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When he set the empty cup down, he clasped his hands on the table, looking at Devon with the calm countenance he had known growing up. He watched closely and saw the moment recognition flooded his father’s hazel eyes. Before Devon could make a move, his father had already stood up and pulled him into a hug.
“Dad!” he whispered as sobs built up in his throat. He grabbed his father just as tightly. The man he hadn’t seen since he was a young eighteen-year-old leaving on an old and dirty military truck.
“My boy,” his father whispered through his own tears. “I’ve missed you.” He felt his dad kiss his hair before he pulled back, holding him by the shoulders to look him over.
“My dear boy, you’ve been through hell.” His father’s eyes held pain and sadness as he moved his hands to take Devon’s face.
“I am so sorry I never came home, Dad,” Devon cried, not even trying to rein in his emotions, but his father never expected him to. He always claimed one couldn’t fix something broken if it was hidden away.
“My son, when I passed the gates, I asked of you. The judges allowed me one request, and that was to see you. All of you. I know what happened, and I did not once blame you for the decision you made. There was no choice there but evil and the destruction of evil. You did something that man may have seen as wrong, but in the morality of the universe, you set things right. You went above human law, such a law that has flaws, and I am proud of you. I watched children that would have died without your choices grow into amazing people. They did not know what you did, but I do.” He told him with glassy eyes. Devon could barely see through his own tears.
“How did you die?” his father asked with sadness creasing the corners of his eyes as his hands cupped his son’s face. He knew his father had hoped he would have lived out his days with children and grandchildren of his own.
“Mission gone wrong,” was all Devon said and his father simply nodded sadly at the news.
“And you were here in Elysium with me all this time?”
“Uh, kind of. Maybe we should sit?” Devon motioned to the chairs and his father took the one
closest to him, grabbing Devon’s hand between his own.
“Well, Dad, it turns out there is something quite off about me.” He watched as his father’s eyes narrowed. “When I died, I was brought to the Underworld, but not as a soul for eternity. My soul and an ancient power merged, which was released when I left my mortal body, and I don’t really know how to explain this all without sounding crazy, but I am immortal. I have Godly powers over nature and I work alongside Persephone, the Goddess.” His words came out in a rush before he calmed enough to finish. “We are bound. Married, so to speak.”
He watched his father’s jaw go slack.
“You are a God?” his father asked as his eyes pierced through Devon. The fingers of his father’s other hand pulled into a fist on the table.
“Yes, as weird as that is to say, I am. The Goddess Demeter… well, it turns out I have her power.”
Instead of seeing confusion on his face, his father gave him a warm smile as he patted Devon’s hand in the loving way he remembered him doing when he was a boy.
“You are married to the Goddess?” his father asked.
“Yes.” Devon wasn’t sure if the heat in his cheeks was a blush or not. His dad was not one to miss a detail or let a subject drop.
“I was so sure you would marry that girl, Greta. Do you remember? Her father had the best crops at the markets. I was sure her adoration would win you over. When you left for the military, she asked for your information to write you.”
Devon let out a little laugh. “Yeah, I remember. She said she would wait for me. I told her to move on. Took her about two months to announce she was getting married to the Stuart guy down the road.” He looked at his father. “You know I never felt for her that way.”
“Oh, I did. I worried you never showed any interest in anyone, then I thought that perhaps women were not what you desired. At least until I found you with Maria that one time…”
“Okay, yeah, let’s not rehash that. I didn’t want to die a virgin, but I definitely did not want my dad to walk in on it.” Devon was very sure he blushed now and cleared his throat. He grabbed his tea and hoped the embarrassment would go down with it.
“Yes, we both could have lived without that moment in the loft, but you never seemed to look at anyone with the spark in your eyes. I just wanted happiness for you, my son. I wanted you to know that.”
“I have that,” he told his father and a warm smile cross his father’s lips. Devon hated that he had to segue to the next subject, but he needed to discuss this while he could.
“You didn’t have that. Mom was-”
“I thought she was ill. I was wrong.” Devon’s head snapped up at his father’s words. “She was very much a lovely woman when I married her, but something changed in her over time, something I didn’t understand.
“She had something in her blood that gave her dreams that seemed to be more. The blood of someone who had visions of things to come, and not knowing what they were, they drove her mad.
“I should’ve believed her, but no one truly believed in religion anymore after the Great War and pandemic. I tried to take her to one of the older churches that still had inhabitants, but what I thought might be older clergy was no one but refugees. Doctors wanted her to be medicated, which I chose to push.
“Do not take this as your fault, for it was not, but I know now she saw you becoming more than just a human boy, that was why she behaved as such after we conceived you. She saw this.” He motioned his hand over Devon, as if his mother saw him as he was now. “She was cursed with a gift that I wish I had known how to help with.”
It shocked Devon to hear his father speak of it this way.
