@mc5punk 19 February 2025 more from that month

Short story: The Last Whisper of Pompeii

The morning of August 24, 79 A.D. came with a bitter omen. Marco Lucio Valerio, a spice merchant with fragmented memories, spat out the sour wine in front of the family lararium, a small altar dedicated to the protective spirits of home. His daughter Claudia, a twelve-year-old girl with charcoal-stained hands, let out a giggle when she saw her father's grimace. - Dad! Claudia exclaimed, laughing. The gods are drunk! Marco smiled, but his gaze was diverted to the altar where Julia, his aunt and priestess of Venus, was burning incense with an almost furious intensity. - What's the matter with you, Julia? Marco asked, frowning. Have you offended Venus? Without taking her eyes off the altar, Julia answered in a grave voice: - It's a strange day today, Marco. The air smells of warnings. In the unconcern of the moment, no one noticed the disturbing howls of dogs directed towards Mount Vesuvius, or the sudden stampede of bees leaving their hives. While Marco was in the Forum, immersed in the bargaining of the price of cinnamon with a Syrian merchant of henna-painted nails, the sky began to release a rain of pumice stones. - Ten drachmas for this cinnamon! - shouted the Syrian with a sly smile. - No more than five! Marco replied, raising an eyebrow. Do you think I'm a fool? The children, oblivious to the danger, picked up these volcanic stones as if they were toys, not knowing that each one was an omen of the inescapable fate that was hovering over them. Lucio, the baker with a smile always covered with flour, was trying to appease Tellus, the goddess of the earth. - Lucio! Marco shouted as he passed by. Don't you think you should leave those loaves in the form of...... Okay... you know what? Lucio laughed and shook his head. - Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to calm the gods. But don't worry; they're just breads. However, his oven creaked with a metallic groan, announcing the first crack that snaked through the terracotta floor. Julia felt the terror before the heat set in. In the temple of Isis, where he used to recite forbidden verses, the oil lamps were extinguished in unison. - What's going on? she wondered aloud as her fingers trembled as she unrolled a papyrus hidden between her breasts. "O Venus, let me burn in love, not in fire."* But the deafening roar of Mount Vesuvius drowned out her fervent prayer. Claudia, sensing the imminent danger, ran towards home with a podenco puppy clinging to her chest in search of comfort. - Dad! he shouted as he ran through the streets. Something terrible is coming! However, the streets he knew had been transformed into death traps: broken tiles were falling like giant's teeth, and the thousand-colored mosaics were cracking under his sandals. Arriving at the peristyle of his home, he noticed with horror that the mosaic of Livia, his mother whom he remembered only as a whisper of linen and salt, was beginning to melt. - No... It can't be! - Claudia whispered as she watched the glass tesserae come off like tears of molten glass. Marco was fighting against the human tide that was fleeing in terror towards the sea. - Claudia! Come here! - he shouted in despair as he advanced against the current. Don't stay behind! Blinded by panic, the Pompeians beat each other with garum amphorae and trampled amber necklaces in their frantic flight. He was advancing against the current, with the dried blood on his robe; a tragic memory of the moment when he had carried Decimo's body. He finally found Claudia hugging the puppy under the remains of the ceiling. - Claudia! Marco exclaimed relieved but scared. Are you okay? - Yes... but I'm afraid, Dad — she replied with tears in her eyes. Julia was shouting pagan psalms as the garden burned down in a matter of seconds. - Venus! Listen to my prayer! - cried Julia desperately. Titus, the Greek slave who solved mathematical equations with the precision of a sentence, drew a last Euclidean line in the air before his eyes burst from the heat. The volcanic cloud reached them at the moment when Marco was covering his daughter's eyes with a fold of his robe. "Close your eyes and hug the dog tight—" Marco told her in a trembling voice. Don't look at anything else. In an instant, seven hundred degrees Celsius turned his lungs into volcanic glass. They died in an embrace, with the dog's skeleton biting their ankle in an eternal gesture of protection. Centuries later, in a laboratory in Naples, an anthropologist reconstructed her last seconds using laser light resonances. Amazingly, the ashes had preserved even the smallest detail: the fold of the fabrics, the direction of the wind in her hair and the panic etched on her facial muscles. By amplifying the vibrations trapped in the plaster of their skulls, they managed to capture a shuddering echo: *"Cla...day..."*, Marco's voice whispered, an echo of love petrified in time. Today, tourists photograph the cast of his final embrace. However, no one seems to notice that every August 24th at 4:11 PM a fleeting shadow in the shape of a girl runs along the Way of Abundance. Archaeologists attribute it to simple games of light; but poets swear that it is Claudia eternalizing in ash her last drawing: a father, a daughter and the volcanic monster that made them immortal. Source of the images. Image created with Starryai.