Rome's thoughts-

Ashes and soot are, to be frank, disgusting. There's no use for them.

The fire that creates it is completely different. Its creation has become the cure for food-borne diseases and the solution to seeing beyond the darkness, to defecate on something but your own two feet.

With as much haste as it was lit to write by could be how quickly flames would turn around and murder both creator and craft.

The horizon was foretelling just that: a sunrise that never came, but stayed to glower amongst the houses and the temples and the bodies. Now not only were my hands dusted with soot, but my back was starting to peel itself away. Blood dripped onto the road behind me as I tried to continue walking.

Not one of my better ideas.

Sitting now, the fire clawed its way across the monuments, sparkling across marble to reach the more flammable insides.

Cracks could be heard more than seen at this distance. A warning cry would come out as the posts would lurch to the side like the trees that had once loomed this area before. It was ironic to be sure.

A good laugh.

Another bad decision on my part, as blood slid through my mouth and down my front to join the rest.

But I could still hold my head high, to see what I had become. I could imagine the flames away, seeing only my glorious empire as it should have been. Chaos did not do it justice.

"Keep painting."

Yes, it did remind me of him of all things. This is how I could stand tall against my own failure, knowing I would still be standing. This would pass, these would scar, and it would end up a rough patch like all the others.

Feliciano did as he was told. Sitting on the banks as his brush went up and down. His face was not visible above the canvas, sniffling was the only evidence there was to a person being behind it at all.

A sweet child Feliciano, but he was not yet strong. So I had to be, especially as people started rushing towards us melding as best they could into the charred water, faces already wrought with smoke.

I made him watch as Pompeii burned alive, and I wanted to make damn sure he remembered it.

"Wh- why… I don't understand… Grandpa I-" The thick air muffled his speech but it was apparent he was upset.

"This is a lesson." I spoke louder than necessary, I didn't want screaming and loud cracking sounds to be what he learned. This was important. "This is what a disaster is."

He looked up at his painting, then the actual scene, back to the painting, and then crashed his eyes into the view of mine. I continued.

"By morning, this will be a wasteland. What trees that bore fruit, will lie dormant in their soil. What grand temples that were built, will have withered and decayed. What children that so happily played next to you, will either do so tomorrow or never again."

He was sobbing again. My hands tensed, should I really be going this far while he's so young? What if- no, it had to be done. I sat next to him on the grass; I wanted to be on his level.

"Listen to me, and listen forever." I chose this point to pick up his half finished painting, and break it into pieces.

His cries were deafening. Every ache could be felt, and I even had to swallow down the frog in my throat. I delved on still.

"Do not grieve something partially torn. Never. Tears will not make this go away, tears can not wash away all the soot, and the ash, and the rubble. You must be strong for the whole picture, and must never be afraid of what you have created being destroyed. It happens too many times, Feliciano.

Your memories are not the painting; your knowledge is not the scrolls. You, you are it.

You are the trees that must be helped to live, the temples that must be constructed to be worshiped in, the people that must be encouraged to survive.

The painting is nothing as long as your memory of it exists."

He crawled into my lap, face buried into my chest. My voice softened, I pushed his head back until I made sure he was looking at me.

"You, my child, are everything."

I remembered that now, more than anything that had gone on in my life as I watched my city continue to burn from a closer proximity than before.

While thinking I had wandered towards the central square, debris lurking around my feet, one of my eyes swelling itself shut from some particular injury to the city.

Perhaps it was just symbolic for my lack of judgment.

Heat compressed around the center of my beautiful home, but there was a reason to go on. To keep on longer than the fire could. I had to, even as I had to keel over in the middle of my own streets.

"Grandpa Rome?"

The ominous crack sounded off to my right, but I stayed still. Tears were forming as I looked around at my empire; my everything.

"Yes Feliciano?"

Once so beautiful and grand. The height of civilization, the poster-child for the most successful of conquests.

"What… what if you lose your memories?"

The tears fell only a few seconds faster than the pillar across my back, fire now eating away my sides, and rubble tucking me in.

"Then… you have nothing."

Thank you for reading. I am humble to whatever you wish to say.