The Priestess of Ceres
A father and daughter talk memory, myth, and food near an ancient Pompeii tomb.
“They say she fed the people,” Papa said, twisting a dried olive branch with steady fingers.
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew — the woman in the tomb. The one with the laurel, the rings, the necklace that caught the light like truth.
“The Priestess of Ceres. She blessed the harvest, kept it strong. Called the rains with prayer and kept the children fed.”
“And him? The man?”
“Any man. They assigned him a name. She was the name.”
We sat on crates near the dig site, ash coating the ground like the residue of memory. I looked out at where the statues once stood, now removed and restored in glass rooms.
“They found them side by side,” I said. “They say they were buried together.”
Papa snorted and shook his head. “Doesn’t mean they lived that way. Stone tells you how they died. Not how they argued, or loved, or if they made bread in the morning.”
“Then what does it say?”
“Only that someone carved a story. And people believed it. The goddess writes the real story.”
He handed me the branch. “Here, daughter. Braid it right. The spirits don’t take kindly to lies told with your hands.”
I wove the sacred braids in silence. The olive cracked in my hands.
“Do you think she believed in the goddess?” I asked.
Papa smiled. “Maybe. But I bet she believed in feeding people more.”
I nodded. “I’d want to be remembered for that.”
“You remember someone like that every time you eat,” he said. “Her name’s in the grain, even if you never learned to say it.”
Real headlines that vaguely resemble today’s fiction:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pompeii-tomb-life-sized-statues-found-porta-sarno-necropolis/
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