Just Your Average Time Traveller

Four letters.

I tiptoed behind Cassia as we entered the villa again, except I had my backpack this time. My tunic was clutched in my hands as I tried to cover myself with it. The Roman had insisted that we didn't have time for me to change, so there I was climbing the spiralling stairs noisily as she breezed onto the landing. 

"Shh," she told me as I clunked along behind her. 

"This isn't my choice! My feet are-"

"SHH," she insisted. I rolled my eyes.

I ran headlong into the baths and by the time I'd got out, my bag slung over my shoulder, I was really starting to hate olive oil.The musty, thick smell clung to me like an infant, stubborn and malicious. Cassia was leaning against a dark mahogany door that led into some sort of box room, waiting for me, a frown creasing her smooth, hazelnut skin . Puzzled, I tried to catch her eye. I waved my hand in front of her face, smirking, and yet when she looked at me, her expression turned swiftly from a frown to mocking to a more hostile frown.

"Let's go," she told me, before batting my hand away as it hung in the air. I knitted my eyebrows together in confusion. Five minutes ago, she had been smiling at me like I was an old friend. So...what had changed? 

I wanted to ask her, to make sure I'd done nothing wrong. At that thought, I stopped myself. Who cares? Of course, these Romans need to trust me, I told myself, but it's not that important. As long as I have a place to sleep and food to eat, it won't matter. I was going to find those soldiers, and make them take me back anyway. It struck me then that I hadn't exactly made any plans. How was I supposed to find them? Yeah, I really had to think that through.

I didn't have time or energy to dawdle, to 'make friends.' The thought gave me a surge of bitterness, with an acute pain in my forehead. Dear god, was I getting a migraine? 

I sighed in exasperation and followed Cassia down the stairs. On the second step down, I thought I heard voices. I stopped cold. Adonis would be at the bakery, as always. He never came here, Miss Antagonist had told me so. So who...? Hastily, I backtracked, and crouched beside the painted-white iron banister at the top of the stairwell. I closed my eyes to focus more on what I was hearing.

"...I know that, my dear. But I have barely seen you for so long. Perhaps it is my feeble old mind, but I feel you are not old enough to be going around the Village with your friends all the time."

The voice was that of an old man, wizened and hoarse with age. It was unfamiliar. That sparked my interest, as Cassia wasn't exactly a social butterfly. But she knew this man well. Yet, not well enough to tell him that she had no friends. 

I mentally slapped myself, as I had been doing alarmingly often. Really? I thought she would trust me more than another Roman? For all I knew she was part of a 49AD mafia gang, with rusty daggers and hair gel made of smushed up olives, as everything seemed to be here; made of olives.

"Uncle, no, your brain far exceeds mine. I simply feel inclined to explore the world. It's difficult for me to understand the way things work...you always keep me inside. I am old enough even to marry! Please, understand that I cannot be your little neice forever," Cassia was saying. Her words sounded strained and way too formal, as if she were trying too hard to keep a secret. Maybe she didn't trust this man as much as I had first thought.

"Oh, my dear Cassia..." the old clacked his tongue sympathetically. "I understand. However, I am curious as to where you are getting this food from. This day and age has no mercy for philosophers such as I! Where do you go, to acquire such quantities of food and drink for almost...nothing? And why?"

"Because-"

"Don't start a sentence with 'because,'" the man warned. "A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity."