and specific kinds of matter. This is Saturn's Spider.  It looks exactly like Saturn's rings, but hunts and harvests magnetic particles from the ring as it moves along them. In its path the Spider leaves fine particles entrained to the same energetic field; this is its web.  The Spider also stitches the particles into itself using energy from the solar wind.

We talk about how the Spider traverses its rings. It's not a movement you or I could see. It moves very slowly. Solar energy is dilute at Saturn's distance from the sun, and the Spider, feeding on it, hunts with corresponding slowness.  Any action, even a frenzy of rapid feeding, can take months.

Every 30 years Saturn completes an orbit around the sun. When this happens the Spider trains its attention in the direction of Earth, spreads itself out thin, and listens. Its web acts as a large antenna and its body encodes what it hears. The Spider has been doing this at the same orbital position for millions of years. As Saturn moves away from this position, the Spider taps its encoded message into its web. The web resonates across the entire ring system with the new encoding.  When the web is queried by pulses of radiation from outside the solar system, it transmits what the Spider has written into it. The web has a large surface area, making it easier to see from very far away.

The Spider sews its web and charges it with information from Earth because this is what it was placed into Saturn's ring system to do. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Spider's creators recognized Earth's potential to create information processing capacity. The timing of that capacity is very difficult to predict, so the Spider was asked to watch our planet for its emergence.

Why Dragon Eyes Look Like Starfields
2/20/18

(Odin requested story with: dragon; Odin; friend Leila; Dada; not little brother Alder; our backyard play structure; and a slide. In my stories, he calls his dragon friend "Pom Pom" but says its nickname is "Pomba," so he stipulates that we call it by the latter name)

Odin and Leila are playing on the slide while Dada watches from the play structure. They roll different items down this slide, trying various balls we have on hand: volley ball, golf ball, baseball. Each works -- will they move at different speeds? We will test this later. They find that a football does not roll well. We think this is by design.

After watching a set of plastic trucks barrel down the slide, Odin tells Leila that he would like to fly with his friend, a dragon named Pomba. As it happens, Pomba lives in a ravine near the top of San Bruno mountain. Like all dragons, Pomba has excellent hearing. He heard Odin's request, and soon a familiar shadow passes over the house. The dragon spirals down, then beats his massive wings to slow his descent and land gently on the roof. Leila and Odin sit on the steps near the slide, looking up over the patio at the dragon. Pomba extends his long neck, bringing his head level with Odin and Leila's eyes. The rest of the dragon hasn't moved -- that's how long his neck is! He says "Hello, Odin. I am happy to see you again. Did you want to fly with me?"

Odin looks into the dragon's eyes and notices, for the first time, that his friend does not have eyes like his own. Instead of a pupil and iris, the dragon's eyes are a dense field of points of light on a black background. They remind Odin of starfields he's seen in Astronomy magazine sent by Grandpa Bob. Pomba's eyes are littered with points of light so dense, with so much to see, that even though nothing moves everything still seems to move. There is too much information to take in that area appears newly seen each time. Odin and Leila look into the dragon's eyes for a long time.

Odin asks the dragon why his eyes look like stars. 

The dragon says, "This is how dragons make fire. People say that we create it in our bellies, but really we ask for it from stars. Our eyes can connect us to any star we like. We open a window to its fire through our bodies."

Odin and Leila are excited, and ask to see dragonfire. Pomba replies that it is not safe even to look at unless it is from very far away. Dragonfire is actually a direct window into a sun. It is so bright that it will damage their eyes up close - even if they look at it quickly. Odin remembers how bright even the eclipsed sun was last summer, at Grandpa Bob's house. He asks how they can see dragonfire safely. Pomba asks them to wait.

The dragon beats his massive wings and lifts himself slowly from the roof. Odin and Leila smell his hide in the air as he rises. Soon, Pomba has flown very high. Odin thinks he looks like a piece of dust in the sunlight, or an slow-moving jet.

Suddenly there appears a flash so bright that Odin and Leila have to shield their eyes! A searing white line extends from the dot of a dragon, then streaks across the sky, into space. They see a solid beam on the inside, but it is decorated with flame along its length.

When Pomba returns, he looks very sad. Odin asks him why. The dragon says that when he creates starfire, the stars he touches are terribly eager to speak with him. They are separated from anything like themselves by great distances, many light years ("Odin, this this is the distance traveled by light in a year"). Their light messages can't travel the distances any faster. But when a dragon asks for starfire, they always give it happily in exchange for the company. He feels them ache for companionship. The loneliness of stars is why all dragons become very sad whenever they make dragonfire and why they do this so rarely.

Dragons can touch stars that cannot touch each other because dragons are born eyes that can develop into wormholes. These fold the distance to any star they conceive and decide to contact. (because, sure -- that's how wormholes can work)