A Demystification: Eve

Day 8: Picture Prompt

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Word Count: 765

Lyn had never cared for cities much. She should have probably liked them more; they were filled with so much life and so much more to see and learn than the smallish town she lived in. But, full as they were, as brimming with human ideas and dreams and hopes and, yes, human fears as they were, each of those millions of people lived a life as completely isolated as if they lived alone amongst the empty buildings and burnt-out wreckage of human architectural greatness. A person could live their whole life in a city and never know more than the few streets outside their house. More often than not, they lived in a building filled to the brim with people living an isolated mirror of their own, lonely lives. A city was, in essence, millions and millions of complete strangers.

For someone who'd never really had a friend, Lyn didn't need a bigger reminder of her own loneliness. She could deal with a small town full of potential friendships gone awry, but a whole city of future ex-friends rolling their eyes at her as she passed was just a little too much. So while she was definitely not a country girl, she supposed that she wasn't much of a city folk, neither.

The fact that she was currently walking down the streets of New York City with the Greek Messenger God was, therefore, not something she had exactly planned. However, it turned out that their intrepid ally, one Lucifer, the apparently misnamed Father of Lies, lived on an island completely inaccessible by human means. This meant that she and Hermes would have to travel through the Twilight, the true dwelling place of all entities that owed their existence to human belief. Being mortal, Lyn would not usually be able to do such a thing without Hermes expelling an egregious amount of his own energy to bring her through, and that was not exactly a possibility given Hermes' power situation. So Hermes had asked the Fates what to do.

"Why are we here, exactly? I know it's not to see my sister...she's back home with my parents right now." Lyn was having a hard time keeping up with Hermes. Even under the guise of an average human, Hermes still possessed his ridiculous propensity for speed, and he'd mentioned something earlier about twilight and having to hurry.

"We're looking for something to act as a gate," Hermes replied. "A gate in the city of travelers at the time-between-times. The Fates said we should be able to enter the Twilight that way, using the power of the real twilight to enter the metaphorical one. That way, I don't have to use up all of my stores to bring you in and will continue to be only somewhat useless as opposed to completely so."

"Well then...why don't we go to Greenwich Village? Washington Square Park has an arch. It's kind of a copy of the one in Paris. Shouldn't something like that be able to theoretically act as a gate?" Lyn grabbed at Hermes' hand, forcing him to stop. "Listen, Hermes, did the Fates say anything about the threat being dire or imminent?"

The god shook his head, golden curls bouncing. "No. Not yet. It still looms, but it's still more of a creeping insidiousness than a dire threat. We should have time."

"Oh, OK, good. Then let's hop on the subway. That should get us to the Village with plenty of time to get to the Arch. Then what do we do? Walk three times widdershins while chanting something in Ancient Greek? Maybe doesil nine times?"

Hermes raised an eyebrow and leveled a sardonic gaze at his friend. "No. I just open the gate to the Twilight using the gates own power instead of mine to bring you in. Unless you'd rather dance around like a moron and call attention to yourself before disappearing into nothingness?"

"Actually..." Lyn broke off at the look on Hermes' face. "OK, OK, no. The last thing we need is people thinking that aliens showed up in NYC and are planning to invade..."

"Maybe they'd think a god took you into his realm?"

Now it was Lyn's turn to stare at Hermes with incredulity written all over her features. "In NYC? Haven't you ever been here before? Of course they're going to think it's aliens. This is America, dude. Gods are far less believable than aliens these days."

"Really?"

Lyn nodded. "Yup. Someday, you might want to tell Thor that he's actually an alien. I'm sure he'd love that."

"Of course he would."