Automata Romana

Chapter 7: Bright new day

"Chirp chirp chirp!"

The small bird made its noise, but alas no response came.

"Chirp chirp chirp?"

Try again as they might, the little bird didn't get a response. Growing more thirsty by the second, the bird thought to push its discarded food wastes out of its cage, and onto the despondent wreck below. This produced some results, as the lump stirred.

"Good morning." blandly stated the lifeless husk as he dropped a fistfull of birdseed between the bars of the bird cage.

Lumbeing to the far corner, Hadrian picked up a clay pot filled with water. He then dumped that water into the birdcage, hardly missing the bird. Then he turned away from the mess of birdseed floating on the bottom of the bronze cage and exited the room.

"Chirp..."

Hadrian then entered the atrium

"Hey." Kiya said, washing her hair by the fountain.

"How's your morning?" He responded. "Anything new?"

"Nothing, yet." Kiya responded in turn. "And quite frankly it worries me."

"Rightly so. Find me if anything changes, allright?"

"Allright."

"You... alright?" Hadrain said.

"As I said, not much new." she responded. "Um, Hadrian?"

"Yes?"

"If you aren't too busy, could you stay for a minute?"

"Certainly."

Hadrian sat on the floor across from Kiyas spot on the fountain, leaning against the palace walls. For a few moments the two didn't speak, Kiya washing her hair and Hadrian tapping the ground. He silently handed her a comb when he figured she'd needed it. They looked horribly melancholic with, aside from occasional glances at one another, the both of them drooping their eyes on the floor.

"It really is an awful shame. He was a good one, you know?" Kiya said. "Kind. Warm."

"I know that better than anyone. I have been a slave all my life and he wasn't my first master. I don't know how to say it, but... when one is legally property most people will, or will try to, treat you like property. That's society, just how things are. But not with Alexios. I mean yes, he did purchase me but it was never treated like that. He never distinguished between me who he found at a market and people like you who applied. Better, even. He rather just picked me up and presented me with a good life. Warm and kind, like you said, but also... respectful. He treated me like a person whom he valued and not a... Well, not like I was used to. And for people who don't share that philosophy, the majority of society and in particular his son, he would protect me. He was an important man, he could make sure of that. It was as if or rather it felt like because of him... I mattered."

"I always knew the two of you were close but I guess I never knew the details." Kiya replied. "But.. I can see it. He really was everyone's dad but to you more than anyone."

"The world is horribly cruel but you could pretend it wasn't if you were in his. But in this world, now he is not! And that... that..." Hadrian yelled.

"Sucks ass." Kiya declared.

"Yea I suppose."

The two of them laugh, a chuckle that fades to silence. A silence that stays for a moment, that hangs in the air until

"At last, dear friend, the fleeting years
In everlasting circles run..." Kiya sang.

"Love Horace. Classic poetry." Hadrian said before "In vain you spend your vows and prayers, They roll, and ever will roll on." He sang.

"Should hecatombs each rising morn" Kiya responded.

"On cruel pluto's altar dye, should costly loads of incense burn..."

****

"their fumes ascending to the sky."

Hadrian recited on a stage, to the crowd of a couple hundred. Under normal circumstance there would have been more, but this was on short notice.

"You could not gain a moment's breath, Or move the haughty king below, Nor would inexorable death, Defer an hour the fatal blow."

Everyone aside from Hadrian was dead silent, but in spite of that the air was distinctly saturated with lamentation. Not in the tears and crys of women and men, but in the tired, sad eyes of the crowd.

"In vain we shun the din of war, And terrors of the stormy main, In vain with anxious breasts we fear, Unwholesome Sirius' sultry reign;"

Kiya was to the side of the stage holding a fruit basket, standing strong but with a weary eye. The governor of Egypt sat next to his partner, lips warbling and teary-eyed.

"We all must view the Stygian flood, That silent cuts the dreary plains, And Cruel Danaus' bloody brood, Condemned to everduring pains."

But not all in the crowd were so sorrowful. Alexander, front and center near the governor Gaius, had a face that read as angry, annoyed, and bored. His slave, given that they have a bandaged face, was a bit harder to read but their eyes signaled a fearful pity.