#| v. 201 to 146 bc.

[omektannou]

in honor of actually starting ayzebel’s blog take this drabble it’s not a drabble it’s four pages of anysus and ayzebel being sad and grumpy post-second punic war i wrote! it elaborates on a few headcanons and probably doesn’t make any sense, but that’s fine with me. enjoy ;-).

“I can feel it too,” Ayzebel promised. She felt her bones ache with every step and knew she had no strength left. Her mind was scatterbrained, even more than usual, completely forgetting one language or replaying phrases of Etruscan she heard in town on repeat. She either roamed the streets randomly, bumping into almost everyone, or did not leave the house at all.

The female personification raised her eyes and looked across the table. Anysus sat hunched over, quite like a lame beggar in the streets. Half of his face was hidden behind a large hand that now shook upon further inspection. The other half, his eyes, gazed at the mosaic floor with neither disappointment nor sadness—no emotional at all.

“Not as intensely as you.” She rarely talked this much, but the words tumbled out like a clumsy slave spilling stacked barrels at the port. They echoed just as loudly. “I really felt it when he came here. I didn't— I didn't think somewhere as far as Zama even affected us. Sometimes I dream I am one of the prisoners. He wasn't smart, just got lucky. They shouldn't have sued for peace.”

Not even that changed Anysus’ posture, and that opinion was one of his own. She did not have one either way, too blinded by pain to think for those few weeks.

“We’re doing fine financially already,” the girl continued, her hands folded so tightly in her lap that her tan knuckles blanched with the strain. The world would stop when Carthage didn't have money. “It doesn't seem like it, but we have enough to pay them. For now. Unlike… Unlike last time.” The war on the mercenaries had hit Ayzebel harder than the other. He’d already been in a downwards spiral of pain, and it was her first taste of it, so many years past Agathocles’ terror on the city.

“...What are we going to do?” she asked into the gloom of the dusty room, an old branch of the library she found Anysus hiding in. “What are you going to do?”

His tea was getting cold, she could see. He had not touched it. If Ayzebel had not been leaning forward, she might not have heard him at all. “I don't want to do anything at all.”

Her face, almost always without emotion, scrunched into an unreadable expression before melting away with an exhale. “We have the city. We don't have the empire,” she pointed out bluntly. “We never will if we can't raise an army. Numidia’s already started to— what a bitch. We can't do anything if we don't have a navy.”

Anysus’ voice was barely above a wheeze. “Ten.”

Her heart went out to him behind its walls, being ever rebuilt since Arria’s passing. Brick by brick, event by event. She knew the navy and the port was dearer to him than anything else, and it would be to her too if she'd been allowed. The two of them loved the sea itself equally. They had no elephants either, though most of them had died already. Anysus kept Kbiir, but in the recently empty pens under the outer wall, he looked lonely. “We still have merchants. The port is still open.” They had nothing to trade.

“Pirates,” was Anysus’ hoarse one-word answer.

“We could rely on aristocrats and privateers for their own vessels,” she insisted. “Romulus has his nose so far up patricians’ asses, he won't notice if he have more than ten war ships.” She had thought about all of this in her time alone and after the pain of Zama had subsided to a dull ache. What would happen if they lost.

The man did not have a response for that, it seemed, not even a shrug of his shoulders. He'd aged so much in seventeen short years since they last saw each other. Anysus always grew quickly as a child, and she joined his exponential growth in the sixth century, but this was different. This was wrong.

The angle brought the light to expose the depth and dark color of his undereye circles. He did not actually have wrinkles, but his face was always arranged in such a melancholy scowl that some still showed. His shoulders sagged with the weight of a heavy burden, though almost all of their responsibilities had gone with losing the war. The life had gone out of him when Romulus first brought the news of Aranth’s death, but he was now a walking corpse. Ayzebel could not say she looked better herself, an ashy pallor, frayed hair, and no kohl.

She wanted to know everything he saw with Hannibal. She could not imagining facing the Etruscans’ ghosts for fifteen years. When Arria had fled to Carthage with some of the population of Cisra, Ayzebel had thought that had been a hard thing to watch. She attempted to stay alive in one of the new Etruscan refugee neighborhoods but faded and faded under Ayzebel’s watch. Aranth had died even earlier, and Anysus had been made to trample on his grave. Well, no more than the Romans already had, she supposed.

The silence had lasted for more than a few moments, but it dispersed instead of hanging heavy in the air. They both knew they did not have to talk constantly. She was exhausting herself even further by venting.

A bracelet slid down her arm and clanged as it met other ones as she lifted her arm to grab the cup of tea. It was Etruscan, no doubt—they all were. Anysus’ were too. After all that work, Ayzebel didn't have enough energy to lift it to her lips, and let her arm lie limp on the table. The other one would have joined it if it could.

Ayzebel slumped in her chair further and stared at her lap. “I can't predict the future,” she admitted. “I don't know what will become of us.” Anysus only blinked at that, likely a bodily response and not even a reply.

“I can't— I can't stay in the city for too long.” Ah, a sentence. Perhaps they were getting somewhere.

Ayzebel knew he was more used to traveling, but she glanced up at him and raised an eyebrow. “I doubt you'll be going anywhere for a while.” She had seen him fall down the stairs or pass out on the stairs a few times now, and it'd only been a week. He averted his eyes.

They both ended up standing in front of the Etruscan community somehow. Ayzebel could not say how they got there or whose idea it was. Perhaps it was unspoken communication. They stood off to the side and watched people come and go and sniffed at whatever someone was cooking in the air. Some of them grew to know Ayzebel when she attended Arria, but she did not want them to see her right now. The noise was overbearing, even if it was caused by her second favorite people past her own. Anysus, though she would argue he was more emotional than she was, had nothing on his face at all.

“How long did she live?” Anysus asked suddenly, startling Ayzebel with the jarring question.

“A while,” was all she could manage before she thought about it further. “A few months. She… She slowly faded. Much like I imagine Aranth did.” They were no strangers to the other gender personification and loved them just as much, only platonically. Anysus nodded lifelessly.

“The sarcophagus, I— I couldn't bring it back—”

She looked up at him then, eyes scrunched in worry. His voice was frail and watery, threatening to break at any second. She had no idea what he was talking about; they hadn't talked about much since he got back. As she was about to ask, an image of a stone sarcophagus flashed into her mind violently. She'd seen it before, in her dreams.

She would still need to ask about the details. Ayzebel clutched a nearby railing and scanned the area with heavy eyes. Both of their eyes settled on two children laughing and playing with a dog. It looked to be one of the city strays, but it was playing with them rather than hurting them. Ayzebel wondered if she knew the children; she likely did.

The woman glanced back to Anysus. He was watching the same kids, but after the first outburst of emotion, his face was stone again. She could feel her own heart hardening too. They were both too hollow.

“Let’s visit Kbiir,” she offered quietly. She was happiest among her own pets, but Anysus needed to be somewhere familiar if they were to share miseries. The empty outer wall was depressing, but Ayzebel hoped they could both overlook that. Kbiir had been with Anysus the entire war.

She felt a sudden anger rise in her as the two of them turned away from the community, though she could not say why. She squashed it as she did any other emotion, but it continued to bubble over as she walked. She wanted to know everything about why nations died. Not that she wanted them to, but she wanted to know why Tyre and other Phoenicians hadn't died when they were conquered. Why Egypt hadn't. Why the Romans were so unkillable and how she could end them for once and for all.

“Don't bother,” Anysus said bluntly as they ascended a hill. He must have felt her anger radiating, as they sometimes tended to do, sharing emotions. They were both still very closed-off people, but their thoughts flowed back and forth. At least he stopped her before she started grinding her teeth and punching a wall. It all left her in a wave, and she found it hard to continue walking. Both of them might get dizzy and pass out in the street if they weren't careful.

Nothing had happened to the city, so they were both in good shape there. But the rest of what they were supposed to represent had crumbled. The Italian islands had been gone for decades, and after holding it since Carthage’s beginnings, Iberia was gone too. Personally and mentally, they were both absolute wrecks.

“‘m glad Hannibal sent back his wife early on,” Ayzebel said. “I hardly had anyone to talk to.”

Anysus’ answer was “I know,” but she got flashes of images of a random Carthaginian man and friendly bonfires in the dark until images of dry desert caked with blood interrupted them. She had found Anysus in horrible shape after Zama, and it lasted for about a week after. When she passed the banquet hall one day, a human family was sitting at the table with him. It was likely he had at least one person. She wondered what he saw of her time in the city, which was no war, but had been hard enough.

They reached a point in the city where Byrsa was not blocking the sky and they could see the sunset. The two of them stood off to the side of the narrow road and watched it. Bands of pink and yellow reached out for the sea in an orange haze.

“Sunsets in Etruria were always prettier,” Ayzebel observed, melancholy. The warm tones would contrast with the cool nights and bounce off of all the green foliage.

Anysus didn't say anything for a long time, his entire body taut as a bowstring. Neither of them were thinking of anything of any substance right now. After a few minutes and a cart rolling past, into the fading clamor used almost as a cover, Anysus whispered, “I miss them.”

Ayzebel looked at the deridingly pretty sunset with a sour twist of her lips. The beauty was useless if it was not permanent. She did not know how something so good could end. “I know.”