Sasha Hitchcock - Pompeii - Just before the explosion, a female mystic of the cult depicted here - Secrets of female cult devoted to god of ecstasy unearthed at Pompeii.
The Aurora Archives: Day 18
ARCHIVE ENTRY: 0018-POMP LOCATION: The Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii outskirts DATE: 78 AD SUBJECT: The Private Journals of Aurelia TRANSLATOR: Cas’shya ARTIFACT: Five scrolls of papyrus, preserved in a sealed amphora.
Scroll I: The Month of Mars
I looked at Lucius today across the breakfast table. He is seven years old, yet he looks at me with the eyes of a stranger. I corrected his posture. I told him a Roman boy does not slouch. He stiffened, obeyed, and the light went out of his eyes. Why do I do this? My husband says I am a model wife, I am pudicitia. My house is clean. My weaving is perfect. My heart is a stone.
Gala, the servant girl, found me crying in the peristyle garden. She did not look away as a slave should. She touched my hand.
“Domina,” she whispered. “The mountain air is sweet tonight. Come with us. Come and unbind your hair.” I should have whipped her for the insolence. Instead, I asked,
“When?”
Scroll II: The Month of Maius - The Night of the Knife
I am shaking as I write this. Not from cold, but from a newly found zest for life. They took me to the deep woods on the slopes of Vesuvius. There were torches. Women I recognized, the baker’s wife, the senator’s daughter, all wearing the hoods of the Bacchantes. A tall woman, Flavia, stepped forward. She held a creature by the scruff of its neck. A rabbit, with fur like storm clouds. It hung there, limp and exposed, yet its eyes were wide and calm. It could have kicked her. It could have run. It chose to hang there. The High Priestess handed me a knife of black glass.
“Sever the tie to your old life,” she commanded. “Spill the blood of the timid beast, and be free.” I took the knife. The rabbit looked at me. It did not tremble. It watched me with an intelligence that froze my blood. I raised the blade. The women began to drum. I looked at the rabbits soft neck. I thought of Lucius. I thought of the innocence I crush in him every day with my sharp words.
“No,” I whispered. I dropped the knife. It shattered on the stone. “I will not kill to be free.” The silence was terrible. I expected them to tear me apart like the pictures depicted. Then, the drumming stopped. The women... smiled. They lowered their hoods. They began to clap. Flavia lowered the rabbit gently to the moss. It did not run. It sat up on its hind legs, groomed its ears, and then looked directly at me. It opened its mouth. Its jaw moved strangely, struggling with the shape of our words, its tongue clicking against teeth not made for speech. Like the stories told to me as a child made real.
“The... knife... is... easy,” it said, the voice clipped and high, like the bristles of a brush being dragged across stones. “The... mer-cy... is... hard.”
I fainted.
Scroll III: The Month of Iunius - The Sisterhood
I understand now why the Senate fears us. We meet when the moon is full. We do not plot treason. We do something more dangerous. We talk about the forbidden. We walk through the pine forests, no longer wives or mothers, but women. We sing songs that have no rhythm, wild, joyous and mournful both. We dance until our feet are bare and dirty. We speak of things that are not allowed in the city and the polite circles. Last night, young Livia, the dyer’s wife, laughed so hard she cried. She told us that her rabbit, a stern buck named Cato, had taught her to feel the ‘tension’ in her own body, to release the gravity she holds in her hips.
“I felt it for the first time! The ex-stasis” she shouted to the trees, blushing but triumphant. “The pleasure! My husband was terrified at first, he thought I was possessed! But then he was delighted. Now he brings me flowers and tries to make it happen every week!”
We all laughed, a sound that rolled through the valley. It was not the polite titter of a dinner party. It was the roar of women who had found their bodies again. Vitis, my guide, sat on a rock and watched us. He did not laugh, but his whiskers twitched in that way I now know means approval.
“Joy... is... grav-i-ty,” he clipped. “It... pulls... you... to-geth-er.”
Scroll IV: The Month of September - The Strings
I meet Vitis in the olive grove twice a week with a few other women. He teaches us, and we teach each other. He says the world is not made of stone and law, but of strings. Invisible threads of weight and pull that connect everything.
“You Romans build roads,” Vitis told us today, struggling with the ‘R’. “R-r-roads... are... hard. The... earth... is... soft.” He taught me to close my eyes and feel the gravity of things. Not just the weight of a rock, but the weight of a mood, the density of a silence. I am learning to listen to the space between words.
Scroll V: Saturnalia - The Gift
The festival of Saturnalia has begun. The house is full of holly and candles. The slaves are dining with the masters. Usually, this day is torture. My husband drinks too much wine. Lucius hides in his room. But tonight was different. I went to Lucius’s room. He was sitting on the floor, playing with a wooden soldier. He flinched when I entered, expecting a lecture on his tunic or his manners. I closed my eyes. I reached out for the strings. I felt his gravity. It was heavy, pulled inward by fear. He felt small. He felt lonely. I sat on the floor with him. I did not fix his tunic. I did not tell him to stand up.
“That is a brave soldier,” I said softly. “But he looks tired. Does he need to rest?” Lucius looked at me, shocked.
“He... he misses his mother,” he whispered. The air in the room shifted. The density broke. I pulled my son into my lap. I did not care that my silk stola crumpled. I held him.
“I am here,” I said. “I am here, Lucius.” We played for hours. The house was noisy with the party, but in our corner, there was a quiet, golden peace. Vitis was right. To control the gravity, you must first let go of the weight. I looked out the window at the mountain. The snow is white and beautiful. I feel, for the first time, that I am truly awake.
Archivist’s Note
ARCHIVIST: Cas’shya ANALYSIS: Aurelia’s account provides rare insight into the later stages of a time before the silencing. The rabbit vocal tract is not designed for human speech despite how common it is now; the larynx is positioned high, and the tongue is thick. However, by manipulating the density of the air passing through their vocal cords, they can modulate frequency to mimic human phonemes. This results in the distinctive clipped staccato described by Aurelia.
The ‘Bacchic Orgy’ described by male historians was, in reality, a form of somatic therapy guided by the women and the rabbits together. By teaching women to sense and manipulate their own internal gravity (tension/release), the rabbits helped them reclaim autonomy over their bodies in a highly restrictive society.
The ability Aurelia describes, sensing the ‘weight of a mood’ is a low-level application of connecting to the strings. Humans are incapable of it by and large, though it has been suggested that they once were able to sense them, earlier in their evolution, as we are. This is a rare example with rabbit mentorship, where they can learn to perceive it. Sadly, this diary ends here. We know that eight months later, Vesuvius erupted. However, archaeological evidence from the site suggests Aurelia and Lucius were not among the bodies found in the ash. One legend amongst the rabbits suggests that when the ash began to fall, Vitis guided them. Perhaps the strings led them out of the darkness and toward the sea. We like to believe they made it.
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