At that point, Sam's magical power was more akin to a newly planted seed than the mighty oak it was destined to become. Had he been further along in his changes, he might have been able to catch a glimmer of what was in Lily's mind.
Perhaps it was best he couldn't.
For though Lily Lilith seemed to be drifting into a peaceful post-meal nap, her thoughts were anything but serene. Her dreams ripped her away from the present and back to that one horrible day thousands upon thousands of years ago. The Day of the Shattering. The day she was born.
Human memories were blessedly transient. Time took away youth and life, but at least it dulled the bite of trauma. Lily had been granted no such boon. The Shattering was as fresh and raw in her mind as yesterday.
The nightmare never changed. It always started with the same image: a man in a red robe who stood atop a nauseatingly tall pinnacle of rock that stretched into a rotten brown sky. The sun was high overhead, but it shone with nothing more than a sickly, pale white light--as if it couldn't bear to witness what would happen that day.
Lily floated by the man's side, staring first at him, then down at the two women who stood at the base of the pinnacle. Both of them had once loved the man, and that rivalry had once driven them against each other. But now they shared an altogether different emotion for the man, and now they were allies against a mutual enemy.
Love had divided them, and now hatred united them. It was almost poetic.
A lightning bolt of panic shot down Lily's spine as she realized what would happen next. She screamed in her disembodied voice at the man, begging him to--just once--let things happen differently.
He didn't even spare her a glance. When he finally spoke, it was addressed to the two figures below. His words were like poison that had frozen into jagged green crystals. She heard the wicked promise he made, and even worse--the dreadful certainty that bound it.
The dream never let her close her eyes as the man leaped off the pinnacle. She was not allowed to look away when he landed in between the two women. She couldn't do anything but stare with supernatural clarity at the murder of her mother, Lilith. The first Lilith. The true Lilith.
The man struck her down with four vicious, pummeling blows. The mere seconds between hits stretched into terrible eons for Lily. On the fourth strike, her mother cried out a mortal shriek before erupting into an incredible, impossible shower of molten rock and red-hot stones.
All at once Lily felt the transcendent agony of her mother's demise. It was as though her body and soul had been turned to glass and crushed with a massive hammer.
Lily screamed. She screamed so hard she thought the force of the sound would burst her eardrums. She screamed until it seemed like her lungs would come bursting out of her mouth. She screamed until she couldn't make a single sound.
Her mother's power had been split into hundreds of shattered fragments. They scattered amidst the ash-white desert like burning hail. Lily gazed in numb silence at the smallest piece, knowing how that one little rock would eventually become a creature calling herself Lily Lilith...a faint shadow of the original.
Soon the man and the woman were locked in combat, wrestling each other for the possession of Lilith's largest fragment. It was a smoldering hunk of stone that pulsed with strange life and energy; it was what remained of Lilith's heart. The power it contained would decide the course of the human race.
Many people would later call the man Adam. The woman they would call Eve. Once they had been husband and wife, but now everything had been swept away in a red tide of rage. At last Eve grasped the still-smoking shard that would become Lily and raked it across Adam's cheek, eliciting a terrible howl.
While Adam grabbed at his long and ragged wound, Eve clutched the boulder in front of her. It glowed with an unearthly blue hue that quickly crept across her hands. Soon the glow radiated from her entire body, and the air was filled with a hum that shook the ground in a deep, hypnotic rhythm. Suddenly Eve looked simultaneously younger and imbued with a wisdom far beyond her years.
Adam cried out again, but this time in pure anger rather than pain. Eve held out her hands and uttered one word, and Lily didn't think all the blizzards in history would approach the coldness in Eve's voice. Lilith had a rare moment of gladness about this. She didn't believe the twisted, snarling monster standing before Eve deserved any warmth at all.
Adam's green eyes bulged and watered in animal terror as piercingly bright blue rays of light shot out from Eve's hands. When the beams caught his red robe, they burst into white-hot tongues of flame that hurt to behold. Adam wailed in agony as the hungry flames spread outward, devouring all they touched. He bolted away from Eve and hurled himself into a deep yawning chasm, still screaming like a madman.
The glow left Eve, and she crumpled to the ground. She stayed that way for an excruciatingly long time, first panting to catch her breath, then sobbing from the sheer enormity of what had just happened.
When she finally turned toward the stone again, Lily saw the meek beginnings of hope on her tired face. She knew from the many days she had spent as Eve's adopted daughter what had ultimately made her go on.
The future. The future she had as the guardian of Lilith's heart. The future she had as the mother of her sons Cain and Abel, and her desire to keep them safe from the evil ambitions of their father. The future she had as the mother of humanity.
Many bitter twists in her life would follow. Tragedy would befall her sons. She would learn that Adam was not truly gone, and end up casting Lilith's heart far beyond the heavens to keep it out of his reach. But for now, the future remained as promising as she wanted it to be.
"Lily?"
Lily jolted awake, whirling around to find herself staring into Pink Petunia's inquisitive face.
"Ooh--sorry! I didn't mean to spook ya--I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Lily sighed. "Yeah, I'm all right. Just a bad dream."
Pink Petunia cocked an eyebrow sympathetically. "Oh? What was it about?"
Lily gave her a wan smile.
"It's...nothing, really. I'll tell you more some other time."