Page 16 of We Were Eternal Once

“Three,” you say, holding up a third finger. “We continue to Rome.”

“How?” I ask.

“A ship. Though it will be risky. We’d be in boxes to prevent being touched by the sun. If we’re overtaken by pirates and they open the boxes during the day…” You trail off and I shudder.

“So two options then,” I say. “How long can a war last?”

You don’t answer at first, your gaze faraway. Then your red eyes land on me, waiting.

“You want me to decide?” I ask. You nod, and my heart soars. My choice, whatever I want. The decision laid at my feet. Whatever I choose, it will never be away from you.

“We stay,” I say. “A home, you say? No more inns?”

“No more inns,” you promise.

And for a time, you keep that promise.

We find a home deep in the outskirts of Patras, where the hills disappear into shadows. It’s small, with a path that turns to mud when it rains. The ceiling leaks with the heaviest downpours. But under the bed is a grave for us to rest, safe from prying eyes should anyone enter during the day and look for us.

For a time, it is all I want.

The soldiers are easy to pick off, and I grow stronger with my control. Soon I can whisper in their mind without opening my mouth, though it takes a lot out of me. We never go hungry, and every morning I crawl into my grave with you pressed against me.

You teach me to read Greek, and together we learn Latin. We join the townspeople during nighttime festivals to gods we’ve robbed.

But war is not pretty. The boats bring with them disease, the soldiers are not kind. They leave the port children with hairless faces and return hollow-eyed and dull. The city seethes as prices soar.

At first, I think these are the worries of a mortal. This war is but a few years in a life that will stretch to the end of time. I will blink and they are born and then die, as nameless as the one before them. I cannot keep track of the amount of soldiers we drain, of the ones we let live. I do not know the names of our neighbors, I do not care.

That detachment leads to a degree of … tedium.

We rise with the moon and hunt. We return home and I read. We practice Latin. We make love. We crawl into our grave.

We rise with the moon and hunt.

We crawl into our grave.

I try to hunt a local. Your fingers close on my wrist, firm enough to break the bones there. You remind me of the stories from the tavern, of the cities that lay in rubbled ruins from the war. Of the home we secured, of the ever-present food source of soldiers.

“You picked this path,” you remind me, as if I understood what it meant.

The festivals stop.

Another shipment of soldiers march into the horizon, for only half to return. Our food source trickles.

This means plan three is the only plan left. Charter a ship, sail to Brundisium, travel by land to Rome. I’ve seen the maps, I can read them now. My fingers trace the path we’d take, across the sea and up the Roman Empire to its heart.

“How would we charter a boat?” I ask one day.

“You decided to stay here,” you remind me. I annoy you with this line of questioning, but I don’t care.

“We can’t stay here forever,” I lament.

“It’s a few years. It means nothing in the grand span of time,” you tell me. Again.

Tomorrow we will have the same conversation. And the day after and the day after.

“This city is too small,” you say, placing a hand on mine. “I told you—one day I will show you decadence. In Rome you will never be bored.”