“This is so dreadfully dull,” complained a matron in a diaphanous gown as she reclined. A rumbling of the ground interrupted her. “Nothing ever happens around here.”
“Why not visit your sister in Herculaneum?” suggested her husband, in a tone implying lassitude. A pair of silk merchants was in the villa, standing in front of his couch with their wares – Rick and a historian. “Perhaps the beige. Do you like it?”
The matron wrinkled her nose. “No; I’d prefer a green for Octavia’s new gown. Segundus! Quintus!” she called and two young men arrived. “Get Sextus and Septimius and Octavia. It’s almost supper time.” After they’d left, she turned to Rick, “Nothing substandard. I know silk; that material is too rough.”
“This is authentic silk,” Rick said and then his jaw dropped as the young men returned with, apparently, Octavia and her brothers, one of whom had a large stain on the front of his tunic. But otherwise Rick was not paying attention to the young men, who were probably in their twenties. “There are natural imperfections in the material,” he explained hastily. Cocky, he approached Octavia. “I’ve got white with a pink stripe. It’ll look good on you. But then, anything will.”
She was maybe eighteen or so, he figured. She tossed her hair at him; it was honey blonde and done up in an elaborate, twisty style. She checked the fabric. “Oh, I do like it! It’s like a confection.”
There was another quick tremor. She put a hand on his arm to steady herself. She smiled at him. “Stay for the needlework and you’ll be able to see me in the gown.”
And hopefully out of it, Rick thought but didn’t vocalize. “Of course.”
“We’ll have the slaves make it fast,” said Octavia’s mother.
Four days later, the gown was done. Octavia was wearing it when Vesuvius erupted.
“Just as predicted,” Rick shouted to the historian, as they ran through stone streets that were rapidly becoming lava fields. He thought no one could overhear, or at least they weren’t paying attention as they fought to save their own skins.
But she had been following, stumbling along behind them and she was beginning to falter. “Who are you; that you knew of this?” She coughed as the smoke thickened and the area really began to reek of burning flesh and molten metal. There were screams all around them as people met their fates or saw others meet theirs.
She would die soon, and become a fossil. They all would. But saving any of them would mess with the timeline too much. He could not save her.
Rick cringed, his eyes tearing in the searing heat, and maybe from something else. He remembered Carmen’s requirement that he not wreak too much havoc on the timeline. “I’m no one; I’m just a stranger.”