In the waning light of Floralia’s final hour, I, Julia Aemilia, stood at the threshold of our modest villa overlooking Bar Harbor’s restless waters.
The wind came swift as Mercury’s winged sandals, stirring the lace of my stola and carrying the briny breath of the sea. Behind me lay the marble hall where my parents,
Titus and Flavia Cornelius, awaited my husband’s and my arrival—our first journey together since our nuptials, one year hence.
All their life, my parents had shown Dariel of Pontus courtesy tempered by reserve—their laughter at his jests perfunctory, their salutations measured.
Yet now, beneath the evening star, I felt a tremor in the household’s foundation, as though they suspected a secret I would not yet whisper.
Thus begins the account of how a single gesture—his hand upon my womb—shook the pillars of propriety, and how truth, once loosed, reshaped our family’s destiny.
I. The Pilgrimage to the Cliffs
At sunrise, we donned our traveling cloaks and descended the narrow path hewn from living rock. My father, with gait precise as a centurion on parade,
led the way; my mother, serene yet watchful, followed. Dariel and I brought up the rear, hand clasped in hand, our steps measured against the cliff’s edge.
Here, the portals of the world opened upon azure waters, dotted with isles like emerald testaments to Neptune’s craft. My mother stilled and raised her bronze mirror of observation to our countenances. “Smile,” she urged in gentle—yet insistent—tone, raising the ivory tablet of her likeness-maker (the “camera,” in modern parlance).
In that instant, Dariel’s arm curved about me, his palm alighting upon my belly with such exactitude—plants of my very heart turned to flame. Not the tender cradle of a lover’s embrace, nor the casual tether of companionship, but the firm, deliberate press of hands upon the secret within.
My mother’s hand faltered. My father’s brow arched. For a heartbeat, the air held its breath. Then, soft as the susurrus of cypress boughs, the likeness-maker shutter fell mute. No word was spoken. Only that seal of flesh upon flesh, branding our truth before any tongue could betray it.
