THE SLAVE GIRL - a story in a hundred words

THE SLAVE

 “Who will buy this lovely young virgin?”

“I will,” Petrus said and the hammer fell.

His home was a humble pottery in Stabiae, but a fig-tree shaded the yard, the kitchen was cool, and when Yani gave birth to a son, Petrus freed her.

One day he announced, “I go to sell pots in Surrentum,” and Yani said, “I will come too.”

Petrus stared as she packed all their belongings into the cart. “Shall I bring my wheel?” he joked.

She glanced at the mountain and shivered, clutching her child. “You can buy another – now hurry!”

They were ten miles away when Vesuvius erupted.

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Stabiae was a small village overlooking the Bay of Naples which, like Pompeii, was buried under metres of volcanic ash when Mt Vesuvius erupted.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabiae
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I took this photograph on our village green at Halloween a couple of years ago - this was our local supermarket's offering to the festivities. Thanks to Rochelle for using another of my photos - I shall enjoy reading what the rest of Friday Ficitoneers thought of it. If you are not a FF contributor, you can find us by following the blue frog link from https://rochellewisoff.com/ - after you've left a comment here, of course.

And - if you click on the book cover at the top of this page, that link will take you to the Amazon page where you can buy my new book HELTER-SKELTER, which is the story of Albie, a boy growing up in Kent, South-east England, between the wars - a completely different genre from my last book, A Volcanic Race. For those of you who bought AVR, I am still working on the sequel and hope to publish it in time for Christmas.