Chapter Text
His brother is knelt praying at the stone altar to Hera. He hopes she can watch over his wife, over his son, who they left weak but recovering when they left Ostia. Antonius has aspirations, higher than Aurelius does – Centurion is enough for the elder Castorus – but what good is military success without anyone to go home to? And to succeed would split them up, so if there was nobody to return to, then it would be pointless.
“Aurelius,” he says, voice raspy. His brother lifts his head from his prayers. “We should go now.”
Aurelius, pious to something greater than the things Antonius holds dear, leaves a final kiss on the altar. As they leave, Antonius struggles to express the great resentment bubbling inside him. It is wrong to resent the gods – wrong to have great expectations of them, in the face of the myths and smallness of men. The great columns reveal glimpses of Rome spreading out around the rivers. “Do you think they hear us?”
His older brother has no answer. Before they fully emerge from the temple, a veiled priestess steps into view. “Somniator,” she calls.
Obediently, his brother halts, turning to the priestess. “Ave, well met, Priestess,” he murmurs respectfully with a bow of his head. Antonius silently follows his lead.
She raises her hands in benediction. “What is it you pray for, sons of Ostia?”
Covering his silence, Aurelius answers with more respect than Antonius would manage. This is why the gods saw fit to send Aurelius as their father’s firstborn. “The wellbeing of my nephew, that the gods will see him safely through his sickness.”
A soft hum is the priestess' response. “And what is it that you see in your dreams?” Her head tilts under the veil, a hint of dark lips and a stright nose. Her hands are gently folded in front of her, but her body seems tense. A dreamer can be a messenger of the gods.
The silence lingers, and Antonius is curious despite himself. Dreams are a divine subject, as like to doom as bless, to be left comfortably to soothsayers or priests or oracles. He has no memories of a time before his older brother’s omen-like dreams. What might his brother have to share?
“Only stars, priestess.” He turns his face to the horizon; for an uncomfortable moment, Antonius doesn’t recognise his own beloved brother. “Only stars.”