79AD

Chapter 2

I woke up to a wooden stick prodding my head. That wasn’t very helpful when I usually got these horrible headaches straight after travelling. My eyes fluttered open to look another wooden structure only inches above my head. I turned my body over so that I wasn’t lying on my front any more. I looked around with curious eyes to see leather-sandaled feet and horse hooves and a shaven-head child in a white robe with a stick.

He was startled to see me awaken; I could see it when he fell from his crouched position to the floor. Although he had no hair at all, I could see from the short grains of hair that were growing out that it was ashy blonde. He blinked. His eyes were dark, shining perhaps. At this angle and with the great shadow draped over me, I couldn’t make out what colour his eyes were. Now I know it may seem rather odd for me to account what this kid looked like but whenever you travel, it’s better to know a familiar face.

“Psst.” I hissed under my breath, as I attempted to curl up my knees underneath the wooden structure so that no one could see my bare legs. By the looks of what the kid was wearing, I was definitely in the past, and well, being a woman and showing skin was not exactly considered appropriate.

The kid got down on all fours and lowered his shoulders so that he could look down at me on the ground level. He was frowning as he looked at my full structure. “Hey there. Could you get me a robe or a blanket of some kind?” He was rather a sickly pale and too skinny for any boy of his age. “I’ll get you some food if you do. Hmm?”

I could see his eyes light up at the promise of food. He must have been desperate to have accepted my offer. He jumped on to his feet and was about to speed off, “Hey wait!” He froze, or well, his feet froze. “Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, okay?”

And then he was off. I attempted to follow his feet as the disappeared into the distance, but the crowd seemed to diffuse any hope of this. Twiddling my thumbs underneath my structure, or more like I started to panic when I felt like wasn’t coming back and I would have to find a way of not being noticed as a climb out of this wooden thing into the crowd, until I travel back.

As soon as I saw his bony feet in hide sandals return to my eyes, my hope was reignited. He crouched down with his head tilted to the side so that he could see me, and passed a creamy coloured fabric to me. With much difficulty I wrapped long fabric around my body the scrapes added to my knees and elbows like a sari, just the way my mother had once long ago taught me.  I think it must have taken me about 20 minutes as I saw the boy get bored and start playing with the stick he had awoken me with.

“Hey, I’m done.” I smiled whispering to the boy to shake him from his daydreams.

He looked up from an intense game of playing with dust. His eyes sparkled with flecks of green – it didn’t help with the sun being right behind him. I army-crawled my way out of the wooden structure to find that I was under a cart. No. Wait. Scrap that last bit. A chariot. I was lying under a chariot. What far did I travel back to? Usually the furthest I had ever been was the 17th century. And even that was pretty rare. But I must have travelled much further than that. I broke some kind of personal record. Oh damn, I was not prepared at all.

I brushed off the dust and dirt from my make-shift wrapped robe and rubbed my eyes. I really had to pay attention and renew my common sense if I was to survive here, wherever ‘here’ was anyway. I turned to the boy, hoping he had not disappeared somewhere but fortunately he had not. I think he was expecting that I would give him food of some sort.

As I was bending down to his height to offer my pardons for false promises, something glinted at the corner of my eye. It was a little silver coloured coin on the ground. The boy had obviously not seen since I predicted that he would have dashed for the coin if he had noticed it. I reached over for it and placed it in my palm, examining it. It looked so fresh compared to the collected Roman coins you would see in the museums. Wait, did I just say Roman?