mssolo (mssolo) wrote in the_literatzzi, @ 2009-01-26 14:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | 12a, 12d, nat, romans |
I've been trying to work out what to do with this - how to give it a plot - for a long time. I'm hoping if I use it for the prompts something will reveal itself.
It's somewere about AD 80, and Iuventius has come to Britain in search of his childhood friend Rufus, who is a member of the IX Legion based in Eboracum (York). Iuventius has a kind of (unresearched) PTSD from his escape from Pompeii and suffers from bad nightmare and occasional flashbacks. He's inherited his father's slave trading business, and he hopes to purchase the PoWs from the recent battles with the Brigantes.
The short barbarian stumbled into him, slamming Iuventius back against the wall. He swallowed air to regain his wind, singing the inside of his throat with damp woodsmoke. Darkness moved around him, voices and smells and hot people, but everything inside him focussed on the burn inside his chest. He sturggled to breathe around it, his ribs too small, his chest too tight. He'd known it in many forms - standing over a brazier when the wind changed, breathing too deeply to smell the stew, the fire that he and Rufus had started they hadn't been able to control - but he could taste sulphur at the back of his tongue and every breathe of air that passed his lips was too hot and cloying. He could feel his insides being coated, like he was swallowing hot clay.
He abandoned the vinegary wine and fled the smokey roundhouse, pushing through sweaty bodies of Britons and Romans alike. Outside it was raining, which had trapped the smoke inside the primitive abode. It was far colder than it ever had been in Pompeii, and the tunic he'd chosen was too thin. All of his tunics were too thin.
Thickly-clad locals wandered around in the darkness, passing to and from each other's houses. sheep bleated plaintively. The tavern he'd come from was the best lit and busiest, but the logs that surrounded outside hearths were empty and the fires were out. Iuventius lowered himself onto damp and slimy bark and tried to get his breath back. Cold water ran down the back of his neck, the wet wind bringing it to assault him from all angles. The sounds of the night were unfamiliar, and even the smell of wet grass and peat fires was depressingly exotic. The stars would have been the same, but they were hidden by dense clouds.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to sit on the scree slopes looking out over the sea, to feel the hot sun on the back of his head and shoulders. He wanted good wine, and real baths, and people who spoke proper latin. He wanted the murals and statues and grafitti of home, the roar of the circus and shout of the forum.
He wanted it not to be under his own height in ash. He wanted that not to he his last and overriding memory of Pompeii.
"You'll make yourself homesick."
"Rufus," Iuventius sighed. He raised a hand, and his friend's came out of the darkness to hold it, rough and warm and strong. "How did you know?"
"I don't think I've come across you thinking of anything else," the tribune pointed out. He sat down beside Iuventius. "It's maudlin."
"I don't want to forget," Iuventius said. He leant against Rufus, feeling the heat of his body through his sleeve.
"I remember that feeling," Rufus said. "Sextus, remember?"
"Yes, I think so."
"I try and picture him now, but it's not like it used to be. I know he had the same hair as me, but it was a little longer. He had green eyes, and he always had sunburn across his nose, and he freckled terribly. He had large ears. His nose was crooked." Rufus shrugged. "It's like assemblig a picture; I'm not remembering him, I'm remember that I used to remember. He has disintigrated from a painting to a mosaic."
"That's not really a comfort," Iuventius said. "I don't... were my mother's eyes blue or green? I know they were unusual, and I remember she had jewellery to match, but I can't remember what colour they actually were."
"Blue, I think," Rufus said, "though it's been a long time since I saw her."
"After Sextus died I started to write things down so I'd remember them, but I didn't pack the scroll when I fled. I knew they'd die some day. I accepted that."
"You didn't think it would be so soon?"
"That too. I mean, I'm not ready to take over the business. I don't know what I'm doing. But..." Iuventius blinked rain from his eyelashed. "Pompeii. Cities aren't meant to die, you know?"
"They'll rebuild it," Rufus said. "They always do."
Iuventius shook his head. "They'll build on it, maybe, but Pompeii is gone. It didn't burn, my friend. It didn't shake to pieces. It's buried. Whole houses disappeared."
"I have spoken with men who crossed the Alps," Rufus said. "They had seen snow covered villages when the mountains shook."
"Snow melts," Iuventius said. "Pompeii is covered in stone. Even the gods could not make as thorough a job."
They sat in silence for long moments. A duck walked past them, trailing a long row of ducklings. Iuventius heard Rufus's stomach growl, and his chest hitched with an attempt at a laugh. Rufus's fingers found his, and he rubbed his calloused thumb across the back of Iuventius's hand. The rain fell harder.
"Probably smells better now," Iuventius said abruptly.
"What?"
"Pompeii. Do you remember the smell?"
"In summer? Hades couldn't smell that bad!" Rufus laughed. "Sometimes I walk past the camp latrines and it reminds me."
"You remember when Claudius was sick? They thought they'd kept it so secret, but you could see the blood in the stool outside his house. We knew someone was sick."
"Oh, and there was the silver ring he'd swallowed by accident!"
"I'll say one thing for the rain here: it keeps the streets clean," Iuventius said. "I might learn to stand it, just for that."
"It doesn't always smell this sweet," Rufus warned him. "In summer, those rivers stink of duck shit."
"Better than our own," Iuventius said. "Funny, that. Do they flood?"
"Constantly. It's great for defense."
Iuventius laughed softly. "I'll bet it is. Not a nice place to make your home, though."
"You won't stay?"
"I don't know. Frontiers are good for new slaves, and at least here I don't have greedy relatives trying to take sympathetic advantage of me. I hated the south. I might try Gaul at some point, I suppose." Iuventius looked Rufus in the eye. "Do you want me to stay?"
"I've missed you," Rufus said. "I'd forgotten what it was like. But you're so Neopolitan; I don't think you'll be happy here."
"I'm so soft, you mean," Iuventius said dryly. "I'm so coddled. You're right, of course, but I like the idea of at least trying to rough it."
"You've brought a household of slaves with you," Rusus pointed out. "Your chef is from Gaul."
"I'm not a soldier! I'm not going to go without them. Besides, it's better for business to have a good household."
"You're here to buy, not sell."
"I'm here to grieve," Iuventius said. "I'm here to mourn Pompeii and my parents. The rest is... the rest will follow, when it's ready."
"You think so?"
"I don't know. I was hoping you would."
Rufus slung an arm around Iuventius's shoulders. "I've not got enough years on you to help there. That's the thing about adulthood. Age won't matter again until we're hoary old patricians and philosophers." He squeezed Iuventius to him. "You're freezing, my friend. If you're bored of these barbarians we could go back the the barracks. Have a nice hot bath, some good wine, and bunk up together in my quarters?"
"You even flirt like a soldier," Iuventius said. "You've changed so much."
"Is that a no?"
Iuventius snorted. "Have I ever turned you down? Of course it's not a no. It's just another bit of Pompeii lost forever."
"I'm better in bed than I was then," Rufus assured him. "It's like the stench; some things are better buried by ash, my old techniques amongst them."
"I'll be the judge of that," Iuventius said with as much snot-nosed patrician's son pride as he could muster. They both laughed, loud in the wet night. An owl hooted nearby, and drunken shouts came from the inside of the tavern. This, at least, was familiar.