A Demystification: Eve

Day 19: Trigger

WORD COUNT: 1035

One of Lucian's servants was baking pumpkin pie.

Several families lived on the island with Lucifer. He covered their living expenses and sent their children to school; in return, they took care of everything. They cooked, cleaned, gardened, paid the taxes, ordered the food, did the laundry, everything.

Whoever was doing the baking now was a genius. Lyn was pretty sure that Lucian had heard her conversation with Hermes about Thanksgiving. This was the first time she wasn't going to be able to spend it with her family. She'd told them that she was taking part in an archeology program, having won a scholarship, and would be unavailable for the holiday. It made her sad that she'd miss her mother's pumpkin pie, she'd said, and Lucifer had clearly heard.

Lucifer heard everything. It was rather disconcerting.

It began when something tickled Lyn's nose as she read in her bedroom, fuzzy-slippered feet rocking back and forth in the air as she sprawled across the entirely-too-comfy-for-words bed Lucian had provided for her. A scent, furtive and elusive, danced right under her nostrils, teasing Lyn with its familiarity. Looking up, Lyn put her book down and breathed deeply, inhaling years of comfort as she did so. "Punkin pie! Holy shit, punkin pie!"

Jumping from her bed and shuffling across the floor--she wasn't used to fuzzy bunny slippers, even if she'd insisted to Lucifer that she had to have them just to see if she could--Lyn threw the door open and stuck her head out into the hallway. Lucian's villa wasn't anything like the house in which she'd grown up, being rather Mediterranean rather than Old Country in design, but as far as her brain was concerned, it was the most familiar place in the world. It was home.

And mom was baking pie.

A wave of homesickness washed over Lyn as she remembered that she wasn't at home, and it definitely wasn't her mother baking in the kitchen. For a moment, everything was as it had been. No gods had shown up to plague her, she wasn't living on an island in the middle of nowhere with a creature that was, to many, the Father of Lies and every evil thing in the world wrapped up in one. Most of all, she hadn't yet become a disappointment to her parents.

She'd wanted to be a professor, like her dad. He taught economics at SUNY. She hadn't planned on becoming an economics professor, no, preferring literature to numbers and money, but she was going to get her Ph.D nonetheless. And her parents had been so proud of her, knowing that, in her own way, Lyn was going to continue the family's motto: greatness in all things.

Then college had come. And Lyn, as smart as she was, and as deep an understanding as she possessed for the literature she read, barely managed to graduate Cum Laude, which was certainly not good enough to get into a prestigious grad school. She had proven herself to be a failure. And, though they'd never show it outright, her parents believed her to be one, too. Ever since then, something had been missing between them. Her family believed in greatness; they didn't know what to do with mediocrity.

And mom had never made her pumpkin pie again.

What would they say if they saw her now, living on an island with Hermes and Lucifer, waiting to save the world from Adam? What would they say if they knew that their daughter, their old souled youngest child who just didn't fit in, was the oldest woman in the history of the world? That she was the founder of Free Will in man, and a martyr for humanity?

Would it matter to them that she hadn't graduated Summa Cum Laude from school if they knew she was the reason they could go to school at all?

Lyn had felt ashamed of herself for so long, afraid that she just wasn't good enough for her immensely successful family. She barely even saw her parents anymore, knowing that a visit to the family home meant a grueling gauntlet of inferiority complexes and guilt trips. Jewish mothers were amazing at that sort of thing. But nothing was worse than the disappointed sadness she saw glimmering in her father's eyes whenever he saw her, a reminder that she was supposed to be his legacy and now she'd left him with nothing. She'd failed him as much as she'd failed herself, after all.

But why? Now she had friends, she had perhaps even more than a friend in Lucian, and she had found out that she was so much more than just a Literature Professor. She was the mother of all professors, of all engineers and doctors and dentists, and every human being. She wasn't a failure. She was not a failure.

"Eve?" Lucian's voice wafted into her memories, a series of flashes brought on with every breath of spice that wafted beneath her nose. She blinked and looked up, not realizing that she was still standing with her head in the hall. "Are you alright?"

God how she loved him. And that was another thing. Her family rarely loved deeply, or even at all. Brynden was an exception, but then there was a piece of her in all of her siblings. She was seeing that now. But only Lyn loved with her whole self. And she had found love, and love might even be returned.

"I'm fine. Is that pumpkin pie? How'd you know it was my favorite?"

Lucian smiled. "I heard you talking to Hermes and thought you might like to have a Thanksgiving dinner with myself. He has to go up to the Twilight tonight, so it will be just us, but I've had a traditional spread laid out. And Annibel makes wonderful pies."

Lyn looked down at her feet to hide her blush, but she had a feeling that Lucian had seen it anyway. "I...thank you, Lucian. I really appreciate it. And I'd love to have Thanksgiving dinner with you. Especially if it means pumpkin pie."

It was time to make new memories, after all. Memories of someone who most certainly wasn't a disappointment.

To anyone.