( starter for @lionhvrted ) set 58 BC. gaul.
ANTONY FEELS THE SMELL OF LEATHER SURROUND THEM, barring the doors and clouding any other memory they could indulge. Rome’s clarity, its spotless expanse - trickles of water, brocades hung out to dry, peeled fruit being served in spheres - seem even more a fantasy than the ones he usually entertains. He bites down on coldness and it tastes like something congealed. The first time he took his boots off to mend them, it was like stepping into the next chamber of the public baths: lukewarm, and then icy, and all in all prevailingly wet. That texture of frozen flesh is everywhere, from the bed cot to the table. When he chews, it goes just the way Gabinius' soldiers talked about their desert expeditions, only it's humidity going down his throat instead of sand. When he downs his ration of wine ( a restriction that holds itself name-only, at least for the near future ) it turns to water in his bloodstream. Mark can practically sense it dillute; even the hangovers are backwards here, runny and unstable, having never reached that height of self-forgetfulness. The brawls are more vicious, and the rutting is abrupt, misplaced. He loves every moment of it.
He can see no sense to the whole enterprise, no steady direction, only a chain of muted colors and bright deeds that spins them one week into the next. It spins them into new territory, as well. Crinkled by dampness at the edges, the map lays before them, hostile and brittle - yet they see her expand with each patrol. There are no choices to be made, here. He wouldn't voice any of this, at least not now, with Gaius Iulius dining before him, mangling a chop of something still live-looking. He half expects it to leap off the plate; for a moment, he stares at it, undefinite and raw, waiting for the twitch. Then he reaches for the wine pitcher - not a matter of amphoras here, no frailty permitted - and realizes that there's no need to say it, either. His excitement is plastered on his skin like the barbarians paint theirs. "Where to? Every time you make them slaughter one of those things", his wide gesture encompasses the platters, the sturdy ribcages jutting out against gold, "this play-making at dinner, it means you're about to send us back out." His tone is so pleased it should shame him, evoke the gratified huffs of a boy who memorized his poems. Yet it does quite the opposite - Mark delights in this new found ability to translate the world around him, deduce the knit in commander Gaius's brow like it had hieroglyphs carved within. Whereas before the world of the living was something to be sweetened, peppered with spices and challenges, now it made itself known to him. He knew what kind of mission it would be from the way clouds worked themselves into a canopy. He knew who would die, and who wouldn't - or just might not. He had all this guesswork set out for him, this taming of clues, and it was like a gift, like a naked woman in your bed just before dawn. "So?" The soldier pushed the question further, the vowel parting his lips against a smile. It hovered just above the edge of the glass, a half-circle of red.
