Musa delectibilis pulchram sapientem perspicacem

Si velis tu fidelis servum iuvare hoc oratonem exaudi

Etiamsi mortalis sum in Olympo commendo

Mea vox in fabulam lapidis et nubis cantare rege

Uti Prometheus hominem flammae argutiae et cretae fecisti

Sic scientia homine oriebatur et Pompeii scientia

O, delectable Muse! Beautiful, wise, observant,

Hear this prayer, if you please, to aid your faithful servant.

Mortal though I may be, in Olympus I do trust

To guide my voice in singing a tale of stone and dust.

For Prometheus did make man from fire, wit and clay

And from man was thus born knowledge, and from knowledge, Pompeii.

The words roll off your tongue for the tenth, hundredth, thousandth time. So begins Cordelia’s thus-far untitled epic, an extensive and brilliant history of Pompeii, its people, and your temple. There are no hidden meanings to be found therein beyond the typical abstractions of poetry, no tricks or traps. Just a tale told with immense love and a staggering ability for conducting historical research. That is one of the first things that struck you about it beyond its careful use of language, in fact: the poem’s impossible attention to detail. There is not a single significant event in Pompeii’s history Cordelia has missed, and you even learn of a few yourself while reading her work. The founding of your Temple, the Nucerian amphitheater riots, the terrible earthquake that shook the city when both you and Cordelia were still young – it’s all there, the latter now rendered not just tragic, but ominous.

Such genius gone to waste.

You copy the poem down on some spare parchment you manage to cobble together, then in your Tome when the parchment runs out, reciting it as you go. “Mea vox,” you read. “My voice” in the feminine. You ponder the rarity of Cordelia’s narrator, whose story the reader learns of in fragments as the poem goes along. An unnamed woman, she was a talented poet, and one of the many mortals Jupiter managed to seduce. In retaliation, Jupiter’s wife, Juno, transformed the narrator into a wisp of air, a disembodied voice that spends her time shifting through the nooks and crannies of Pompeii, an invisible witness to its history. It is such a gentle, heart-wrenching narrative.

Did Cordelia feel invisible?

Such genius gone to waste.

You shower the poem in ash, trace over near-faded words, curse the spots when your tears wet the bare parchment. Miraculously, this has happened only once, the first time you finished reading the poem all the way through, when you realised the epic has no real ending. It just… stops. Like she did. Like you have now, in a different way. But after that first emotional outburst, too powerful to be contained, you decide: No more. There is no way you will let this scroll be damaged again. It shall remain preserved for eons, on parchment, on stone. You will retell it for eons if you have to, your voice alive in the wind, a wisp of air, undying.

But wait, your voice?

Can I do her justice?

Did Cordelia feel invisible?

Such genius gone to waste.

Voices, voices in your head, unflinching.

You lay the scroll to rest on a broken pillar while you practice, practice, practice.

You lay the scroll to rest on a broken pillar.

You lay the scroll to rest.

A pillar? Rest?

For a second, an image: Cordelia crushed by a pillar of stone. It is so vivid you let out a scream.

And then, you wake up.

You can’t remember when you fell asleep exactly, or how long it has been since you lay down amongst the ash, the unchanging nature of Personal Libraries making your guesswork all the more difficult. But before you even think to consider this question, you swivel your head around desperately, momentarily terrified of having let the scroll out of your sight. What if someone stole it, or broke it, or if you – God forbid – drooled on it?! Fortunately, you spot the poem almost immediately, still resting atop the pillar where you left it. You breathe a sigh of relief. At least that part was not a dream, although that means Cordelia’s fate was not imagined either…

You try to push the thought aside and get back to work, but a massive headache prevents you from doing anything but sitting up. Now that you think about it, you have not felt physically tired or sleepy since your arrival at Amar’s Bookshop, but your grief seems to be getting the best of you mentally. Maybe it would be good for you to lie down for a few minutes, try to get your thoughts straight.

Below you, the ash feels surprisingly like a mattress, perhaps because there is so much of it. You try to clear your mind then, to think of something other than your horrible loss, but it proves to be near impossible. In your mind, the poem keeps echoing:

O, delectable Muse! Beautiful, wise, observant…

That was Cordelia to you. In fact, this whole poem has the powerful effect of transporting you straight to your past. It is a painful journey, you reflect, but also one that provides an odd sense of comfort: you love Pompeii, after all. You love its Temple, its people, Cordelia… And nowhere are they as alive as in her own writing, as in an epic that you now know by heart.

How terrible that she isn’t here to finish it, you mourn. To keep Pompeii alive as it was, not show it dead as it is. You thoughts now turn to the copy of Pompeii you keep carrying around, and you shiver.

It should have been her here, not me, you think.

You believe that with your whole heart.

Yet nevertheless, it is you. That is a fact. You know it to be so. And for that reason, you know that if Pompeii’s memory relies on anyone right now, that someone is you. And not just Pompeii’s memory, but the Temple’s memory. Cordelia’s memory.

You close your eyes again, your headache returning when you consider the responsibility you must now carry. For a moment, you contemplate heading over to the scroll, taking up a quill, and continuing where Cordelia left off right this second. You have some skill in poetry yourself, after all – nothing close to Cordelia’s, of course, but you know that with time and effort you might be able to give the epic some semblance of an ending, especially considering the amount of poetry reading you have been doing as of late. Yet even if you felt ready to tackle such a challenge now, you know you don’t have the energy for it in your fickle state. If you are to do it, that is a task to undertake in the future.

For the time being, then, you decide to merely rest, to try to sleep off your woes. In your dreams, you are transported once again to your last moments with Cordelia, your hands intertwined, your world collapsing all around you. But this time there is a strange feeling of peace accompanying the scene. You were together, after all.

Cordelia did not die alone.