Margo waited until Malcolm had fallen asleep, then quietly dressed in the darkness and slipped out of their rented room. She wanted to get away by herself to think. What with lessons and down-time adventures, she hadn’t really found five whole minutes to just think about the enormity of what she was doing. She knew she was taking a risk, going out at night, but Ostia wasn’t Rome. Besides, I need to prove I’m ready to solo.
Margo gained the dark street without raising an alarm. She leaned against the wall and let go her breath, then grinned. So far so good. When her eyes adjusted, Margo caught her breath. The sky … Clearer even than a Minnesota winter night, the sky was so filled with stars Margo lost whole minutes just gazing upward.
Everybody should see a sky like this, just once be for they die …. Margo had met folks who’d never seen anything but the murky yellow glow that passed for night in places like New York. Maybe if they saw a sky like that they wouldn’t feel so … so self-important.
Feeling keenly her own insignificance, Margo found her way to the docks. Wooden hulls creaked in the night Wind flapped in loose sails, sang through slack rigging. Where ships rode quietly at anchor, a few braziers burned on high stern decks, marking the presence of night watchmen. Margo found a stone archway near the entrance to one long pier and settled in the shadows. Far away, drifting on the spring wind, she could hear a magical chorus of frogs and insects from vast salt marshes. Margo sighed. I’m really sitting on a dock two thousand years before I was born.