52 Results with the "Historical" genre
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First light in the peristyle finds a child raking at pale sand, freeing cat shit and whatever else the feline gremlins bury for safekeeping. The grand fountain churns softly, the villa’s groundsmen removing a sizable portion of its water after the first frost. Soon, they will drain it ahead of the first snow and fix an angled tarp over the open roof. Each accumulation, the groundsmen will cut the tarp’s sewn navel and drop snow into the fountain’s pool. Villa Servii contains two hemispheres,…-
120.7 K • Ongoing
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The Colloquies: Low Perceptions The majestic peak casts a shadow over the villa, a protective mother whose smothering proximity is a trick to the eyes. Memories of her many visits to this plantation unravel like a fallen scroll. Her mother and Uncle came from lands so far east of Parthia that no Roman name existed. Mother, a wealthy man’s battle bride, settled into an opulent domus in Mediolanum that soon became lonely in Roman bigotry’s shadow. Uncle, with eyes as narrow and face just as…
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120.7 K • Ongoing
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Dust gathers on the road as four black steeds trample into view. Their burden is a wooden carpentum with four iron-ringed wheels and the cross-swords of Mars painted upon both its window shutters. A nod from the Servian Lord brings out the day’s groomsmen, a chatty pair of teenagers wearing their warmest best. The young men corral the panting beasts, promising them fresh water, plentiful lucerne, and a soothing brush—they deserve all of it and more after such a laborious journey from…
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120.7 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
XX – The Month of Honey VII
No bigger fool exists than a man blind with love. Mother cut his last nerve with that word, leaving him with no guilt for slicing her throat. Discontent, he leans against the Roman, whose words gently tickle his back. Mud Face, Milky, Reed Eyes, and the others conspire at a shady roadside watering station. The two sides speak over a trough where their horses drink, and a civilian stands among them, his curls blacker than Aedan’s. Large blue eyes watch Servius Tribune with a sensual…-
120.7 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
XIV – The Month of Honey – I
The Bucarati kips upon glossy mudflats. The vessel resembles a timber beetle with its tightly bound sales and dangling oars. It slumbers as men till the wet sands beneath its rudder, digging that will ensure the incoming tide washes her away. Alps-born Romans crowd her surface planks. They wear fur over their shoulders and wool on their extremities. None are clean-shaven, not even their newly minted leader, Lucius Scipio Servius, whose beard shines golden like the short coils on his head. His noble…-
120.7 K • Ongoing
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Lucius Vitus Servius once said that rivalry within ranks festers like flesh rot, and if a general ignores it, he’ll lose a man as quickly as a leg. Gaius recalls his old friend’s observation as he watches the murdered man’s son glower at Kombius, a prince of the continental Atrebates. The more concerning bit of flesh rot, however, is Titus Labienus, who listens with jowls tight in resentment as the noble speaks of his time as an Ancalite prisoner. Before their first campaign on the island,…
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120.7 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
XXXVI: The Last Leaf Falls
A line of gray rises from the woods, but smokeless chimneys draw him to the village. No guard walks the wall. The smithy forge has gone cold, and courtyard braziers full of wood stand without flame. Pigs slumber in their pen, tightly packed mounds unmoved by his investigation. Knocking on doors yields no one, so he sets off for home under the fading day. Along the main road, he spots the villagers filing down the ridge. Two-wheel carts break up their procession, pulled by young men and full of…-
120.7 K • Ongoing
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Moonlight guides him five hundred steps from the kitchen to the barn. Unease quickens his heart as the worst thoughts plague him. Shadows dancing beneath the cowshed doors prove his hunch correct. Loose hay strands litter the drive bay, where pungent tack and fresh lucerne begin clogging his nose. Warm air overhead brings his attention to the loft. There, the rangy druid sits under the tresses as coals smoldering in the floor pit cast an orange glow behind him. The serpent, Delphine, often spends cold…
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120.7 K • Ongoing
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Two enormous clamshells sit atop the grill rack, each with golden brown upon their banded domes. Their crusty skin is cool enough to touch, and Niko gently detaches each layer, popping the edges before pulling them free. The thicker, unattractive mold will make a good bottom—this is the story of his life—and that makes him smile. He tosses a handful of semolina into its hallow, spreading and rubbing the grains around before laying down raw cabbage leaves. These large verdant blankets will stop the…
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120.7 K • Ongoing
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Snow white clouds grace the fresco’s blue sky, where tiny birds flock, each a delicate paint stroke that gives no detail to their name. Three walls hold up this seaside sky, with blackened sands and rocky shores that host women frolicking about in their athletic unmentionables. The gynaeceum at Villa Servi lacks a fourth wall, but with its bushy head, the stone pine growing in the peristyle below affords some much-needed privacy. Under her tunica, a skilled tongue performs feats she thought only…
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120.7 K • Ongoing
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