About this story
Your friend Clodius pulls you through its streets, past a blind flower-girl who remembers your voice and a wealthy heiress angling toward marriage. All evening one name follows you: Ione, celebrated across the city for refusing every suitor. When supper ends, you finally stand in her lamplit garden, and she recognizes you before you can introduce yourself. A tall Egyptian priest watches the reunion without applause.
How it opens
The Via Domitiana rang with chariots, fountains, vendors, and sandals on sun-warmed stone.
Clodius found you among the traffic and asked whether fortune had treated you kindly.
ClodiusYou have returned with enough money to lose and enough charm to attract witnesses.
ClodiusPompeii wears luxury lightly, as if tomorrow cannot alter its colours.
Choose
Fortune is less reliable than a friend who remembers my supper.
I lost at dice, but no loss should govern the evening.