By the Gods!

It's ANOTHER series...;P

Yes, boys and girls of the FFML, this one is not only borne out of the need to fulfill some Roman thoughts of my own (too many visits to see Gladiator), but also to get out of the Ranma fix that I was on...Don't get me wrong, I haven't given up on The All-Americans, Mythos OR With Wings to Carry Them...

But I needed a break, especially with school...SO...Here we are...

Disclaimer:
Evangelion doesn't belong to me or anyone else on this list. Live with it. I've borrowed the characters with situations to make a grand story of love and betrayal and men in skirts...Er...Togas...Live with it.

C&C, as always, is wanted and welcomed;
gargoyle@glasscity.net
gargoyle9@hotmail.com
or
gargoyle4@hotmail.com
Flames will be sacrificed in the name of Caesar!

So, mix some wine and grab some meat and enjoy my VERY first Elsetimes fic!
The Fate of Hearts!

***

Snow was falling quietly around him. He shrugged against the
mild cold, but really cold, but not really comfortable. He looked
down at the old lady selling her wares. The old lady looked back at
him. The little bazaar where the old woman had her stand was
situated on the northeastern side of the small town. Caeles felt
sorry for the old woman, who sat in the cold air in front of him.
She was guarded against the weather by several layers of material.
The colors had once been bright and cheery, but like the old
woman, faded well past their prime. She muttered something
unintelligible and worked the items around her stand with her
gnarled, bone-white hands. There was worry in her eyes that
Caeles didn't understand. Was she afraid of him? He thought that
he wasn't that intimidating. Perhaps she had caught wind from the
locals about his father. His father, the calm serenity that makes
others fear. The quiet in the night of Rome. The real power behind
the Emperor. Maybe that was why he had been sent to Germania.
To be quietly gotten rid of? But, how had he angered his father?
What did he do-Caeles closed his brown eyes.

...I shall not fear him...

Opening his eyes, he saw that the old lady had turned from him
and looked out across the town to the hills nearby. Caeles followed
her line of sight. A slight chill ran up his spine as he thought he
heard drumbeats. Caeles adjusted the furs that he wore against the
chill in the air of the new year. His tutor had told him that
Germania grew cold quite early and stayed cold late. The old lady
turned back to Caeles quickly and gestured to the display in front
of him. Caeles simply shook his head. The woman probably
wouldn't understand him anyway. Caeles shivered as a slight
breeze picked up. He longed quietly for the warm, wet winters of
his foster home in Campania.

There. In the distance. It was a drumbeat. And another. And
another. A thin column of smoke rose across that same hill. The
old woman let out a small squeak and hurriedly closed down her
little stand. Caeles was startled as hoof beats pounded down
around him with seemingly no warning. He turned and watched as
a Centurion galloped past. The red and bronze of his armor shined
dully in the overcast day, the plume on his helmet bouncing gaily
as he rode along. The horse was similarly arraigned in the red of
the Germanic legions.

"All take cover-All take cover! Barbarians at the pass-Barbarians
at the pass!" he shouted from horseback.

Caeles watched him ride past. He went off towards the column of
smoke and drove his horse faster as he dug his heels in.

"Barbarians?" Caeles asked to himself.

He turned to ask the old woman about it, but she was gone. Her
stand little more than a wooden table, she had taken everything
with her. All around him, the people of the small town in which his
carriage had left him had all taken their leave of him. He wondered
why...Caeles reached into the little leather pouch at his waist. He
withdrew a scrap of parchment that his driver had given him before
leaving. It read -Hope to see you soon, Mistura-. What kind of a
name was that? Mistura? As he had been told, Mistura Kalendis
was a great general in the Northern Legions, almost as great as
Caesar himself. It sounded like a woman's name to Caeles.

Faint sounds began to drift to his ears. Sounds he'd never heard
before. Caeles watched the far hill as several units of the Legion
appeared on the crest. They were the sounds of blood and fire and
hate. They fell before the onslaught of a mass of earthen colored
men, all attired in browns and greens and the black mud of
Germania. Caeles watched as they swarmed over the hill, ever
faster toward the small town. They were the sounds of war.

***

The Fate of Hearts:
An Elsetimes Fanfic of Neon Genesis Evangelion

By

Joshua Trujillo

***


I - Another World / The Test


***

Caeles watched the hill as the mass of humanity, if you could call
them that, spilled into the narrow valley. They moved so quickly; it
amazed him to think that they weren't something more like water.
The way they flowed down the hillside and around the trees, it was
quite hypnotic. Caeles began to back away as he realized that the
living mass of barbarians would most likely not hesitate to kill any
Roman son, much less the son of the Imperial Proconsul. But, it
would be so easy to just watch them as they rolled on. It would be
easy to just give up.

He watched as the horde grew closer. Something in him screamed
at him to run. As the fear began to grow in him, Caeles half turned
and fell, his foot twisted in a root from a nearby tree. The pain that
shot up through his leg was immediately worse than the thought of
barbarians taking his life. Caeles whimpered impotently. He pulled
himself to his feet and backed away as best he could. The
barbarians were at the end of the village, killing those that they
flushed out of their houses, lighting the rest to the torch. One
crazed creature, hair matted yellow and brown, spotted Caeles and
screamed something in his disgusting native tongue. When he saw
that Caeles was dressed as a Roman, he ran towards the boy. The
brute raised his crude sword high and Caeles closed his own eyes
against the killing blow.

Which never came. There was only a strange gurgling sound.
Caeles cautiously opened his eyes and stared in fascination at the
arrow that was stuck through the massive barbarian. The blood that
trickled slightly out of his mouth was the same color as the plume
on the shaft of the arrow. Red. Roman Red.

The huge man fell dead at Caeles' feet. His own blood was
pounding in his ears and Caeles didn't even hear the hoof-beats as
he was picked deftly up onto a horse, and placed behind the rider.
The riding lessons that his tutor gave him paid off as Caeles
instinctively grabbed hold of the person commanding the horse.
The horse galloped hard for a few minutes and Caeles held on, not
knowing who his savior had been, nor where exactly they were
going, but when he did open his eyes again, he saw the forest
around him ablaze. Arrows of fire rained down around the
galloping steed as they raced to wherever they were racing.

Barbarians fell to the wayside, sometimes crunching under the
hooves; sometimes the person controlling the horse would swing a
sword through his line of sight, which would cleave easily the head
of the barbarian they were passing. Caeles wondered at that. He
thought that he should feel nauseous or at least disgusted by the
horrific sights around him, but he couldn't bring himself to worry
about these creatures. They attacked first, did they not? They
refused to be led under the glorious banner of Rome, so they must
be the traitorous savages that he'd always been taught about. And,
as if to satisfy his own mind, one of them would most definitely
have killed him, had it not been for this brave fellow on horseback.
Caeles held on tight, closed his eyes and tried not to imagine the
horrors on the other side of his eyelids.

The bounce of the horse was enough to keep Caeles' attention, as
the land seemed to sometimes drop out from underneath them. He
tried to hang on, but the horse was wet with blood, or sweat or
something else and while Caeles tried not to think about it, his grip
around the waist of the warrior in the saddle remained firm. The
sounds of the battle around him grew more and more quiet, fast
fading into the background. The speed of the animal didn't seem to
slow, but around them the quiet of the forest came back. The
sounds of the trees whipping past them, along with the undulating
horse under him combined to lull Caeles into a state of semi-
consciousness.

Images. They were images that he knew. His foster parents,
provincial governors in Campania, always too busy to be bothered
with someone else's child. But, he reminded himself, they were
kind in their own ways. They provided him with everything he
wanted and he had a great time learning all about the glory of
Rome and her people and her past and...Other things. The other
children didn't understand, they were too busy pretending that they
were Julius Caesar, while Caeles was learning about what made
Caesar the man he was. He did have a friend though, who enjoyed
learning about all the old military campaigns as much as Caeles.
He missed him.

Caeles was jolted back to the present as the horse slowed. A
female voice brought the horse up and he fully stopped. Caeles
opened his eyes and looked around the warrior. A woman with
kind eyes took the reigns from the warrior and smiled as she saw
Caeles. She was quite pretty, actually. He blushed and returned a
shy smile. He looked around the compound. Many tents of
different colors held a general row of about thirty-five or so.
Legionnaires and Centurions walked to and fro, some led horses,
and some led dogs. He could hear the sounds of iron on an anvil in
the distance somewhere. Caeles was impressed for the size of the
camp. A tap on his wrist brought his attention back and he let the
soldier his hands were around help him from the horse.

The soldier dismounted after and walked into a large tent before
Caeles could thank him. He quietly supposed that the man had
things he needed to report and Caeles supposed that his thanks to
the man could wait. Caeles turned back to the woman. About the
same height as the soldier, but with short brown hair that fell about
her face, making her blue eyes quite round.

"If you would, please?" she said, gesturing to a nearby tent, "My
name is Certus Penator. I am the personal adjutant to the general."

"Caeles Soter," he replied.

The pain in his foot began to grow, but Caeles tried to ignore it as
he stepped through the folds of the brownish tent to the darkness
on the other side. The center was cleared away and at the far end of
the tent was a large table. On the table rested perhaps hundreds of
parchments of all types and sizes. Caeles was quiet as the man
standing over them stopped writing and looked up. He wore his
gray hair flat and close to his scalp, like an old soldier and he had
the look about him that he'd spent too many winters in Germania.
He sighed out, his gaunt features looking older than when Caeles
had entered the tent. He motioned Caeles to the table and pointed
to the map nearest the middle of the table.

"Look at them."

Caeles started at the sudden intrusion to the quiet. The man's voice
belied his apparent age, hiding a force that Caeles hadn't heard all
that often. The only source of light was the flickering of an oil
lamp nestled somewhere on the table. He pointed to the maps again
and Caeles examined them. The map in the center of the table,
nearest the lamp, showed a pair of hills situated in the midst of a
small valley. Marks on the map along both hillsides were that of
Roman legions holding earthworks. A large area of blue to the
north of the hills seemed to mark the adversary. The lines of the
valley swept up and while Caeles hadn't seen that very often, it
normally meant that the walls of the valley were impassable.

"Well?" the man asked again, "What do you make of them?"

"Kopos neck."

"Hm?"

"Something I learned from the campaigns of Caesar in Gaul,"
Caeles replied as he continued to wonder about the placing of the
soldiers along the hills.

"Very well," the man said, "What would you do then?"

Caeles looked up from the map. The man had folded his long arms
across his chest and waited expectantly. Was he asking for advice?
He looked like a general or some other higher up in the military,
why would he need the advice of a schoolboy? Caeles thought for
a minute. Something came to him...

"Assuming that the army here can keep the battlements on the
hills," he began, unsteadily, "Take a cavalry charge down the other
end of the valley and drive the enemy down between the hills and
into the arms of the Legions below."

"The foxes to the hunters," a voice said from the darkness to
Caeles' right.

The voice! It sent shivers up his spine. So smooth...Like thunder
over the sea on a summer's night. Caeles strained in the darkness
of the tent to see the owner of that voice, but whoever it was faded
just as quickly back into the blackness. The old soldier cleared his
throat, which brought Caeles's attention back around. Caeles
gulped.

"And if we can't hold those hills?" he asked.

Caeles thought for a moment.

"Then set a line of catapults here, here," Caeles said, pointing to
places on the map, "And here."

The old man looked at the places to which Caeles pointed and
nodded slowly.

"Thank you, my young friend," he smiled, "Certus?"

She stepped out of the shadow near the entrance to the tent to stand
beside Caeles. Certus nodded back to the entrance and ushered a
confused Caeles out. The flap thudded dully as the tent was folded
into the dark once more; only the flame from the lamp on the table
provided any illumination. The old man stared at the entrance for
another minute.

"He acts like his father," the female voice said again.

The old man turned to his right. Into the small lamplight stepped a
woman. Skin smooth and light like milk, her arms bare and the
collar of the cloak she wore flirting with the skin above her breasts.
Her blue eyes shined brightly from under brown locks that seemed
to be too plain for her, like she should have been born of another
hair color. She folded one arm under the other and stared into the
goblet he hadn't even noticed. More wine, probably. She was not
one to be without it these days. The old man straightened and
thought more on the child of Soter.

"His mind is sharp and uncluttered," he said flatly, "He'll work
fine."

A bright sliver of laughter erupted from the woman.

"Will he now?" she chirped, "We'll see..."

She wandered back into the darkness of the tent and the old man
snorted. He dipped a small, worn stylus into the ink and scribbled
down a couple of his thoughts on a scrap of parchment. Looking
around the table a moment, he picked up a small bell and gave it
three sharp rings. Not half an instant later, the tent flap flipped up
and a young man entered and bowed quickly.

"To General Kalendis," the old man said, handing the courier the
scrap of parchment.

The man bowed again and took off running. The tent flap smacked
shut again and the old man sat into his chair. He felt heavy, worn
down. And the young man he saw today made him feel old. A tear
fell for the boy, Caeles, for what he must endure. And the tear fell
for his own role in it all.

"Why Effero?" he asked of the air, "Why does it have to be your
own son?"

***


II - Fish


***

The air outside was crisp and clean. Caeles breathed in and looked
around him. The sounds of battle had faded off in the distance, no
longer audible from the camp. Caeles smiled, as he hadn't thought
that it was something he should've ever heard. True, he'd been
trained by the finest soldiers and warriors of Rome and Greece and
Egypt and half a dozen other peoples, but that didn't mean that he
liked battle.

These thoughts coursed through his head and fogged his mind. He
stumbled as the injury to his ankle came back to him. He swore
silently and stopped, holding his shin. The young woman named
Certus looked back and came to his side.

"You're injured?" she asked.

Caeles nodded.

"I stumbled before the Centurion picked me up," he said, "I must
have turned my ankle."

Certus smiled and got under his other arm. She helped him stumble
his way to another tent, this one adorned in the same fashion as the
last tent, a small table to one side and a bed opposite. Atop the
table, maps and similar papers were spread out in no order that
Caeles could see. Certus led him to a stool near the bed and he sat
down on it. Certus knelt at his feet and began to undo the leather
strappings on his boot.

"Your driver was supposed to bring you right into camp," she
sighed as she got his boot off, "An escort was supposed to be in
that little town, but he had to take off once the battle began."

"So the driver left me?"

Certus looked into his questioning eyes and smiled.

"I don't think it was intentional or anything," she went back to
examining his ankle, "I just think that he got scared. Possibly got
wind of the battle or something."

She turned his ankle slightly and he winced from the shoot of pain.
Certus clucked softly and hummed a little tune.

"What is that song?" Caeles asked, trying to take his mind off the
pain.

"Hmm?" she asked.

"That tune you were humming. What was it?"

She smiled and held up a finger. She got up and left the tent, but
returned a minute later with a largish leather satchel. She placed
the satchel on the floor near him and opened it.

"Before I tell you about the song, I'd like to ask a question of you.
How much do you know of the people under the General's
command?" she asked, rummaging around inside the satchel, "I've
been told that you're a very good strategist, but what do you know
of the people?"

"Just rumors, really," he said, "Like, you've got the slaves actually
guarding the governor's estate?"

Certus pulled a small glass bottle from the satchel and nodded her
head.

"It's odd to think that they are indeed slaves, but yes, you're right
about that," she said, "We like to think in terms of the good of the
city, which means that the lines delineating plebian and patrician is
kind of blurred. By the way, the tune was one that my daughter
always loved..."

The little cork on the top of the bottle came off with a pop and
Caeles could instantly smell a pungent, sweet odor that came from
within. Certus placed her left hand under his injured foot and
poured a small stream from the bottle over his foot. She set the
bottle down and began to rub what felt like oil into his injured foot.
Caeles winced from the pain, but then began to feel a warm
sensation spread from the oil into his foot. The more she rubbed,
the more the heat from the oil spread, relaxing his foot and making
the pain subside. She stopped rubbing and pulled a little cloth from
the satchel. She wiped her hands and turned her head to one side,
as if he could hear something he could not. She looked up at him.

"Now, hold still," she said.

He nodded and she lowered her head slightly to his foot. Caeles
was about to say something when she blew on his foot. Even as
slight as her breath was, the oil, which had almost been hot enough
to make him break into a sweat, suddenly cooled. He took a breath
against the weirdness of the feeling. Her breath on his foot made
the oil grow colder and colder until the feeling in his foot was
fairly gone. She looked up at him again.

"Can you still feel your foot?"

He shook his head.

"Good," she said.

She picked up the same cloth from her bag and began to wrap his
foot in it.

"You said you had a daughter?" Caeles asked as he tried to be
friendly.

He wasn't entirely sure it would work. She looked up from her
work and smiled a sad smile.

"Do you know the area of Gallia Cisalpina?" she asked.

"I had to ride through it on my way here. South of the Alps, north
of Latium and Rome," he said.

He shrugged, still wondering at the lack of feeling in his foot. It
had to have been something in the oil, but what? He had never
heard of this kind of healing before. She didn't look like a witch.
Perhaps she was a priestess...

"It's the region that I and my family are from," she said as she
continued to wrap his foot, "There's a small trading town there,
near the Adriatic Sea. I fell in love with a spy who had been
injured and was resting there. I bore him a daughter about a year
later."

"You must have loved him," Caeles guessed, not wanting to give
up the brief company.

She shrugged in response.

"He was secondary to my daughter, whom I love more than
anything and I think I raised her well," she continued, "The spy
left, but that was fine as I raised her in the ancient arts of my
family. Healing. Something I learned from my mother, who
learned it from her mother and so forth. What plants healed, what
plants did what, which plants you could eat safely and which ones
you couldn't. The preparation of potions is another family art,
which made me quite valuable to the Legions of Rome."

"My daughter was very intelligent and she learned the craft as
quickly as I could teach her. She soaked up the information just
like a sponge! I was amazed and pleased that the family arts would
continue in good hands. And then, one day after her tenth birthday,
a Roman messenger came through town saying that two legions of
barbarians were coming from Germania and that our town was
next in the path."

"I was frightened beyond belief, but I got our little family together
with as much as we could carry and we journeyed to the hills.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to hide long enough and the
makeshift camp we had was overrun. I was injured, but not enough
that I didn't see one of the brutes take my daughter away,
screaming."

"Stolen...My Gods..." Caeles breathed.

The enormity of the situation took his breath away. No wonder his
father wanted him here! If these savages were taking children from
Roman towns IN Roman provinces, then they HAD to be stopped,
at all costs.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Caeles shook his head to clear it and smiled at her.

"Well, that happened about five years ago," she said.

She picked up his boot and helped him scoot it back onto his
injured foot, cloth covering and all. She began to fit the strappings
back into place, securing the boot.

"I joined the Legions as an adjutant to one of the governors in
Germania in hopes of one day finding my daughter, even if it's just
to mark the place where she died," she sighed, "The governor died
a few weeks later and I was brought under the command of the
General as her personal adjutant. It also helps that I can use my
family arts to help the General. It makes me feel a little better, at
least."

"My ankle feels much better, thank you," he said.

"Well, it's pretty twisted," she said as she put the bottle back in the
satchel, "You'll need to take it easy for the next week."

"Will he be able to ride?"

Both of them turned at the voice from the entrance of the tent.
Caeles smiled. It was the Centurion that had saved him! Now, at
least, he could thank the man. The man coughed and wiped a glob
of mud from somewhere on his face. He untied the strap on his
helmet and lifted it from his head. Long black hair flowed out as
she wiped...

She?!

"I'll prepare your wash, ma'am," Certus said as she took her satchel
and exited.

"Yes, that's fine," she hacked violently again, "Feels like I ate a
sheep whole."

Caeles made an incoherent noise and pointed to the female soldier.
She smiled an odd smile at him as she unbuckled the sword from
her waist.

"Shocked? Most men are," she said, sounding more female, "It's
natural. Caeles Soter, it's my pleasure to meet you. I am Mistura
Kalendis."

She began to hack again as Certus returned with a large bucket of
steaming water. It looked like she was having difficulty getting it
in the tent, so Caeles hopped up from the stool and picked up one
side of the bucket. Certus looked down at his foot and back up to
him. He smiled in return and nodded to the table. The water
sloshed happily in the large wooden tub as they set it on the table,
covering several parchments with a layer of warm water. Certus
disappeared out the tent again and returned quickly as Mistura
finished hacking again.

"Ma'am, you haven't been taking the elixir, have you?" Certus
asked as politely as she could.

"Can you make one that doesn't taste like the insides of a ten-day
old goat?" Mistura said sourly.

Mistura splashed some water on her face and Certus handed her a
washcloth.

"Now, Caeles, your father has sent word that I am to accommodate
your needs as far as living is concerned," she said, washing the dirt
and blood from her arms.

"He did?"

"Yes," she replied, "But it was that you're to have one of the spare
buildings...Alone."

A short silence ensued.

"Alone," she tried again, "To live by yourself."

"If that's all right?" he asked.

He had hoped that his father wouldn't take away his solitude. It
was so nice not having to bother anyone and he wanted to keep it
that-

"No, it's not all right," she said, interrupting his thought, "There's
enough room at the governor's estate to house an army, you'll stay
there."

He was crestfallen.

"Yes, ma'am."

Mistura was satisfied with the answer, but not the tone. It was
almost as if the boy wanted to be alone. Well, that would have to
be something that she would have to work on in the future. No man
was an island and no boy could grow up like that. But for now, she
would leave it as it was. Mistura pulled at the buckles on the sides
of her breastplate and sighed briefly as the tightness subsided on
her chest. One of these days, she'd have to get one more suited to
the female form.

She stopped short as she realized that the tunic she wore under her
armor was, while comfortable, also rather see-through. She turned
to Certus, who was standing with another cloth ready. Mistura
nodded to the boy and Certus got the hint, blushing at the thought.

"Just go," she said as she finished with her buckles, "Go ahead and
show him to his tent."

"Yes ma'am," Certus chuckled lightly.

***

Caeles looked around the tent to which Certus had lead him. It
seemed to be a smaller version of the General's quarters. Bed,
small table, oil lamp hanging from in the center of the room. It
looked cozy.

"This will be your quarters until we return to Urba Tertius," Certus
said, "Which should be in about two days time. If there's anything
you need, I'll be the one you need to talk to, as the General will be
indisposed."

"Two days..." Caeles wondered, "Will that be all that's
necessary?"

"You're the military mind," she smirked, "You tell me. For now,
get your rest."

Certus raised the flap on his tent and left. Caeles looked about him.
He wondered if the city would have similar arrangements, or if it
was a true Roman city? He didn't know. He hadn't ever heard of
Urba Tertius before, but then, he supposed there were some border
towns that had never heard of his hometown either.

His hometown was not far north of the marvelous, steaming peaks
of Vesuvius. On clearer days, he could see down into the port city
of Pompeii. Caeles sat down on the bed and stretched out, feeling
the softness of the blankets beneath him. It felt so comforting after
so many days of traveling. Ten days by horseback through
Campania (Southern Italia) and Latium (Middle Italia), then
transferred to a carriage for the rest of the journey through Gallia
Cisalpina (Northern Italia) and to the other side of the Alps to
Germania (Thank you geography tutor!). Caeles laughed slightly.
Geography was one of his strong points. Geometry was not. Ah
well, such was the way of things. He should have stopped in Rome
while he was near there, but he never really liked the city and its
stink of corruption. There was too much politics in the way of
daily life there. Too much in the way of simply living. He felt good
just lying there, for the first time in a while...And the pillow at his
head was soft too.

Caeles closed his eyes, focusing on the noises outside the heavy
fabric of the tent. It was an exercise in concentration in which one
of his numerous tutors had educated him. The odd looking one
from Egypt, most likely. The ability to discern your surroundings
by the way they sounded. Very important in nighttime combat. The
way the sound will bounce sideways in a forest, or the round
sounds that come off a dry riverbed, or Roman roadway and when
fighting in the mountains with the wind howling in your ears, it's
important to be able to locate the edge of the cliff.

Not many noises came to his ears this time. The camp may have
been in the middle of a huge forest, but the human noises drowned
all the normal forest noises out. But, even for a military camp, it
was still fairly quiet. A raucous burst of laughter came to him on
the outside of his hearing. It was punctuated by a hacking cough.
The General. She was nice enough, if a little pushy. But that
seemed to be an overriding trait that many in the military
possessed. It didn't grate on him, but it had reminded him of where
he was and with whom he was talking.

But...There was another sound. Closer. Much closer than the
General's tent. It was the sound of breathing. Quiet, warm breath.
He could hear the person shuffle something and Caeles darted to a
sitting position as he heard the tent flap open. He looked around,
only to see the flap stirring. He got up from the bed and stuck his
head outside. Several soldiers were talking nearby and there was
another soldier a few tents down who was grooming his horse.

He ducked back inside the tent, before any of the soldiers noticed
him and secured the little flap on the tent. Caeles turned and
something caught his attention. A glint of silver in the lamplight.
He looked to one side of the bed and saw a plate of food and a full
goblet. He knelt and sniffed the food on the plate. Fish? Where do
you get fish in the middle of a forest?

There were some vegetable-looking things on the plate as well, he
picked one up and took a bite. It was kind of sweet, with that
vegetable taste that he'd come to recognize. Fairly good. He picked
up a piece of the fish and popped it in his mouth. It was good too,
fried to perfection with some kind of seasoning. It wasn't anything
he recognized though. Egyptian? Where do you get foreign spices
in the middle of a forest?

He set the plate down and picked up the wine goblet. The wine
tasted pretty strong as it splashed down his throat. Caeles wrinkled
his nose as he wondered at what a wasteful person it was that had
mixed the wine. It certainly was stronger than he normally drank it,
but not bad. It tasted like a Sicilian wine. Where do you get a
Sicilian wine in the middle of a forest in Germania?

This was getting ridiculous. Obviously, Certus brought them in for
him and he had just fallen asleep on the bed and not really heard
her come or go. Caeles finished the fish and vegetables, and found
the fullness of the meal satisfying. He sat back on the stool against
his bed, the wine warming him through.

Maybe...Just a little sleep...

***


Joshua "Gargoyle" Trujillo
"Stone Cold Protector of the Righteous"
"Owner of The Anime Bar & Grille - Mm, mm good!"

Come visit The Anime Bar & Grille!
Now with two locations!
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/1509
and
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/museum/1275