Oblivion ✓

B| Riccardos Christmas gift

shortly after the epilog

JOSEPHINE

"Are you ready?" Riccardo asked as he shut the car door and buckled his seatbelt. I nodded silently, my hands gripping my student ID with all the excitement that seemed to rush through me. "You know, you can talk to me, right?" he laughed softly, and once again, I nodded in silence.

"I know," I finally answered, my voice quieter than usual. But somehow, it felt like words weren't enough to say everything I was feeling. It was just a trip to the museum, but it was the first time for me. I couldn't shake the excitement in my stomach.

Riccardo started the engine, and the car rolled slowly out of the garage. The wind from the open window rushed past while we drove towards town, and I stared out, watching the street blur by. 

"Rico, why do you think so many people care so much about all this stuff?" I asked suddenly, my voice more than just curious—it was a little desperate, too.

"You mean the museum?" Riccardo glanced at me briefly. "I think it's because we're all looking for meaning. People want to tell their stories, just like we do. They want their lives to mean something, not just vanish into nothing." I mulled over his words, watching the trees along the side of the road whip by. There was a part of me that didn't quite understand it—the idea that objects, ancient artifacts and paintings, could carry so much meaning. But then I thought about the woman in that painting he'd shown me in the brochure, her dark eyes staring, almost waiting for something. Was that how people felt when they left something behind? Like they needed to be remembered?

"Do you think people in the past cared about being remembered?" I asked after a while, my voice softer now, almost as if I was asking myself more than him.

Riccardo didn't answer right away, focusing on the road as he turned the steering wheel. "I think they cared, but maybe not in the way we think. Maybe they just wanted to live, like we do. They just didn't have the same way of doing it, so they left things behind. Things that would still be here long after they were gone." I nodded slowly. It made sense, in a way. They didn't have Instagram or Snapchat to capture their moments. They left things behind—pots, paintings, statues. Things that would last, things that might still tell a story hundreds of years later.  "Hey, look," Riccardo said, pointing ahead. "We're almost there."

I looked up to see the large, imposing structure of the museum coming into view. The tall, stone columns stood proudly at the entrance, and the glass doors glimmered under the afternoon sun. My heartbeat quickened, a mix of excitement and nerves. 

We parked, and as I stepped out of the car, my legs felt a little shaky. I wasn't sure why, but it felt like stepping into something important, something that might change the way I saw the world, even just a little. I remember how often I'd spend my days watching this buidling and how small it made me feel. As we walked toward the entrance, Riccardo bumped his shoulder into mine, a grin still plastered on his face. "Come on, Josie. This is your first museum. Let's make it count."

I smiled back at him, feeling the excitement finally bubble to the surface.  The doors slid open, and a cool rush of air greeted us as we entered. Inside, everything felt grand and quiet—an overwhelming silence that only made the excitement buzz louder in my chest. I could already tell, this wasn't just a place with old things. It was a place where stories lived, waiting to be uncovered. "Where to go first?"

Riccardo glanced around, pointing toward a grand hall in the distance. "Let's start over there," he said, gesturing toward a room with a massive sculpture of a woman draped in flowing robes. "It's the one I've been telling you about—Demeter mourning for Persephone."