Just Your Average Time Traveller

Utterly static.

As Cassia and I walked side by side up the dirt road that split off into the Village's lanes, we said nothing. Cassia had slowed to a vaguely human pace to allow me to recover from before, giving me plenty of time to think. And what, above all, was I wondering?

I was thinking about my parents back home.

All this time, I had been away from them, away from all of my friends, and I hadn't spared a single thought for them. Now, the guilt was catching up with me. Before, all I had wanted to do was get back home, for me. I didn't like it here. It was dangerous, scary, completely new and forbidding. But that was just me. I had never wondered what my parents were thinking right now. Were they worried? Of course they were. What kind of a question was that?

What about Isobel and Marty? They'd be tearing their hair out. Had they called the police or something? The teachers must have noticed immediately that I wasn't there. They would have called someone. I knew it. They wouldn't just give up. Isobel and Marty wouldn't let them.

Maybe they sent those soldiers. I was beginning to get annoyed with the term I was using. Soldiers. They must be so much more than that, to be able to travel through TIME, to be able to follow me. If they could do what I did, with the help of that pocket watch (I couldn't possibly have done this myself), then wouldn't that just make them exactly like me? Perhaps they knew what it was like to suddenly find yourself thousands of years in the past. Maybe it was something they all went through, stumbling upon a watch in the street and finding themselves in equally impossible situations.

That, above all the others, was a comforting thought. I had to get back to those people, MY people. Not these rugged, rough Romans, who seemed to be dragging me along just because of what one old woman had said. How could they even trust her?

Deep in my thoughts, I hadn't realized when we stopped on the side of the deserted road, with its dilapidated wooden housing in little groups around the streets. A large roof hung over our heads as Cassia stopped, leaning slightly against a wooden post in front of the empty house.

"Sam," she said, turning to me. "Can we...go to the groves? I need to think."

I blinked a few times wearily. Wasn't she tired? Couldn't she think at the villa, as it was always quiet there? But I nodded, part of me wanting to go back to the untouched wonderland that Cassia had discovered.

As we walked, I felt the need to speak. I had a lot on my mind, and I needed to forget about it, just for a while. So I asked the first question that popped into my head.

"Doesn't it get confusing?" I asked, immediately hating myself.

"Doesn't what get confusing?" Cassia said dryly, turning to me as we walked. I floundered.

"You know..."

"I do?" Cassia smirked.

"Yes."

"What do I know then?" She pressed, bitterness seeping into her voice. My mouth opened and closed for a while as my brain tried to process what she was saying and think up an answer at the same time. The first thing that came to mind sprang out.

"Doesn't it get confusing when you and Cassandra are in the same place? So someone calls your name and the other person answers?"

Cassia frowned at me. "What are you talking about? Our names are completely different."

I copied her expression. "No, they sound pretty similar to me." There was a long pause before understanding bloomed on Cassia's face.

"To you. What if...?" She looked at me intensely. "What language am I speaking now?"