I woke up the next day with my sister Varia standing over me, being as bossy as always, yelling for me to get up and get moving. I groggily said something about getting up in a few minutes, and she left, knowing I was a heavy sleeper and usually needed a few minutes to get up. As I slowly worked my way into consciousness, I thought about how Dog was doing and how long it had been since I last fed him. At least three days, maybe more, which meant he would be extremely hungry when I next saw him.

After I had fully woken up, I rose from the bed and walked into the main room where Varia and Lar were already up and arguing about something trivial. Mother and Father were up too and were having a small quarrel of their own. When Mother and Father noticed me, however, they stopped arguing. Father told us that it was time to go to the thermopolium for breakfast, and Varia and Lar grudgingly stopped the argument of their own and followed Father, Mother, and I out the door of our apartment room. 

After we descended the stairs and walked out of the apartment, I noticed something odd. No birds were singing and there was a more-than-usual amount of dogs barking. Looking around I saw not a single bird in the sky nor perched on a rooftop or on the ground. The gods had been taking their anger out on us since the beginning of summer by causing grapes to die and for fish to die in the Sarno River. Even our highest priests could not fathom what they were angry about. Proper offerings had been made at every meal, a portion of food put into the fire, and we had celebrated all of the festivals of the gods properly, and Vulcan had seemed happy the other day when he had caused the earth to shake. Now, I was starting to think that the shaking earth had not been out of joy, but out of anger at us. But for what I couldn’t think of, and neither could anyone else in the whole city of Pompeii.

Lar and I talked about inviting over our good friends Marcus and Gallus over to play hide and seek this afternoon as we walked to the thermopolium. It was about prime time for families like ours to be getting breakfast at the thermopolium, so I wasn’t surprised in the least to see the thermopolium jam-packed with people tripping over one another in their haste to get to where they wanted to go in a timely manner, which was nearly impossible because of how crowded it was. Vendors called out their wares to people walking by and customers haggled with sellers of various things like bread, pottery, and knives of all sorts. By the time we had gotten there, I was very hungry, so we turned to the nearest bread selling stand with the shortest line.

After waiting in line for about fifteen minutes we got to the front. Father ordered one loaf for all of us and paid with a knife he had recently forged at his job, which was a blacksmith. I took my small piece of bread and ate it very slowly, to try to preserve it, but the temptation proved too much for me and I ended up gulping it down as fast as possible leaving me no bread for Dog. I immediately felt bad but, luckily for Dog, Lar wasn’t hungry for he had eaten too much at last night’s gladiator fight so he gave about half of his share of bread to me. I told him I would save it for later and shoved it in my pocket for Dog.

As we were walking back home from the thermopolium I saw some people pointing towards the mountains. I stole a glance in that direction and saw steam spiraling up from the mountains as white as a cloud against the cold blue sky. From the distance I was at it was impossible to tell which mountain the steam was coming from. I pointed this out to Mother, Varia, Father, and Lar and they stared open-mouthed at the mountain for they too had never seen anything like that before that day. Mother and Father broke into a hushed conversation that we kids didn’t interfere with because we knew it was more important to make a decision on what to do than to hear what they were saying. They decided that we should continue about our day unless the steam started hurting or affecting us in another way. And so we continued on our way home, stealing terrified glances at the mountains and the steam slowly spiraling up into the sky and looking as harmless as a butterfly, and making beautiful shapes against the brilliantly blue sky.

When we arrived back home we walked to our altar and kneeled in front of the statues of our family, Varia with her pretty face and tall stature, Mother with her warm eyes and short height, Father with his big burly muscles and crazy hair, Lar with his mischievous eyes and curly hair, and me, with warm eyes like my mother and crazy hair like my father. I kneeled down to pray our morning prayers, though I couldn’t help from adding a part about sparing me and my family from the danger of the steam, looming like the shadow of a mountain, big and dark in our future.

Mother looked me straight in the eye and told me that not knowing what five plus seven was completely unacceptable, and I would not be allowed to play with Marcus or Gryllus until I ran through the whole ten-table of addition again. I was really just distracted by the steam coming out of the mountains so I told her that five plus seven was 57 and apparently my wild guess was nowhere near the correct answer of twelve. Mother had been teaching me basic math for the past few years and I wasn’t really trying my hardest. I knew that some of it would come in useful later in life when counting things, but it was the patricians who got to go to school and learn how to argue and do advanced math. For plebians, you just learned your father’s profession if you are a boy and some basic skills like reading and writing. Soon, Father was going to teach me the ins and outs of being a blacksmith like he was doing with Lar, who was three years older than me at 10. I thought about the unfairness of all of this, and even though I really wanted to be a blacksmith, I also wanted to know as much as the patricians.

After I had run through the ten-table with Mother again, this time focusing my whole attention on it and getting everything right, I walked downstairs to level three where Lar and Gryllus were already playing a game with balls. Lar rolled the ball straight towards Gryllus, who did a kind of spin to dodge it and flung it back at Lar with the bare fingertips of his hand. Marcus was sitting a few feet back from them, sulking. I asked if I could play, and Lar and Gryllus said to wait for the next round so I sat down next to Marcus. He was taller than me with large hands and a light complexion. He told me he was sitting in the corner because he had already been hit by the ball and was annoyed because of it. After Lar or Gryllus won, I can’t remember who, Lar suggested we play outside and we agreed whole-heartedly. Before we went, I grabbed a wooden hoop and told Gryllus’s mother that we were going to play outside.

Outside, it was a balmy, sunny day with occasional clouds crossing the sun. Horses trotted down the streets and merchants sold their goods off the side of the road. Slaves ran errands for masters and friends chatted cordially. We walked down the street to our normal spot, dodging hurrying shoppers and the occasional patrician-on-horse. When we were about halfway there, the earth started shaking again, but this time more force so Lar, Marcus, Gryllus and I fell over almost immediately. I heard shingles fall off roofs, and people shriek as they fell over. Then the shaking stopped and I felt relief that the danger had passed. As we staggered up a man of about 18 screamed shrilly and pointed towards the mountains. I threw my head around and saw what he had been screaming about, the steam that had previously been coming from the mountain had turned as black as night and was drifting in our direction. Marcus screamed and stood there in shock so I grabbed him by his toga and dragged him back towards our apartment. Other people screamed and the street’s previously little order dissolved into chaos with people running and falling over one another, trying to get back to their homes. Marcus had regained enough sense to run and dodge the people alongside me. I couldn’t see Lar or Gryllus in the panic of the crowd so Marcus and I just ran forward toward our apartment. Rocks started raining down, about the size of a fist, so were yelps of pain were added to the screams and shouts. A rock the size of a human head hit a house two feet from Marcus on my left, crashing into it and making a large hole in the roof.

I could feel the rough cobblestones through my calceus as Marcus and I staggered towards the apartment. Ash started falling like a death-black version of snow as we ducked inside the apartment. Screams and shrieks still echoed from outside as we stopped to catch our breaths. I told Marcus to stay there and ran back outside in search of Lar and Gryllus. The ash burned my skin and I almost turned back, but I knew that Lar and Gryllus would need help getting home, for the cloud of ash had completely blocked out the sun and turned day to night. A falling rock hit me on the shoulder, scalding my skin and burning a small hole in my tunic. Vulcan, the god of fire, had to have been behind this, because of all of the hot and burning ash and rock. I called for Lar and Gryllus, to no avail for the screams of the people blocked out all sound. A horse whinnied somewhere to the left and I heard a vendor’s stand collapse. I called out again and again and an acrid tang started to build in my mouth. Coughing I almost gave up hope, until I heard a voice calling for Marcus and me. I shouted back and they came stumbling blindly over to me. I grabbed them both by the hands and we staggered over to the apartment. As we stumbled into the apartment a look of relief washed across Marcus’s face. All four of us were coughing and covered in soot but we were alive and that was the important thing. We walked/stumbled/crawled up the stairs of the apartment. When we reached level three we parted with Marcus and Gryllus. Lar and I stumbled up two more levels where Mother was arguing with Father about going out to look for us, but my coughing gave our presence away. She gasped and ran over to embrace Lar first and then me. Mother started brushing ash and soot off our tunics and togas and then ran to get water to put on our burns. After we walked inside I almost immediately collapsed onto the floor. The last thing I remembered before I blacked out was Varia, Mother, Lar, and Father standing over me concernedly, pressing water on to my burns.

I slowly rose back into consciousness for the second time that day. The building groaned, but from what? I realized I was on Lar and my cot from the lumpy and uncomfortable surface. That was when I remembered the ash and rocks falling from the sky and I bolted upright and looked around. Same old smelly falling apart apartment except for groaning and creaking coming from the roof. I got up and walked into the main room, and Mother and Father were talking about what to do while Varia and Lar were listening to them talk and looking like they had seen a ghost from Pluto’s realm. 

As soon as I walked into the room and I started coughing and so for the second time that day, Mother and Father stopped talking and turned to face me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just waved and walked over to where Varia and Lar were sitting and sat down. Mother and Father resumed their discussion, more hushed this time, probably because they didn’t want me to know the difficulty of our situation, which I already did. We had two options, make a run for it outside and probably die from heat, ash, and falling rock, or wait inside the crappily built apartment and probably die from the building collapsing from the weight of the ash and rock piling up on our roof. Both ways probably meant death, but I was in favor of running outside for death seemed assured as the apartment creaked and swayed in Vulcan’s rage. Mother and Father agreed with me, and after about twenty more minutes they told us the plan they had made up. We would wrap cloth across our mouths to help keep out the ash, I would grab all of the statues of our family and the gods, and then we would run with Father helping me because I was the littlest and was the most affected by the ash for the five minutes I had been outside earlier. Since we were close to the harbor, we would run to the there and try to board a boat. 

And so we prepared with me gathering the statues, Varia ripping up strips of cloth from my favorite blanket for our mouths, Father gathering our money and valuables, and Mother and Lar getting the leftover piece of bread we had for lunch and waiting by the door. All of this took five minutes, and we left out of the door of our apartment and walked down the rickety stairs. We all wrapped the cloth over our mouths and nodded to each other to signal that we were ready. From inside the apartment, the screams were muted and sounded like they were from a whole different world, but as Varia opened the door they returned in full force. I heard shingles fall off of roofs, market stands collapse, and people call for loved ones they would probably never see again. Varia stepped outside, and Father after her and then came Mother and Lar. I took a deep breath, the last fresh one I would get in a few hours, and ran out after them. Flaming rocks hurtled from the sky and reaped destruction wherever they hit. Other people ran on the street, going different directions and crashing into each other. About a foot of ash had collected on the ground, as hot as my Father’s forges. A flaming rock the size of my Father’s head fell from the sky and whizzed past my left ear, hitting the cobblestone of the road and bending it into the ground. An inch closer and I would have been dead. Just from breathing the smoky air for a minute I had started coughing again. It was hard to run with the ash on the ground but we tried our best. In this case, our best wasn’t enough.

As we half-ran and stumbled through the streets I fell behind. I was a snail at running in the first place, and the ash on the ground didn’t help matters. My legs burned with each step and I knew that I was going to die. Collapsing to the ground, my whole body started to feel the raging fire of Vulcan’s anger. I whispered a prayer to Vulcan to stop this madness and let me live. Then, a strong hand gripped my arm and hauled me up onto my Father’s back. I threw my hands around Father’s neck and he started running forward with the strength of a bull from working in the forges since he was eight. Mother, Varia, and Lar were up ahead, fighting their way through the ash, but Father and I gained on them quickly and we fell in step with them once we arrived. We turned at a right angle and continued down another street, the constant cacophony of screams and shouts accompanying us. The number of people that were on this street was double the last one. I figured that other people had the same idea about going to boats like us. We had to dodge horses, falling rocks, and people running the other way for no apparent reason. Our pace had slowed from a walk to a crawl with the increased number of people on this street.

Suddenly a column from a broken theater to my right started groaning and it began to fall over towards me. Father, not noticing the falling column, kept going forward and so I leaped off him and my butt was fortunately cushioned by the ash when I landed, the column still falling in a path to crush my head. I was in a kind of awkward sitting position and my butt burned from the fall and the foot of ash it landed on, which pillowed like snow when I landed. Mother and Varia were right behind me while Lar and Father were up ahead. I was the only one in the path of the column. They should have let me die, should have survived themselves. But Varia who had no time to think about her choice shoved me out of the way of the column, sacrificing her family that she could have built, her plans, her dreams, her hopes, and her life, for me, her younger brother. I tumbled out of the way of the column with Varia’s strong push, she had always been pushy, always telling me what to do and bossing me around because she was older than me. The column crushed the life out of her, her back twisting weirdly, and she, and I, knew she had no hope.

“Go,” she rasped to me with one of her final breaths.” become the world's greatest blacksmith like you want. Go!”

“No!!” I screamed as hands gripped me from the back and dragged me onward.

Mother ran around the side the wreckage of the column and crouched next to Varia, her whole body shaking as Varia’s life was snuffed out by the fury of the gods. Tears leaked from my eyes and Lar’s hands held me tight. Father ran up to Mother’s side and slowly pulled her away towards us. I may have been imagining it, but I was sure I saw tears in his eyes. As they moved away I got a glimpse of Varia, and she wasn’t moving. I choked back another sob, and Lar and Father gently pushed Mother and me on. We slowly warmed up to the idea of moving, Mother and I, and we started to pick up the pace again.

 After I had been hit by falling rocks about the size of my fist probably twenty times, with each time adding a new bruise or burn to my growing arsenal, Father and Lar had nearly been crushed by a rock as big as a lion, and Mother had stopped and started crying twice (we had to get her moving again each time), I collapsed in the ash again, which was still as hot as flames. I was out of strength and Lar had started leaning against Mother a few paces back. Father picked me up and hauled me onto his back again, and while I tried to protest, I was too weak to do much of anything except hang like a sack of potatoes around my Father’s back. At this point, breathing the smoky air was hard and I broke out coughing every ten seconds. Mother and Father looked at each other, both knowing what I knew, I was going to die unless we made it to the boats soon. And so we tried to pick up the pace more, but the effort proved to be fruitless and we couldn’t go any faster. If anything, we started going slow with the smoky air and coughing leaving us short of breath. That was when the second, and not even close to last, catastrophe happened in the day-night of Pompeii.

A flaming rock was thrown up from the mountains by Vulcan, and what a beautiful arc it made. It fell with the force of Mars and was Mercury as it flew down. The rock was about the size of a bull and had little indentations shaped in it, like all the other rocks that had fallen that night. Poor Mother, for it flew onto her head, she had no time like Varia to say any last words, one moment she was living, and the next she was dead. It was Lar who was the first of us to notice. He had walked up to us for a minute to tell us something, so he was spared from the falling rock. But he heard the crash over the chaos of the streets, and he was the first to turn around and scream, looking at Mother’s charred body. For the second time that day, I dropped to the ground, some of my strength regained, and we turned around to look at Mother. Father ran over to her side, repeating no over and over again to himself as if that would reverse what had happened. I just stared in shock at what happened, tears wetting my eyes as they did when Varia died. The tears from my eyes had dried up from when Varia died, but no water lasted long in this heat. Lar was crouching at Mother’s side, next to Father, not too close in fear of sharing Mother’s fate themselves. The ash burned sinisterly on my ankles, people screamed and shrieked around me and stumbled towards the harbor, but none of it mattered except Mother’s body, Lar, Father, and me. I almost collapsed in my sadness, almost gave in, almost fell over into the hot and burning ash to end my life, but instead, I did the logical thing. I grabbed Lar and Father by the shoulders and gently did as Father and Lar had done to me when Varia died. I led them away from Mother’s body.

Eventually, they warmed up to the idea of moving and getting away from the death and destruction as I had done when Varia had died, and we picked up the pace again. Lar and I took turns being part of the father-son jockey and so we made progress forward, getting closer and closer to the harbor with each step. I was riding on Father’s back and a few steps ahead of Lar, when another flaming rock, this time the size of an elephant, hit the apartment to our left. It was like ours in many ways, boards hanging loose, smelly, and most importantly, built out of wood. When the rock hit the apartment, the whole thing exploded, as bright as the sun in this unnatural night, and shrapnel flew in all directions. People on the street who were closer to it were immediately had flaming shrapnel bash into them and they either burned to death or died from the impact of the shrapnel. People who were farther away, like us, had a chance of life. A piece of shrapnel flew past my left ear, an inch closer and I would have been dead. I fell to the ground as Father ducked under a piece of rubble from a previous explosion. I tried not to think about what had happened to the people inside the apartment, I hoped they all had gotten out as we had. I didn’t even realize anything was wrong until I turned around to check to see if Lar was okay. He wasn’t. A piece of shrapnel had lodged itself in his gut and just from looking at him I knew he was dead. For the third time that day tears sprang to my eyes and I remembered his tricks and how he had always loved to play with marbles. I had always fought with him over dumb things like who got to play with which toy. Now, I was thinking about how he had always shared his food with me and had taught me how to be tough like he always was.

“I love you, Caelus,” he said with his final breath. “I’m sorry for all the fights, I should have been a better big brother.”

“No!!” I screamed and I started sobbing as his eyes turned dull and he stopped breathing.

Father grabbed my shoulder and turned me around from his body and led me away from everything, the burning streets of Pompeii, the bodies of my loved ones, and the other people suffering in their houses, or running through the streets and trying to get away, to live, as Mother, Lar, and Varia failed to do. My life, as burned and broken as my dead family, somehow continued. When everything seemed as dark as night, I had one thing left with them, as constant a companion as the sun and moon. Hope. And hope was what kept me going, what kept me walking, stumbling, and crawling towards life, the boats. As we fought our way towards life I clung to hope, as it had never failed me yet and will never fail me until I let loose my final breath and join my family in the underworld.

Father and I, leaning on each other, covered in cuts and burns, our togas and tunics in tatters, arrived at the harbor. It was complete chaos with people fighting over spots to board boats and patricians trying to create order from chaos and failing miserably. The ash was now up to my waist so Father walked in front to clear a path for me. It was still as black as night from the ashy sky and rocks still dropped from the sky, but here there was no panic for everyone could see an obvious way out, a boat. Father must have been worried about us getting onto a boat because he scanned the harbor and his eyes alighted on a man next to a small fishing boat and offering it up for money. Nobody was taking the offer so Father and I fought our way through the ash and up to the boat. Father asked him how much for the boat and he said three silver coins. My father’s eyes widened and he turned to leave but I pulled out three silver coins, three-quarters of my life savings, and handed it to the man. Father gasped in shock as the man grinned, shook my hand, and walked off to find another boat to board. He looked at me in awe and I shrugged and walked into the boat.

Father took to the oars and we rowed away, leaving the screams of the people behind us. I could see that he was beginning to tire like I had countless times over the course of that day. With nothing but the calm bay and the death-black sky, closing my eyes I could almost imagine that we were on a relaxing boat ride under the starry night sky. Almost. I would never forget what happened in Pompeii, and I was never going back. I had always wanted to leave, but not in that way. Not with Mother, Lar, and Varia dead. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I remembered Lars face as his eyes had dulled and Varia telling me to go and fulfill my life dream, to go to Rome and become a blacksmith for her. I promised myself I would do it, no matter the cost. We rowed away from Vulcan, god of the forge, fire, and blacksmiths, who had spared Father and me from his wrath. But not Lar, who had said he was a bad big brother, he wasn’t really, we had just fought once or twice. Or Varia, who had told me to go and become a blacksmith, for one time I had told her my dream of becoming the world's best blacksmith and swore her into secrecy. And Mother, who I had been mad earlier that day for keeping me from playing with Marcus and Gryllus, who were probably dead in Pompeii like her.

That was when we stopped moving. I didn’t notice at first, completely immersed in my crying, but when I finally lifted my head up I saw Father kneeling at the bottom of the boat, coughing and retching. I ran over and kneeled next to him and started crying again. I was scared out of my mind, and Father sounded like he was dying. He had always been the strongest of the family, now he was kneeling at the bottom of the old fishing boat and dying. I cried my eyes out as his soul joined Pluto and the rest of my family in the underworld.

“Caelus,” Father said with his final breath and his eyes dulled as Lar’s had.

I screamed in agony from the unfairness of it all, slamming my fist on to the wooden bench of the boat, which hurt even more and caused me to start crying harder. I gripped the statue of my Father with my fist, causing the other ones of the gods and my family to clunk into the bed of the boat. I looked down and saw Mother, Varia, Lar, and Vulcan on top of the pile and a sudden rage flew through me. I grabbed Vulcan’s statue and hurled into the sea. I could hear the soft plunk in made on the smooth surface of the Bay of Naples. As the realization of what I had did sunk in I prayed to the gods that I was sorry even though I knew that nothing would come of it. I was going to die, being punished by the gods like the rest of my family. I looked up and there was Vulcan, with his hammer in his hand and a short beard. He was standing on Neptune’s realm with ease and I knew the end had come so I closed my eyes and waited for death. But death didn’t come. I timidly opened my eyes. Vulcan was still standing there, hammer in hand, doing nothing. As the realization hit me that I wasn’t going to die, I tried a little wave to him which yielded no response. He just stood there, bobbing up and down with the rise and fall of the ocean, as if he was thinking about killing me but hadn’t decided yet. And then, a boat I had not noticed because I had been immersed in staring at Vulcan, sailed right towards him and when they were about a hand apart Vulcan disintegrated into ash. Somebody was yelling from the boat and I collapsed in a heap right next to Father, his blank eyes still staring into nothingness. I started coughing as Father had when a strong hand gripped my shoulder and the whole world faded into black.

I slowly rose into consciousness in a room made of wood, like my apartment, but with solidly built walls and a solidly built floor. A door to my left was slightly ajar and there was an end table by the bed I was sleeping in. My mouth was a desert so I looked around for a cup of water, and luckily there was one on the end table next to the bed I had been sleeping in. I wondered where I was, I had never touched a true bed before, as I chugged down the water in the cup until it was all gone. It was then that I remembered Lar's face as his world ended, Varia telling me to run away and become a blacksmith, Mother and Father dying, and Pompeii getting bombarded by rocks and ash. I immediately sobered and started crying again. I remembered the screams, the ashes, the rock that had immediately destroyed Mother. I knew I wasn’t there now for I saw sunlight peeking through a window. Judging by the angles of the rays of light it was early morning.

After I had composed myself I stood up, my legs aching from burns and cuts, and started to explore the room. I found a bundle of my possessions, along with some of Father’s. His hammer was there, along with the statues of my family and the gods, excluding Vulcan’s. I gripped the hammer in my hand, squeezing my eyes shut, a tear trickling down my cheek. Then I walked over to the chair in the corner and sat down and thought. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, it could have been five minutes, it could have been an hour, when a man of about fifteen walked in, whose name I never learned. I was polite and told him hello and then he crouched down next to me and I started asking questions. From those questions and answers, I was able to piece together what had happened to me. The boat had just left the harbor when the patrician and many of the plebs on board heard a scream of anger. The patrician decided to find whoever had screamed and try to help them in any way he could. So the boat turned aside from its path to Herculaneum and the rowed towards the scream. They found me in five minutes and watched me stare at the boat and then collapse. After I had collapsed someone from the boat, an extremely good swimmer, jumped into the water and grabbed my shoulder as I passed out. Then, the boat rowed up and I was delivered safely on to it. The boat was on a course to Herculaneum to see if it could help people there. When they got there, however, Herculaneum was gone and there were no survivors. And so the boat continued on its way to Neapolis where I was now. He also told me I was in a house of a patrician that had agreed to let me stay here until I had recovered from my injuries. I doubt he would have done this if I wasn’t seven and I was a survivor from Pompeii. He told me that Pompeii was buried in ash and rock and that there was a whole desolation around the volcano they named Vesuvius, which was where Vulcan had thrown his rocks of destruction from. Then he started asking me questions about what trade my Father had practiced so as to find someone who could adopt me. I told him my father had taught me a little about being a blacksmith and that I already had a hammer from him. He said he would try to find a family of blacksmiths willing to take me in and I thanked him whole-heartedly. And so he left and I was back to being alone, depressed, and terrified in a room in the house of a patrician.

I walked through the streets of Neapolis with the fifteen-year-old man at my side. He had found a family of blacksmiths willing to take me in as long as I would help them out at the forges, which was what I wanted to do for my job anyway. The past day had been uneventful, with me crying, getting free bread, and staying in my room almost the whole time I was there. Horses trotted through the streets and salesmen called out their wares, like in Pompeii. Almost everything was the same, except for the layout of the city and the fact that Pompeii was buried under ash and rock. I remembered the days before the eruption, which seemed like a lifetime ago, with Mother and Varia and---I bit back tears trying not to cry, especially because I was about to see my new family. Thinking about this made a single tear escape through the wall I had made to hide my emotion, which made way for more and more tears until I was crying. When Fifteen (that is what I was calling him at the time) noticed he pulled me off to the side of the street and tried to comfort me. We may have stayed there for an hour, with me just crying and him patting my shoulder and telling me everything was going to be alright. I thought of Dog, who I had not fed in three days when I had left. I thought of my standoff with Vulcan that I wasn’t even sure happened. And most of all, I thought of Varia’s pretty face, Lar’s tricks and games he played with me, Mother’s stern kindness and her warm brown eyes, and Father, who had always looked out for me and protected me until the very end.

And then I thought of all I still had, my life, my dreams, and most of all, my hope, which filled me up to the core and allowed me to rise, gripping my hammer, that used to be my Father’s, and the statues of my family and take another step forward, towards my future, and another one after that and another and another until I made it to the end and joined my family in the underworld. Like all humans, I had a spark, and at that moment I knew I was going to be okay. And so I rose from the ashes of my old life and stepped confidently into the new, with hope and my guide and resilience as my weapon. I rose from the ground and took a step towards the future, and didn’t look back into the past.