Prologue
The greatest fantasy consumed by final passions dying not alone,
Where lips meet lips, flesh on flesh driving the chariot home.
So with me dear girl, will you fantasize about our last fateful day,
Burn with me love, consumed like the lovers of Pompeii
- Michael Cranford
xXx
November 29th, 2000 AD
Dirt slips through your fingertips as you dig, the stifling midday Italian sun beating down on your already sunburnt back. Overworked and underpaid, a normal degree decorated historian wouldn't be succumbing to such labour, but there was something about this dig that had you hooked. Though exhausted, your arms aching from continuous movements, it was as though the presence of the suddenly departed souls were moving around you, dancing their fingertips against your sensitive, reddened flesh.
Before your time working, the great city streets of Pompeii had already been re-erected, followed be the Casa di Loreio Tiburtino, the Casa dell'Efebo, the Casa di Trebio Valente and Via dell'Abbondanza, which goes from west to east all along the length of the town. The façades of the houses had been uncovered and restored to show their delicate beauty, followed by the great city walls to frame the once thriving place that had been bursting with life up until the eruption, buried under a hot layer of death 1921 years previous.
Despite the great archaeologists before your time uncovering such heart wrenching and incredible finds, you can't resist the feeling in your gut that something or someone out there is calling for you to find them. With the sudden end to so many lives and a now forgotten way of living, there were so many stories left unsaid; so many souls just waiting for their existence to be at peace.
It had always been your dream to bring closure to a society that had met such a brief, bitter end, over taken by poisonous gasses and boiling ash from the great Mount Vesuvius. To some, it may have been seen as something stemming from horror but to you – beautiful.
Smiling to yourself through your thoughts, you barely even registered the change of consistency to where your trowel was scraping over the ashen dirt, the distinctive noise of a scrape shooting to your ears.
"I think I've found what we're looking for," You called out, your voice shaking with the anticipation of what could possibly be hiding under the golden dirt.
At that instant, you could feel in your gut that you had uncovered something special; a story that had been waiting nearly two thousand years to inspire a generation.
The Pompeii Lovers, intertwined with one another for all eternity.
Notes: This is just something that has been wanting to get out of my head for a while. Let me know if you like the idea of the story. I know the prologue doesn't really add to much, but it's giving me a feel for it and hopefully setting the mood. I'll actually get the real story out in a day or so.. But if you read this: thank you so much!