I hope all of you were patient. I know that "Beauty" was so out of nowhere, but I hope you liked it anyway.
Well now I'm back to finally continue this story after a good enough break.
Chapter 7
A New Friend
Matt was sitting in the basement, his wounds from his encounter with the storks all bandaged up. He held the picture of him and his friends in hand.
Matt heard a knock on the door. He got up. It was painful but he slowly made it to the door and opened it.
The person at the door was Aaron. Matt allowed Aaron inside and they both sat down.
"It's been getting worse, huh?" said Aaron.
"It has," Matt replied. "I still hope it will eventually go away."
Matt then goes back to looking at the photo. Aaron sees this.
"What are they like?" he asked.
Matt barely heard. "Huh?"
"Your friends," Aaron clarified. "What were they like?"
Matt sat silently, trying to figure out the right words, until he found them. "They were great people. I could relate to them a lot, and I had a lot of fun with them. Sometimes I feel like they're the only ones that understand me. It's…"
Matt stopped himself, as he wasn't comfortable with mentioning the part about running away from his parents, but Aaron could infer from "sometimes I feel like they're the only ones that understand me" that Matt had bad parents.
"I understand what it's like to want to run away," said Aaron.
"I never said…" Matt was about to say.
"You didn't have to," Aaron replied. "I can tell."
Aaron thinks for a bit. He originally didn't trust Matt, but after living with him for a while, Aaron realizes Matt isn't that bad of a person. He would go on to ask, "Do you wanna be friends with me?"
That request knocked Matt off guard. He and Aaron didn't interact much since making it out of the woods. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized that he may need someone to comfort him in a time where his friends aren't there to accompany him.
"I'm fine with that," Matt finally said.
Matt went onto his phone and looked through it. Before ending up in this world, he downloaded a lot of videos and things he liked on his phone in case the internet ever went down.
Some of those things Matt downloaded were all episodes of Stranger Things.
Matt goes to where he downloaded Stranger Things and shows it to Aaron.
"My friends introduced me to this show," Matt told Aaron. "It became one of my favorite TV Shows."
"I don't know what that is, but now I'm curious," said Aaron.
3 hours later…
Matt and Aaron were halfway through the first season, but Dareth called them up for dinner. They got up, but it was hard for Matt, as he was still achy. Aaron helped carry Matt out of the basement.
During dinner, Matt and Aaron spent their time discussing Stranger Things and how awesome it is. Dareth and Catherine noticed this.
"Someone's finally chatty," Catherine remarked.
"Well, Matt showed me this super awesome TV show called Stranger Things," said Aaron. "If you want, we could show you."
"What is a, TV show?" asked Dareth.
"You have books and plays in this world, right?" asked Matt.
"Yes," Dareth replied.
"Well, a TV show is sorta like a play," Matt explained. "The main difference is unlike a play, a TV show is shown on an electronic device, that way you can see it from the comfort of your own home."
"Your world sounds awesome," said Catherine. "Not even Newtopia has technology that advanced."
"Newtopia?" asked Matt.
"It's the capital of Amphibia," Catherine replied. "It was my childhood home before I moved here to live among the common folk. Other newts like to see themselves as superior to other Amphibians."
"My world is like that," Matt replied. "My parents follow a religion that forces people to follow it. They view anyone that doesn't follow the religion as horrible people meant to suffer. That would apply for my friends, who aren't followers. I even heard my dad discussing forcing me to end my friendships with them because of that. It's… why I ran away."
Aaron looked at Matt with a sympathetic look on his face. He understands what Matt has gone through. Ever since that day, 3 years ago, when the toads of the West Tower ruined his life, he never looked at Toads the same way again. No matter how nice Dareth was to him, he just couldn't bear talking to him at all.
"I understand what you're going through," was all that he said.
The 4 continued eating, and didn't discuss anything for the rest of the meal.
