====================== Challenge: Requiem by Nancy Kaminski (c) August 24, 1998 ====================== A Conversion Day vignette written on the 1,919th anniversary of the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of Pompeii I wrote this in answer to Erika Wilson's challenge for a Conversion Day story. Okay, it's a day late, but what's one day when the event was 1,919 years ago? I was fortunate enough to visit Pompeii in 1981 after the tourist season, and was able to wander at will through the city with only a few other people for company. It was a remarkable experience, and one that I treasure. I have never felt such a sense of antiquity and interrupted life as among those streets and houses. Thanks to Lisa McDavid for providing Lacroix's real name. It came in handy! Other than that, I was on my own, since I wrote this on my lunch hour instead of enjoying the wonderful Minnesota summer outdoors. The things I do for fan fiction! Permission is given to archive this story on Mel's FK fiction site. Everyone else, please ask. ~~~~~ Lacroix soundlessly settled to the earth. *His* earth. The stars glittered above in the hot August night, the Milky Way a sprawl of pale luminescence across the heavens. A light breeze soughed over the ancient cobblestones. The air smelled of dust, and heat, and age, and death. He was home. Pompeii. Why he had come back, on this night of all others, he was not sure. He had left Toronto with no explanation a month ago, his ancient soul suddenly restless for different sights, different sounds, and somehow drawn back to the city of his birth, and rebirth. Not that anything was different anymore. After nearly two thousand years of existence, nothing was new. He had seen it all, in one shape or another. When he took his leave Janette had merely smiled her secretive smile and wished him bon voyage. Nicholas had turned his back and told him never to return. Nothing ever changed. He had drifted across Europe, revisiting the places he had been so long ago---scenes of both defeats and victories, the latter more numerous than the former. He and his army had been an implacable instrument of conquest and destruction. But all those victories, all those triumphs, the wailing of the conquered, and the spoils of war had been reduced to nothing in the face of the mountain. That mindless primeval force of nature--- magnificent, terrible, and impersonal---had erased Pompeii in one dreadful afternoon. It would have erased him as well but for Fate. When the eruption and tremors woke him from his wine-induced sleep, his daughter had offered him the choice of living or dying. He chose to live---and never regretted it. And yet here he was, walking the resurrected streets of his ancestral city, seeing the eerily preserved husk for the first time since the First Death. All the vitality was gone; what was left seemed to mock him with silent accusations. "You survived, and we did not. Why did Fortuna favor you?" Why indeed. He had not been a philosophical man then---no soldier could afford that luxury and be victorious. Seizing opportunities, gaining advantage, and making the most of little, combined with a fierce tenacity in both his military and political lives (and they had been inseparably entwined) had been his skill. He had never wondered at his good fortune; he had merely taken the gift his daughter/mother had given him and turned it to his greatest advantage. Yet here he was musing over the meaning of his existence. He halted outside the iron gate protecting the entrance to the villa of Lucius Albuchius Celsus. He had known the man, a vain and foolish scion of an old family, who had subtly snubbed him as only old money and high position could do. He tossed a pebble into the empty atrium. It clattered to the floor and into the dry impluvium, echoing off the faded walls. "So much for your wealth and position, Celsus," Lacroix whispered. "You died as quickly as the least of your slaves. And here I am." The dead refused to answer him. Throughout the night Lacroix walked the streets of Pompeii, easily evading the patrolling watchmen. He silently visited the empty buildings and examined the plaster casts made of victims caught in the ash. His memories of mortal life were vivid and exact---why, he did not know. Nicholas' mortal life was but a fading impression to him, as was Janette's to her, and yet Lacroix remembered his own with almost the clarity of the vampire. And so in his mind he brought the dead city to life. Instead of empty streets and broken houses he saw crowds and bustling shops under the bright Mediterranean sun. He smelled sweat and heard the steady babble of voices, conversing, calling, hawking wares; carts creaking, hooves clattering on cobblestones, the bray of a donkey, the laugh of a child. And above all the vitality and energy he saw Vesuvius, a looming purple presence, covered in fields, vineyards, and orchards. Its rich soils had brought life to the area for almost a thousand years. It had been a beacon to him after a campaign, the sight telling him he was almost home---to rest, to lauds, to Selene and his daughter. But then it had brought death instead, and he changed forever. Close to dawn he found himself reading the graffiti on a wall near the Forum. The messages scratched in the white plaster ranged from the pathetic to the obscene---the outpouring of the masses for all to read. He considered the wall thoughtfully, then stooped to pick up a sharp stone. In the language of his mortality he carefully wrote a line of text under a message lamenting the discovery of an unfaithful lover. Lucius Divius Crucifictor returned home and found only ghosts and ashes, and nothing more. He dropped the stone and stepped back to examine his handiwork. Let the archaeologists fret over the minor vandalism, he thought, smiling thinly. They had done more than he ever could. He straightened and looked upward. The eastern horizon was lightening; Vesuvius' peak was tipped with gold. His past was truly dead, as dead as this shell of a city and its long- gone inhabitants. There was no meaning to his good fortune, no greater guiding force. It had happened, and that was that. It was time to go. Finis ~~~~~ Plaudits, criticisms, and Pompeiian generals may be sent to nancykam@mediaone.net