Celebwen Telcontar: This is somewhat like Tomb of Time, but it's a bit different and entirely from Didyme's point of view. And yes, Balrog, there's more volcanic activity in this story.

Balrog: Oo! Yay! I won't criticize you, then!

Celebwen Telcontar: Will wonders never cease?

Here I am, in this… rock, unable to move. The rock had been very, very hot for a time, so hot I thought it was going to kill me. Vampires are flammable, after all. But, somehow, it wasn't quite hot enough to burn me to a cinder.

How did I get here, trapped in this rock you ask? Well, it all started with my brother and Poseidocles. The Greek Vampire had a powerful talent, which makes me chuckle when I think of his name. Neptune, while the God of the Oceans and Horses, is also the God of Earthquakes, and is known as Poseidon to the Greeks, and since Poseidocles' name means "Glory to Poseidon", I think his mother must have been a Sybil, or Priestess. Poseidocles could sense and predict earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other geologic phenomena.

I'm getting off track.

It all started with the earthquake on August 16th. Aro immediately Read Poseidocles while the earthquake was going on. Only the vampires in Volterra could feel it; the humans had no idea the earth was moving. After the quake was over, Aro took Poseidocles into a secluded room, and conferred with him. At the time, I figured he was finding out the possibility of a devastating quake that could demolish our palace. That night, as I lay with Marcus, I felt a chill creep up my spine. The only other time that had happened had been the morning that Paris had shot my father, and when Aro had reappeared after his inexplicable disappearance, twelve years after the war had finished. I shrugged the feeling off, since both times I had had it, I was Human, and had forgotten about that. Vampires always remember everything after being turned, but often our Human lives are forgotten. I had forgotten that slight premonition of danger and heartbreak.

The next day, Aro ordered me to help the destruction in Herculaneum. Aro said that was the earthquake's epicenter, and so I went. Pompeii and Herculaneum were very wealthy towns, and some of the places that we got a lot of tithe from. It would put a major dent in our finances if either place were to collapse economically. I figured he sent me because I could keep hopes up. Now, I know differently.

Three hundred miles is nothing to a vampire. I got to Herculaneum in about half an hour, helping some of our major suppliers to patch their businesses and homes up after the quake. Aro told me to stick around after the repairs had been completed, because there was another quake Poseidocles had felt that would happen around 1:00 pm on the 24th. Since the entire town, and Pompeii and Stabiae had been shaken and damaged by the previous earthquake, I felt that was reasonable. Besides, the poor in the region ate fantastically, and I loved the taste of high-quality food and wine that they were seasoned with. Especially the Felarnian wine, it was sweet, and gave the blood the most wonderful taste… much better than the simple bread, gruel, and cheap wine taste you could find in Volterra.

Just after lunch on August 24th, I felt the ground shake. The quake was coming, and I decided to wait inside one of our most important clients' homes so I could keep some of the more valuable property from being destroyed. During the quake, there was a strange, loud boom. I went out to see what was going on, and saw an arm of smoke reaching from the mountain. I had trust in both Aro and Poseidocles, and since Poseidocles had never been wrong about anything, I figured it would be a minor eruption. I ignored it, and helped our client.

The day passed. I started to get uneasy a bit after dinner, since I had heard some strange sounds from the mountain all day. But, I trusted Poseidocles. He had never been wrong.

What a fool I was.

I followed the populous to the boathouses on the waterfront when they went down. At least I had a ready source for blood.

The sound of something rushing at an incredible pace down the mountain and through town made a chill go up my spine again. That was the only warning I had. Then, the cloud of superheated rocks, ash and gasses reached us.

For the first few minutes, I could smell the humans being flash-cooked. I wondered at the fact that I wasn't dying, that the heat wasn't hot enough to kill me. My hair didn't burn, as I thought it would. It was probably the fact that there wasn't enough air for anything to burn. I felt the land shake and tremble, bucking like a nervous colt. I cursed Poseidocles for being wrong, before realizing it wasn't his fault. Aro had taken him aside, and probably told him not to tell me about the impending catastrophe.

I didn't move, feeling the heat a thousand times worse when I did so. I didn't inhale at all, knowing that if I did so, the ash and gasses would fill my lungs, and make it impossible to breathe ever again. Not that I needed to breathe, but it was nice to be able to scent things.

So now here I am, trapped in a mess of volcanic rock. Once it had cooled enough that I didn't feel like it was going to kill me if I moved, I found that going so long without hunting had sapped my strength. I couldn't move. It was infuriating! My ears and nose were filled with the stuff, and it pressed against my closed eyes. I needed to sneeze, but I couldn't draw in a breath to do so. The air in my lungs stagnated, and started to feel strange. Trying to move my body resulted in the feeling of my body parts being detached then repaired as I relaxed my struggle.

I grew bored.

I began listing the names of everyone I ever knew, beginning with my parents and the Greek camp that was besieging Troy when I was born, and ending with the people I had met right before I was locked in this tomb. I finished, and began a litany of everyone I had ever eaten, which made me even hungrier. That took another couple days, maybe. Still, I was trapped.

I decided to dream about Marcus, about how I would greet him if—when—I got free of this sarcophagus. That made me lonely, longing for his touch, the sound of his voice, the whisper of his clothes against his perfect body, the entrancing sounds he made when we made love. I tried to moan, but couldn't.

My thoughts turned to what I would do to Aro. He would probably destroy Poseidocles once it was apparent that I wasn't coming back. Aro didn't like to have witnesses. He would probably come up with some convincing lie, saying both Poseidocles and I had died in werewolf attacks or had been burned by angry mobs. When I found him again, my half-brother would know the meaning of pain. The thoughts of vengeance took up a good many years, almost as long as the thoughts of Marcus. And there I was again, making myself lonely. I tried to sob, but couldn't with this prison surrounding me. So I fell into a strange torpor, trying to make the years pass faster. I tried to think of nothing and fall asleep. I think I must have succeeded.

I dreamed. They were odd dreams, mixed memories of my parents and Marcus. Memories joined the dreams, and strange thoughts wove odd melodies through the dreams. Strange sounds penetrated, the sounds of people talking, strange rumbling sounds. Several times, the ground shook again, and a couple times Vesuvius gave minor eruptions. Human wars came and went. No vampires knew I was here. Aro must have thought I had perished.

Then, bangings began. They got closer and closer, and woke me from my torpor. Humans were near! I tried testing my strength, but my long hibernation had resulted in me being weaker than a human.

Then, one day, I began to see strange visions. I saw rocks crumbling, being ripped apart by a pair of vampires, one male and one female. I didn't know either of them, but that wasn't surprising. Then, I saw a vision of the sky. It would have taken my breath away, if I could breathe. So blue, and so very crystal clear. I felt like crying. I heard words in a different language, and saw a woman bringing a brace of tigers. I got the idea that they wanted me to keep from eating humans, and only eat animals. Odd idea, but I would try, if the family and visions were real and not some vivid hallucination I was having.

Then, the rock was removed. My eyes were free. I opened them, for the first time in almost two thousand years.

The sky was so blue, so clear. The stars were so close; I felt I could touch them. Strange luminescence came from various areas, but I had my eyes focused on the sky. Then, my mouth was free, and the fur of a tiger was pressed against my lips. I couldn't bite it; I didn't have the strength to bite through the skin. The dark haired female bit the tiger for me, and held the wound against my mouth.

It was like nectar and ambrosia. I had gone so long without feeding that the feel of blood in my stomach was strange. I waited for a time, not scarfing it as I felt like doing. I took slow sips, letting myself get used to blood again. Slowly, my limbs began to regain their strength. While I was finishing the first tiger, the two vampires broke me out of the rock. I could move again, finally after so much time.

My legs wouldn't support me, and I fell into a heap on the ground. I took the tiger with me, and kept sipping at it. When I was finished, the second was handed to me. This one I could bite, and did so. The feel of blood flowing back through my veins was wonderful. It was like a pins-and-needles feeling, but so much stronger. I flexed all my muscles, and stood after the second tiger was finished. The blood left my stomach, flowing through my digestive and circulatory systems.

I took a deep breath, and did what I had been longing to do for almost two millennia, and sneezed the two nasty plugs of ash out of my nose. Finally, I could smell again!

I looked up at an image of a cat sneezing multiple times, to see a bronze-haired beauty. She had dark eyes, like the color of fresh turned soil. I could hear her heartbeat, tiny and quick, like a bird's.

"Please don't eat my daughter," the man said, looking me in the eye. I looked at him.

"She looks your age," I replied. He snorted.

"She's my daughter, carried by my mate, Isabella, while she was human. Renesmee is half-human half-vampire."

"I never knew that was possible."

"Nessie is a miracle. I'm Edward Cullen. This is my wife, Bella, and my daughter, Renesmee, Nessie for short." He gestured to the two women.

"My name is Didyme, daughter of Achilles and Briseis." Isabella gasped. She said something in a strange language to her mate, who replied in the same tongue.

"Come with us. We can give you a home, and a family. Marcus is still alive, and we will contact him, and only him, as soon as possible."

"Thank you," I whispered. Being able to be free was fantastic. Being away from Aro, yet being with Marcus would be paradise.

"Nessie?" Edward asked, turning to his daughter. She said something, then gave me a smile. She must have been the one sending me visions, for she grinned brilliantly at me an instant before I saw multiple images of Marcus. He looked so lonely, so sad… but that was probably because I had vanished under the volcanic eruption.

"What year is it?"

"The Year of Our Lord 2080. The Roman Empire fell in the Year of Our Lord 476. The Europeans found the continents of North and South America in the 16th century, and most of the global economic power is centered in what is called the United States of America, which takes up a good chunk of central North America. The city of Rome is simply a city now, not even the capitol of Italy."

I felt slightly dizzy. So many changes! And—"The Year of Our Lord? What Lord?"

"Jesus Christ. Historians adopted that as a way of telling what era they were speaking about."

"So Christianity became widespread?"

"Very. It's now one of the three leading religions of the world, the other two being Islam, which was created after your… entrapment, and Judaism, which is one of the oldest religions in the world." Edward was being very patient with my history lesson. "What year did I get… entombed?"

"The Year of Our Lord 79. You've been under for just over two thousand years." His voice was gentle. I looked at him, and suddenly noticed something strange, focusing on that to keep from losing my mind with all the changes over two millennia.

"Your eyes are gold. How did they get that way?"

"We—my family and I—only hunt animals. Your eyes are gold after the two tigers you had, since you had no human blood left in you."

"Animals. They taste different depending on their diet, right?"

"Carnivores are tastier to us. I personally prefer puma and grizzly bear to many other carnivores."

"What's a puma and a grizzly bear?" I asked, feeling dense.

"A puma is a large lion like cat from the Americas. A grizzly bear is a massive bear found in North America. We can tell you more when we get home." He conversed with his wife and daughter, then his daughter went off in a different direction. Edward presented his back to me. "Climb on. You have been still for over two millennia, so you probably can't keep up. We're headed back home." I climbed onto his back, marveling at the odd clothes he wore. Then, we were off.

Celebwen Telcontar: The "Year of Our Lord" bit is a direct translation of Anno Domini, which is known more commonly as A.D. The fact that Didyme couldn't understand Bella and Nessie is because Didyme and Edward were speaking in Latin. Nessie has managed to project her talent past her skin. Did I miss anything?

Balrog: I don't think so.

Celebwen Telcontar: Alright, please review, people!