957 A.U.C.
y stomach hasn't gone empty since my return to the city of Rome. I've been invited to homecooked suppers by a well-placed lady, keeping me from passing out in some damp alley while I hunt down work. This domina manages her household and family with such a strong and loving hand and knowing eye that being in her domus made me think of being at home with my own mother. And that was enough to shame me into following the family tradition Mother would want me to carry on. Besides, the scrutator business is slow and frustrating these days, and I was tired of walking in circles around the city. So I travelled to where the city of Hercules once stood.
The reminders are fading: No more are there gaping holes into the underworld's caverns or black tides on the water or noxious haze over the landscape, as in the stories Mother had from her grandfather. The fields have grown, animals roam freely. Homesteaders have returned, not forgetting that the cities lie beneath them, but taking their chances they won't anger the gods in whatever way their predecessors did.
I planned to stay at a small temple near the site, but before I reached it I met a man, all wirey arms and red-rimmed eyes, with his wares set up under a shaggy tent. It wasn't hard to figure him out for the looter and graverobber he was, and would have strangled him with his own tunic collar, if he hadn't flung a notebook at me -- dirty, scorched, ragged, yet readable still -- and if the name boldly written across the outer edge hadn't caught my eye. "There's more of where this comes from," he offered, "if you want it." I paid him more than he was worth and took the lot, and can't afford to pay the temple for my stay or for prayers to my ancestors, so I'm hitching a ride back to Rome, reading all the way. . . .
