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    “I will do my best,” Virgil says. Octavian’s head tilts slightly to the side and a smile peeks from the corner of his small mouth. He knows that Virgil has no say in this, yet seems to expect a truly honest answer. “Whatever Rome asks of me."

    “Very well.”

    “I am not a historian,” Virgil tells him. He knows, but Virgil must remind him.

    “No, but poets are more important.” 

    Virgil says nothing. He lowers his chin. 

    Octavian watches him. Virgil holds himself steady. Octavian finally speaks again.

    “You will fortify Rome.”

    “I will do my best."

 *

    He retires to write. Octavian’s impatience finds him, requests him, and Virgil leaves Napoli’s humid embrace for Rome’s arid commotion. 

 *

    Virgil is often struck by Octavian’s awareness of his fleeting place in this world that will go on without him once he is gone. It weighs him down, keeps his eyes ahead instead of upward like his uncle’s.

    Octavian stops Virgil at a window and pulls him by the forearm to look out over the Circus. 

    “You’ll do all of this justice?"

    “I must, mustn’t I?” Virgil says, and Octavian turns to him with a smile. Octavian always seems thrilled by writing, as if it’s something divine and out of his reach, recognizing its power but not the practice. He is thrilled even further to see himself in writing. Virgil hates to indulge him, but it pleases him like squeezing a blister.

 *

    Octavian sits crookedly in his chair, one of the cushions slipping off the side. He picks with his thumbs at the edges of his fingernails, rusty blood flaking on his fingers.  He raises a bleeding finger to his mouth. Virgil sips his wine and watches Octavian over the brim. Octavian’s company had been asked to retire, but Virgil was asked to stay. 

    “Shall I go?” Virgil inquires, sensing that the latest of Roman political strife does not concern him, and that Agrippa or Livia should be seated where instead Virgil is perched on a chair to spectate Octavian’s nerves. 

    “No,” Octavian says lightly. He runs a hand through his hair and pulls at it in frustration. Virgil wonders what comfort he could possibly be bringing him.

    “Would you like some wine?” Virgil offers.

    “No.”

    Virgil sits back in his seat and pulls his legs up under him. He rests an elbow on the chair back and puts his chin in his hand. 

    “Are you tired?” Octavian asks. Virgil pulls his eyes from the floor. 

    “No.” 

    “We could retire,” Octavian says, still tearing at his fingers blindly, now looking at Virgil, absently. 

    “No, no. I don’t mind,” Virgil says. Octavian watches him a moment longer and looks down at his hands. He curses, pursing his lips while his tired eyes stare through his bloodied hands. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”

    “Are you sure you don’t want to retire?” Octavian replies shortly. Virgil sighs. “I would like for you to stay. Just that. So long as you don’t repeat any of this.”

    Virgil nods. Octavian watches him for a moment and then thoughtfully closes his eyes like a cat satisfied with trust. His eyes open again, already downcast.

    “I need to wash my hands,” Octavian says. Virgil remains still. Instead of calling for a basin and a cloth he pours his own cup of water over his hands and rubs the blood from the creases in his nails. The water drops seep into the dusty floor. Octavian returns to sucking on his bleeding fingers. Virgil sits back in his seat.

    “Is it your head?”

    “What?”

    “Is it your head troubling you?”

    “Just a bad feeling.”

    “It happens to Livia too,” Octavian says, leaning against the wall. At the mention of Livia’s name, a rare occurrence, Virgil feels as if he is about to be put to death simply for hearing Octavian say it. “She has her bad feelings and says that it’s her head.” 

    “It’s just a feeling,” Virgil says. Octavian looks at him, absently picking at his thumbnail. 

    “It also happens to me,” Octavian says. “I find that it’s wise to listen to it. But you know that."

    Virgil writes, and he wishes it was for anyone but Octavian, as much as he is fulfilled to write for such a cause. Octavian, for all his appreciation of Virgil’s humble craft, could never understand the spirit of it. The earthiness of his work is lost when Octavian presses his finger to the words and asks them to be changed, or when he pushes for Virgil to work faster, to please be satisfied, to stop lingering on line after line. Virgil feels, more heavily than ever as Octavian puts an uninvited hand on Virgil’s shoulder to lean over his work, that his work is not his. Perhaps, Virgil thinks, he himself is no longer his own either.

    “Octavian,” Virgil begins, and to address him so coolly feels overly bold. Octavian’s silence is tense. “If I were to die - tomorrow, or the next day - what would you do with this?”

    “Do you plan on passing within the week?”

    “I do not.”

    “Then why do you ask? Is there something I should plan for?”

    “I only wonder.”

    “You shouldn’t,” Octavian says, and sips his honey wine, “but if you did die, I would have to make do with whatever you left me.” 

    “If I were to die before this is done I would expect you to destroy it,” Virgil says, surprised at the imperium in his voice. Octavian narrows his eyes. 

    “You would have wasted your time. And mine. Rome’s."

    “And it would be just as much a waste to consider this finished when it is not.”

    “You are paralyzed by your perfectionism.”

    “And do you not expect no less than perfection?"

    Octavian is silent. Virgil prefers when Octavian comes to him about his writing directly - it allows him to be honest. Octavian does not threaten him the way his men do. But Virgil also prefers Octavian's snide tongue to his silence.

    Virgil thinks of his work, sees it sprawl out vastly before him. It is good, he thinks, it is beautiful the way a mosaic is beautiful, pieced together with parts of other things. Not like the effortless and natural things, like the dew on the grass or the stars on a cold morning. Beautiful like Rome, Virgil thinks, cobbled together deliberately by many hands, over ages of half-truths. 

    Perhaps it is not as uninspired as he feels.

    There is a crowd babbling and murmuring, breathing air that feels like smoke and iron, blinking hard trying to see something grand but obscured before him, incomprehensible. He wakes, sluggishly, in the grey morning’s morning in his room in Rome. He longs for elsewhere, Mantua’s chills or Napoli’s sogginess, where these dreams don’t find him with such frequency.

    Octavian touches him sometimes, as if a test. A hand on his forearm or his knee stays there for a moment too long, a bit too firm, and Virgil pointedly ignores it, and so he believes he passes the test. 

    Everyone else has retired and Virgil, silently processing the most recent critiques, is seated with Octavian, who is regarding him with unusual warmth.

    “There is nothing I can do you for you,” Virgil says into the silence. His voice almost shakes. Octavian lifts his chin in inquiry and removes his thumb from his mouth where he had been chewing at the nail.

    “I don’t believe that.”

    “But I know it.”

    “Well,” Octavian says, swinging his legs off the cushions, “you do plenty. You write for me.”

    “But is that all that you want from me?” Virgil asks. The shake has gone from his voice and has found his knees instead. He is grateful to be seated. Octavian purses his lips and looks away, deliberately unthoughtful. 

    “You know, I often imagine being you,” Octavian says, and Virgil cannot help but tilt his head to the side. Octavian rarely thinks of anyone, so it seems, let alone about seeing through their eyes. “I imagine being so…simple. But I think…” Octavian leans forward and taps Virgil’s knee with his knuckles, “that if I were you I would realize you are not so simple. And not because you are a poet of Rome.”

    Virgil watches him. Octavian sits back in his seat again.

    “Would you like to retire?” Octavian asks. Virgil nearly wonders aloud about Livia’s whereabouts. Or Agrippa’s.

    “I will. Are you through with me?”

    “I never could be,” Octavian says simply, allowing a sly smile across his face. Virgil rises and sets down his wine. Octavian watches him with interest. 

    “Goodnight,” Virgil says, and abandons the glow of Octavian’s candles.

    Virgil sometimes feels a weight on him, like the heavy air before rain settling over his shoulders, when he thinks of the words from his hand living on after him. Will they be good? Will they be truthful? He leans back from his work and waits for that ghostly sensation of future generations at his heels and fingers clutching for his hems to finally fade away. He wonders if they could catch his fingers reaching from their past if he were to extend them to the future. Wonders if they call upon him and if those are the whisperings he hears that keep him awake at night, blinking into silvery darkness, brushing off the ghosts as residue of Octavian’s ambitions. But he can feel their fingers brushing his clothes still, from years beyond himself, ghosts from some unknown future that are as present as the ghosts of the past that Virgil so often feels at his shoulder, urging him along.

    Rome is in his hands, though it does not belong to him any more than it does Octavian.

    Octavian finds him in the gardens. Virgil’s chest thuds with a pulse of apprehension, he can tell in Octavian’s gait that he comes bearing frustration, as he always has in recent weeks. Virgil greets him, and Octavian perches on a ledge above him, already beginning to ramble, voice tilting into frustration, about some new political irritant. Virgil half-listens, humming in the right places, watching bees on the flowers before him, crawling in and out of the caves of petals. Octavian finally sighs, a conclusion, and kicks his feet. Virgil glances up at him and finds Octavian observing him thoughtfully but not meeting his eyes, not noticing that Virgil is looking at him at all. Virgil returns to the bees crawling over the flowers and reaches out carefully to one, allowing it to climb onto his finger where it settles comfortably onto the warmth of his skin. 

    “Do you worry they might sting you?” Octavian asks finally. 

    “If they do then I deserve it,” Virgil replies, “but no. They don’t want to, if they can help it.”

    “Why is that?” Octavian asks. It is the first time Octavian has expressed interest in something so arbitrary, and Virgil resists his own surprise. Octavian leans forward, elbows on his knees, watching the bee perch on Virgil’s knuckle, where an old callous is shamefully beginning to fade. 

    “They die once they’ve stung something.” 

    Octavian hums thoughtfully. Virgil would like to tell him of the empires bees build for themselves, of their efficiency, their social cohesion, but he can feel Octavian’s interest drifting again. If you would only slow down, Virgil thinks, you would see much more in the world than your empire. The bee fidgets on Virgil’s finger, as if detecting that it is no longer relevant, and hoists itself into the air. Virgil watches it until it flies out of sight, so deceptively aimless in demeanor but always returning home by some innate sense of navigation. A pang of homesickness rings in Virgil’s heart, tugging him in the direction of Mantua, and he closes his eyes against it just as Octavian rises and taps his shoulder. 

    “Come with me,” Octavian says, something between a command and an invitation, and Virgil lifts himself up to follow him. 

    “You don’t have to read tonight,” Octavian says as Virgil sits down across from him on the cushions. Virgil raises an eyebrow and Octavian shrugs and offers to share his wine, but Virgil doesn’t take it. “I’d just like to sit tonight. Like friends.”

    When Virgil doesn’t move, Octavian moves over on his cushions and gestures with finality for Virgil to join him, so Virgil does. Octavian, always so warm, reaches for Virgil’s shoulder. 

    “We are friends, aren’t we?”

    Virgil says nothing. Octavian passes him his wine again. This time Virgil takes it, and Octavian smiles, an unusual but pleasant image. He is almost handsome, with his lazily-sculpted face, unremarkable if it weren’t for his expressions. Octavian doesn’t need friends, shouldn’t be concerned with having them.

    They talk into the heavy darkness of the night, stars creeping slowly past the window as the wine passes between them. Octavian laughs, speaks greatly of his boyhood and almost nothing of politics. He tips his head back against the cushions, his face flushed, and takes Virgil’s arm in his warm hand. Virgil expects him to ask for some reassurance that their conversation won’t be included in his work.

    “You’ve stayed,” Octavian says simply.

    “I have,” Virgil says, hoping not to betray his wariness. Octavian only hums, closing his eyes, quickly falling into drunk, half-snoring sleep. 

    Virgil feels he should leave, but Octavian still loosely holds his forearm, and so he stays. He watches the stars in their glowing clouds framed by the open window. Wherever he may go, the stars remain the same, bright in their apathy. He closes his eyes only because he can no longer hold them open. 

    In a cold and weighted darkness Virgil feels a tug at his sleeve and an arm grasp firmly at his elbow, hears a gentle inquiry in his ear in an uneasy tone, in a tongue just barely not his own. But when he grasps the soft hand on his elbow and turns to the voice he finds his hands empty, and nothing but blank faces surrounding him in a pacing grey crowd in the dark. The same voice calls again, still so close to him, still unseen, maestro, and Virgil wants to call out for it, opens his mouth, and fails.

    He startles, blinks, and finds himself still on the floor in the dwindling light of Octavian’s chamber. Octavian stirs and opens his eyes. 

    “Are you troubled?” Octavian asks

    “No,” Virgil says, “it was only a dream.”

    “You shouted.” 

    “A dream,” Virgil insists. 

    Octavian lifts his head from where it is tipped back on the cushions he leans against. Virgil sometimes forgets the weight that dreams can carry even to someone as seemingly grounded as Octavian.

    “About me?”

    “No.” Of that much Virgil is sure. 

    “You would tell me if it was.”

    “Yes.” Virgil says. Octavian watches him steadily. "I’m going to retire.” 

    Virgil pulls himself up off the floor. 

    “Before you go,” Octavian says sleepily, “I have a question.”

    “I’ll try to answer."

    “Is there truth in what you’ve written?”

    “You know the answer to that.”

    “I know that you know more than you let me believe.” 

    “Goodnight,” Virgil says. Octavian sighs and closes his eyes again.

    Virgil steps into the corridor and walks through the columns of starlight, resisting the compulsion to quicken his pace or look over his shoulder at whatever may be following him.  

 *

    Voices chatter and murmur in the distance, buzzing like a mosquito at Virgil’s ear. If only he could reach for them and brush them away the same way. 

    The stones are cool beneath Virgil’s feet in the shade. A beetle creeps sluggishly across the stone, and Virgil puts out a finger, lets the beetle grasp him with its thorny feet. He slowly moves his hand into the Greek sun and the beetle shimmers green and blue. It shuffles and unsheathes its wings and lifts itself up into the warmth just as deliberating footsteps come up behind Virgil. 

    “I wanted to see you before you left,” Octavian says. Virgil turns to face him and stands up.

    “Did you?”

    “I already anticipate my return as well. However,” Octavian says, placing a hand over his chest, “something has me feeling uneasy.”

    “It’s only a short journey home."

    “But I feel that something is doomed.”

    “I feel that it is willed,” Virgil says. Octavian holds his eyes, hard, disbelieving. 

    “Until I return to Rome,” Octavian steps forward, diplomatically kisses his cheek, and continues walking past Virgil, out of the shade and into the sun, his hair flickering like gold leaf.

    The chill sets in first, more deeply-set than the maritime wind could inflict, and the boy sitting at Virgil’s side notices. Virgil cannot remember his name, he had wanted to remember it, to do him the courtesy of knowing his name and his story even though he was only meant to fetch and carry Virgil’s things. But his name escapes Virgil’s mind now.

    “Pardon my observation, sir, but you look ill,” he says. Virgil shakes his head, and the world sways. 

    “It will pass,” Virgil says, his mouth feeling stiff and heavy, and feels unseen eyes on his back. The boy chuckles and Virgil turns to him, but the space at his side is empty. 

    If he is to die, he thinks, he hopes he can at least do it at home.

    He can see the shading of the clouds in intense detail above him, a overwhelming brightness of the sun, a moment of such out-of-place clarity that he thinks maybe he can carry on if not for his eyes falling shut again. It is not where he would like to pass, it is not Mantua, it is not Napoli, not even Rome, but the sky above him is the same sky as anywhere else. It is at least better, he thinks, than dying on that unholy boat. He opens his eyes again, slowly, and turns them up to the sky. 

    The sun is the same here as in Mantua, or Napoli, or Rome. He lets his eyes close against it.

     The fever takes him, and he feels it, longing to reach for his pen.