When the ash had settled and the ground had cooled, the caravan set out from Misenum to Pompeii. Each with relatives lost to the inferno, the travellers sought some semblance of restitution for their loved ones. Among the travellers were the young Pliny, hoping to honor his uncle; Marcus, a freed slave searching for the remnants of his benevolent master; and Julia, a woman yearning a proper burial for her beloved family. After months of traversing the countryside, the trio finally arrived at the city of ashes. Pliny immediately broke out his papyrus scroll and began writing letters, while Marcus, recoiling at the sight, could bare nothing other than to turn back and weep through the same journey he’d just conquered.
When Julia laid eyes upon what was once the city that she had a life in, her breath escaped her. Pompeii was where she grew up; where she learned the ins and outs of city life; where she said her vows for the first time; and where she brought her two most prized possessions into the world. She thought back to the last time she had seen her children, the memory still glowing with a furious vivacity. They clung to the servant as she rode away, not knowing this would be the last time they would lay eyes on their mother. Julia had married young, and was naive to the hardships that followed concemation. Quintus, who once held her lovingly, left her bed not long after it was made. He chased a younger suitor, a woman held higher in the eyes of the people, and she was forced to leave behind everything she knew on his declaration of divorce and remarriage to another. Julia was forced from her home and no longer had a place in Pompeii, finding temporary refuge in Misenum, a town nearby. She had not been away long when the volcano had erupted, and terror struck the deepest parts of her soul when she realized the danger her children were in and the state of helplessness she existed in. Brought back to the reality of the disaster that lay before her, Julia began to aimlessly wander in search for any remanence of things that were once known to her. There were no traces of life amongst the layers of ash; the land was barren and sulking under its own defeat. While the shell of a once booming city was all that remained, there was no time to grieve for anything other than the souls pleading for passage across the river Styx. She imagined her own children, suffering and unrested souls, pleading with the ferryman to get to the other side. With this thought, she set out for what she’d come for: to give her children a proper burial so that their souls may find a place to rest in the Underworld. She began her way back to the outskirts of the city, wasting no time in fashioning two small tombstones for her beloveds.
Julia decided to place them alongside the most prominent road leading into the now desolate wasteland so that passerbyers could give them their due respects. She beckoned “Madus,” three times and proceeded to do the same for Amelia. She felt a calming energy whisp over her body unto the ground before her, and raising her palms to Olympus rejoiced: “Thank you. My children are home.” But no god answered her. “Julia,” a dark and demonic voice cried. “If you plan to leave me here - my spirit unsettled and spurned in Erebos for 100 years, then it is here that you will join me!” Julia slowly stood up and turned to meet the presence bellowing from behind her. Eye-to-eye she stood with Quintus, her old husband who’d divorced her and banished her from their home. Though she wept at the loss of her children, Julia could have no less relished his fate. “You really came all the way here to let me rot, Julia? Don’t think your miscreants are the only souls crossing the Styx today. Build me a tomb and lay me to rest!” But with the horror of her unfortunate past still emblazoned in her mind, Julia ran.
And as Julia and Pliny made her way back home, she could hear the faint laughter of her children leaping through the fields of Elysium.