He used to be a man. A hero, a creator, a good person. Used to be.
Before the Fall.
He couldn't remember the Fall. He couldn't remember anything after it, either.
Until he had met them. He knew he had been a shepherd then, and his dogs had panicked when a wolf approached in broad daylight. He couldn't remember what it looked like, nor the children. There had been children at one point. Not his own. Not like anything he had seen. Twins, he remembered vaguely. Beautiful boys, perfect in any way he could ask for. What were their names, again? They escaped him, slithering through his grasp.
Most memories did, nowadays.
But he remembered being in love once, briefly, with a goddess. He had met her, briefly, once. She had been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
But she wasn't his. She wasn't theirs.
Stolen, his mind supplied. Stolen from her husband. What was his name? It was on the tip of his tongue, now, but he couldn't form the word.
He would know it if he ever met him again, though.
A king. Her husband had been a king and then the Fall happened and now he was wandering the streets of Rome, wondering what had ever become of his Goddess. Looking for her, but he knew she wouldn't be here.
East. He would have to go east to find her.
But he wouldn't, he knew.
She was taken and too far Gone for him to ever hope to find. And then he had Gone too.
It had been Different than the old tales at the edges of consciousness, more than he could ever hope to know. He had no coins. Nothing to give the boatman. And yet he had crossed. Crossed and been punished for a reason lost in the millennia between then and now. He had given up on remembering a long time ago. A beautiful woman crossed his worn path around the city and his heart hurt despite the smile he flashed when she said hello.
Everyone reminded him of his Goddess. He couldn't forget her.
And some small, masochistic part of himself told him he shouldn't.
Just a quick Drabble thing based off my personal head canon that before Rome became a Nation, he was Aeneas.