Eunoia | Sirius Black

INTERLUDE-4

Agrigento, Italy, 1606
Midsummer, Friday Evening
Hottest month, Scalding warmth.

The Drago and San Biagio rivers were searing hot. Simmering and sizzling under the direct sun rays poured on them, casting an ethereal golden glow.

It wasn't as rare to see such beautiful sights while sitting on the clifftops but it was for her.

She'd never stepped outside her cottage.

It was her birthday today. Her mother was absent, and her father had kissed her on the forehead and had said, Happy birthday, Tesoro Elizabeth. Spero che tu viva una lunga vita.

Hope you live a long life. She wanted to laugh.

Elizabeth Agnes Hawke was breaking and no one even noticed. Girgenti city, to be called Agrigento in the future was mocking then. There was faint drizzling.

It wasn't supposed to rain yet but it might as well. She never knew what direction the weather might take. No one did. But she'd witnessed it least of all, they'd caged her in the house after all.

Barred it, refused to let her out. For your protection, they'd said. We are trying to protect you from people who like to take advantage of you.

It was guilt-tripping, gaslighting and she knew it. It was true that not only she but every girl was unsafe, there were drunk men guffawing down the pathways by their house every hour after dark. No female ever stepped out of their houses.

The last one who did had paid her price.

She hated this city, hated Italy altogether. But then she couldn't possibly hate the entirety of Italy. She'd only ever lived in Agrigento, not even visited her own city completely yet.

It was possible she never would.

Even though her parents told her, again and again, they were protecting her by trapping her like a caged bird, she knew it wasn't the real reason.

The reason was the smoke the entire city could see every night, the ashes blowing in the wind every morning. The remains of them - of the witches.

They burned every day. No mercy was ever shown to the females who might not even be witches. And she, Elizabeth shuddered, her parents feared her, not for her, after witnessing something a human couldn't possibly do. Or could. But they were suspicious. They might've been rightfully so.

No one knew of this, of course. No one besides the founding leaders of Girgenti. They never let the rumours travel farther than the borders, they had their ways. She was absolutely sure she did not want to know of them.

A flock of sheep passed by behind her, looking hungrily at the lush green grass. The shepherd whistled and hooted noises for them to keep moving. They'd already had their fill.

But they didn't, half of them stopped to submerge their mouths in the grass, and the man with a bandolier around his head beat their back with a stick. They moved after that.

The grass would soon be gone. There would be dirt surrounding the temples and their ruins. One or two of them still stood. There were prayers and Mass held every day, and yet . . . no one she'd ever known paid attention to the verses recited. No one cared.

The gods were dead.

There were still people who prayed, too afraid of them and their wrath to stop their offerings. But she'd seen a man or two pass by, tipsy and laughing, spitting on the feet of the sculptures of a lightning lord.

She turned her attention back to the water. Her house was near the Valley of the Temples, on the southern coast of Sicily that covered the vast territory of the ancient polis, from the Rupe Atenea to the acropolis of the city, as well as to the sacred hill on which stood the main Doric temples and up to the extramural necropolis.