Three days before the IdesVol. MMXXVI · No. 1Price: two copper coins
Docket No. R-001 · Filed at sunrise
Romula, the city before the city.
Long before E2, there was Romula. A city carved from white marble, laid out in perfect avenues, humming from sunrise to long after sunset. The forum buzzed with merchants and philosophers. Kids raced crate chariots down the side streets. Everybody knew everybody, and everybody was somebody.
The city at sunrise. The marble did the rest.
Dispatch No. 1 · From the baths
The first letter from Romula
By Flavius Fullbelly, Chief Inspector of Lunch
Dear people of E2,
I write to you from the baths, where I have been stationed since morning. The water is the temperature of a good soup, which is to say: perfect. And yet nobody will put it in the official record.
My office has completed its annual review of the midday meal. Findings: lunch was too small on Tuesday. I have ordered a second lunch to correct the record. The second lunch was also too small. A third lunch has now been scheduled. This is what leadership looks like.
Maximus Snorus (Keeper of the Afternoon Nap, a title he invented during a nap) asked me to tell you the Pantheon is still standing. It is. I checked from the baths. Still standing. Magnificent.
They say our city will fall one day, and a better one will rise from the ashes. Fine. But I want it noted, for the record: the baths were perfect, and lunch was too small.
Yours in service, and in soup, Flavius Fullbelly
P.S. If anyone in E2 knows a recipe for a bigger lunch, send it by pigeon. The fast pigeon.
Dispatch No. 2 · The forum at midday
White marble. Blue sky. No bad days.
Where every conversation felt important and none of them were.
Dispatch No. 3 · The Great Baths
Where the city came to soak.
The baths were the living room of Romula. Vast pools of steaming water under painted ceilings, mosaic floors warm under bare feet, and conversation that flowed easier than the aqueducts. Deals were made here. Friendships were sealed here. Some naps were legendary here.
Entry was free. The gossip was priceless.
Dispatch No. 4 · Fountain Square
Water, everywhere, beautiful.
Romulan engineers moved water like it was music. Fountains sang in every square, carved lions and dolphins pouring silver streams into marble basins. On hot afternoons the whole city gathered around them, because in Romula even the plumbing was art.
The water never stopped, and neither did the city.
Dispatch No. 5 · The Pantheon, noon
One beam of light. A thousand prayers.
At the heart of Romula stood the Pantheon, the greatest dome the ancient world had ever raised. Once a day, the sun found the oculus and laid a single column of light on the marble floor, and the whole temple went quiet.
The oculus. Noon, every day, right on time.
Dispatch No. 6 · The Festival of Lights
The city that never stopped singing.
Theaters carved into hillsides. Frescoes in colors that still make painters jealous. Flute players on corners, poets in the squares, festivals that turned whole avenues into parades. Romulans believed a city should be beautiful on purpose, and they were right.
Every seat taken, every voice singing.
Fact-check desk
Plinius the Nosy reviews Letter No. 1
Head Historian. Footnotes as always.
Verified
1Flavius was "stationed" at the baths since morning. True, but misleading. Everyone is stationed at the baths in the morning. It is a bathhouse.
2On the third lunch: I consulted the official records. There are no official records. I ate them.
3Maximus Snorus did not invent his title "during a nap," but during a highly productive meeting about naps, which he then slept through.
4The Pantheon is still standing. Confirmed. Five stars.
5Livius the Boring calls the baths "merely adequate." False. Livius has never enjoyed a single soup in his life. Source: everyone.
6Lunch recipes "by pigeon": Denied. The pigeons have unionized. All correspondence now by tortoise.
Personals
Legends of the lunch hour
Flavius Fullbelly
Chief Inspector of Lunch
Once ate an entire roasted boar at a state dinner, then asked what was for dessert. The boar was the dessert.
Maximus Snorus
Keeper of the Afternoon Nap
Fell asleep during his own wedding. Twice. Once snored so loudly during a Senate debate that they adjourned out of respect. The motion carried.
Somewhere along the way, Romula got comfortable. The baths got bigger. The feasts got longer. The naps got more ambitious. Nobody was building anything new. Nobody was looking out for anyone else. The city that was built for joy started hoarding it.
The marble was still beautiful. The fountains still ran. But the kindness ran out first, and everything else followed.
Final edition · Filed from the ashes
Romula fell. E2 rose.
No one agrees on how it ended. Fire, time, the slow forgetting of beautiful things. The marble cracked. The fountains went quiet. Ash settled over the avenues like snow. But the idea of Romula, a city built for joy, built to be beautiful on purpose, refused to die. It slept under the ash, waiting.
And from those ashes, E2 rose.
The carving that survived. Found in the ruins, it reads simply: E2.
