Putting My Feet In The Dirt September Writing Prompts#10: Soft Spoken Secrets

I’m not sure exactly why today’s prompt brought to my mind the final moments of Pompeii, but it did.

I went to the Pompeii Exhibit when it was in Seattle about 5 years ago and the video below was part of the exhibit- the floor in the little theatre where we watched this  shook and the room filled with smoke.

You had the sense that you were sitting in a room (  the walls looked like blocks of stone and we sat on benches that looked like they had been carved out of stone too)  in Pompeii and looking out the window and to the city below  and across to Mount Vesusvius herself.

Knowing what was going to happen was bad. Seeing dates and times made it real. Seeing the birds fly off was the scariest part for me.

But of course, it only got worse for Pompeii as the day moved forward.

In the end, hidden under all of that ash was  Mount Vesusvius’ secret as well as the evidence of what she did over 2 days  and the horror she caused to the residents of Pompeii.

A long time after the fact we learned  all about it.

It was a softly spoken secret that you could hear in the sound of the burning.

.That’s all you could hear because the birds, the river and the port were all gone and there wasn’t much else to hear.

But hidden under the ash, buried below the Earth Vesusvius’ secret would come out and the world and the curious would learn it.

I guess the birds were singing on that day.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso