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Wyrmskyld
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#3
Old 10-16-2013, 04:07 AM

The ruins were old. Some of the pillars might even have witnessed the rise of Caesar, although an empty fragment of stone building was much newer and likely only saw the last Duke of Naples a century before. Perhaps the ruins had even belonged to the duke, and had been left to grow wild and become another bit of historical flotsam dotting the landscape of southern Italy. Whatever the ruins had once been, they had had a fine house and elegant gardens. The house was mostly gone now, from neglect and looting and the encroaching gardens. Tall cypress trees ominously shaded an old walkway between house and road, while lavender and rosemary wrestled with nettles in what used to be the kitchen garden. Grape vines had overrun the crumbling garden wall and spread on to what was left of the building, climbing high to keeping their heavy burden of fruit out of reach of all but birds.

Well, birds and the slim teenaged girl standing on the shoulders of a boy her own age. "Just another step to the right, Marzio... There!"

Stretching just a bit more, Marisa Angioli broke the stem of a particularly inviting bunch of grapes and bundled them into her apron with another bunch of equal size and beauty. She eyed the ground and shifted her weight slightly to warn her brother before dropping from his shoulders to the ground. A rock turned under her foot as she landed, and she yelped and flailed one arm while the other cradled the fruit-filled apron. A hand caught and steadied her before she could splash into the stagnant water of a ruined fountain, and she looked up at her brother with a rueful laugh. "See? I told you I wouldn't fall."

She walked over to the two pitiful bundles that held their worldly belongings and retrieved a worn kerchief, spreading it out on a rock and placing the grapes on top. "And we don't have to go hungry or thirsty while we wait for Nazario to get here with our pay."