𝗪𝗔𝗜𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗠𝗘 ━━ l. valdez

xx ━━ this city reeks of driving myself crazy

03. chapter twenty

━━━━━━━━ ( 💫 ) ━━━━━━━━

THE SKY WAS BRILLIANT BLUE, as if the stormy weather had never happened. the sun rose over the distant hills, so everything below us shone and sparkled.

i had seen big cities before. i was from athens, after all. but the sheer vastness of rome grabbed me by the throat and made it hard to breathe. the city seemed to have no regard for the limits of geography. it spread through hills and valleys, jumped over the tiber with dozens of bridges, and just kept sprawling to the horizon. streets and alleys zigzagged with no rhyme or reason through quilts of neighborhoods. glass office buildings stood next to excavation sites. a cathedral stood next to a line of roman columns, which stood next to a modern soccer stadium. in some neighborhoods, old stucco villas with red-tiled roofs crowded the cobblestone streets, so that if i concentrated just on those areas, i could imagine i was back in ancient times. everywhere i looked, there were wide piazzas and traffic-clogged streets. parks cut across the city with a crazy collection of palm trees, pines, junipers, and olive trees, as if rome couldn't decide what part of the world it belonged to—or maybe it just believed all the world still belonged to rome.
          
being back in europe after over eighty years was like jumping into a swimming pool on a one hundred degree day. it was all so refreshingly familiar yet so foreign to me at the same time.

also being in rome, knowing that nico was so close, made me jittery. i wanted to spring into action.

"we're setting down in that park," leo announced, pointing to a wide green space dotted with palm trees. "let's hope the mist makes us look like a large pigeon or something."

i hoped the romans below would fail to notice the giant bronze trireme descending on their city in the middle of morning rush hour. i didn't notice any cars veering off the road or romans pointing to the sky and screaming, "aliens!" the argo II set down in the grassy field and the oars retracted.

the noise of traffic was all around us, but the park itself was peaceful and deserted. to our left, a green lawn sloped toward a line of woods. an old villa nestled in the shade of some weird-looking pine trees with thin curvy trunks that shot up thirty or forty feet, then sprouted into puffy canopies.

"they look like the trees from dr. seuss books," percy said.

"who's dr. seuss?" i asked.

everybody found that funny.

to our right, snaking along the top of a hill, was a long brick wall with notches at the top for archers— maybe a medieval defensive line, maybe ancient roman. i wasn't sure.

to the north, about a mile away through the folds of the city, the top of the colosseum rose above the rooftops, looking just like it did in travel photos. that's when my legs started shaking. i was actually here. i was so close to home, but at the same time i was in the heart of the old roman empire, enemy territory for a greek demigod.

jason pointed to the base of the archers' wall, where steps led down into some kind of tunnel.

"i think i know where we are," he said. "that's the tomb of the scipios."

percy frowned. "scipio... reyna's pegasus?"

"no," annabeth put in. "they were a noble roman family, and... wow, this place is amazing."

jason nodded. "i've studied maps of rome before. i've always wanted to come here, but..."

nobody bothered finishing that sentence. look at my friends' faces, i could tell they were just as much in awe as i was. we'd made it. we'd landed in rome—the rome.