Story time! Title is Pompeii.

[Lyric]

I don't intend to publish this, so I'm sharing it with you guys. Feel free to suggest edits if you want, although it's not a big deal. I just thought you all might enjoy a piece of "sudden fiction" (a.k.a., short fiction, less than 1500 words.)

Pompeii
by B. L. Hoover



When archeologists were uncovering the ruins of Pompeii,
a seaside Italian city destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius during an
eruption in A.D. 79, they found the remains of a dog, still
wearing a collar and chain, outside of the house of a wealthy
fuller named Vesonius Primus. Not too far from the dog were
the remains of a woman and of a child, presumed to be her son.
       The earth rumbled beneath him like a territorial growl, waking him from his doze on the doorstep, and he lifted his head to sniff cautiously at the strange, faint scent of fire-smoke in the air. For two days now, everything in this small, sandy cluster-of-dens had been odd. All of the two-legs smelled strongly of fear, and he had watched intently while line after line of them had trooped past this doorway loaded with carry-baskets, their two-leg pups clutching hands and skirts, all headed toward the big-blue-water and the boats waiting for them there.

       His own two-leg alpha pack male had left him here, chained to the doorway with a kick to the ribs and strict instructions: stay, guard, watch. There was a leather collar around his neck, meant to reinforce those orders, he guessed, but they needn’t have bothered. He would never leave his own territory undefended. Still, that faint scent of fire on the wind kept him anxious and restless. More than anything, he had wanted to be able to move away from the door and sniff around, just to reassure his own instincts that the fire-smell was not accompanied by a fire itself. Unidentified danger-scents made him feel strange inside, as if he wanted to both run and fight at the same time. He had gone into a watchful half-sleep as the sun went down last night, the streets still full of two-legs and their carts.

       With a sudden start, he came fully awake. Something was wrong—dangerously wrong. His own body rhythm insisted that it was morning, and he knew it should be light outside by now, but what little of the sky he could see was still dark and brooding. It looked like a storm-sky, with strange heavy clouds tinted orange and red and green, crackling with shock-fingers, but no rain. He hadn’t smelled or felt a storm coming. The street in front of his doorway was mostly empty; only a few two-legs still remained, smelling of guilt and want and fear as they climbed into windows and forced open doors. None of them came near his door; one low growl and the raising of his hackles had warded off the two who had briefly considered it. He paced on the doorstep and sniffed the air again restlessly—the fire-smell was stronger now, urgent enough that something inside of him recognized it as a run-danger-smell, the kind that you did not stay to investigate, but instead ran away from as fast as four legs could carry you. Again, he snarled at the leather collar. Perhaps his two-leg pack would come back and release him soon. He had done a good job of keeping the sneaky-guilt-want two-legs away from the pack-den door, but every instinct inside of him was screaming for him to run, run fast, don’t look back, run away, go now.

       He had just settled down onto the doorstep again when he heard the roar and felt the wind pick up—fire wind, burning-rock wind, wind that carried the scent of a hot death on it like an unfurled flag. He could do nothing about the collar, so he chewed uselessly at the iron chain as the wind-fire got closer, the air got blacker, and the last few remaining two-legs came pouring from within their dens, screaming out shrieks that blistered his ears. His eyes were watery and he tasted ashes as he chewed, chewed, and then he saw it, a black-wall-cloud full of fire rushing down upon him and upon everything, and the air was scorching his lungs, his nose pelted by burning rocks, and his insides were a riot of bitter-tasting fear and panic.

       He cowered beside the doorstep, curled his face into his own belly, and thought of his own pack—the alpha male who snarled and growled and kicked him in the face, the shrieking pups who stepped on his tail and threw rocks at him, the she-mother who beat him with her broom for stepping into the kitchen. They had left him to fight this thing that eats dens and food and vomits fire-rocks—they had abandoned him and broken the most important law of the pack. He snarled at the memory and stood up, eyes watering, preparing to face the fire-wall like the fierce predator that he was born to be—just as two weeping, desperate two-legs stumbled onto his doorstep. It was a mother and a small male, both burned and bleeding. Too dazed and full of pain to growl at them, he stood silently as they started to pass by, but the young male, seeing him, ran back to tug at the collar. The mother shrieked and tried to pull the little one away, but gave in after a moment and added her own strength to the tugging of the small male. It was too late; his instincts told him that. The thickest, hottest part of the fire-wall was only minutes away. And still, they kept tugging, kept trying. After a moment, when it was obvious to all three that the end was close, they cowered beside him and held him as they wept. Within his heart, a strange feeling bloomed; it was an achy feeling, almost too big to be contained, and at the moment, he was certain that if he wasn’t destined to die with these two-legs, he would certainly have died for them. He didn’t understand, but he felt. That was enough.

       When the fire-cloud poured piles of thick, hot ashes down on their heads a moment later, when the awake-spark flickered and the forever-sleep loomed, he was no longer angry, afraid, or alone.

[Lyric]

1. One little kick

just because I'm hoping someone will tell me what they think before this disappears off the page.

:)

[malta blue]

2. As an archaeologist and a dog lover,

I liked it.

Thanks for sharing it :pals:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Obviously the mother and child were victims of this vicious pit bull.

The Roman Empire would have been wise to ban such breeds. They didn't. And we all know what happened next.