By Their True Names

By Their True Names

As the car winds its way into the heart of Rome, I press my forehead to the window like a child. The city unfolds like a dream—or rather, like an impossibility. Every building stands untouched by time. The Colosseum looms with fresh grandeur, its arches unbroken, its stones unscarred. Towering basilicas cast soft shadows on golden cobblestones. There are no cracks. No weeds. Only perfection.

Is this Rome, or a memory of Rome?

The driver says nothing as he stops near the Pantheon. His farewell is abrupt, like I’ve stepped into something beyond his concern. I don’t even remember booking the ride.

I step onto the ancient stones, and the air hits different—crisp, fragrant, too precise. Even the sunlight feels orchestrated. Intentional.

Then I see the people.

They glide past me in robes resembling Roman tunics, but with a modern elegance—fabrics that shimmer faintly in the sun. Sandals that look sculpted. Their speech flows musically. Not Italian. Not English.

Latin.

Conversational, fluent Latin. As if it were never a dead language. As if it had never needed revival.

A slow chill climbs my spine.

The Pantheon is no ruin. Its columns gleam with marble white and untouched. The bronze doors reflect the sun like mirrors. Two statues flank the entrance—massive, lifelike.

One is maternal and graceful, her eyes watching with sorrow and wisdom. The other is stern, regal, his gaze turned upward as though addressing the sky.

Drawn by something I can’t explain, I approach. My hand reaches out, almost on its own, and touches the foot of the mother statue.

It’s cold. But my fingers spark. A subtle hum travels from my skin to my bones. It feels… divine.

Then I see the inscriptions at their bases.

IOVIS. IUNO.
Jupiter and Juno. The king and queen of the old gods.

I stumble back. My logical brain screams—this can’t be real. But my body doesn’t agree. My heart thrums with something older than fear.

Awe.

Then, a whisper. Not heard, but felt.
Come forth, child.

It’s Jupiter’s voice—low, distant thunder echoing through my chest.

Another follows.
Victoria, daughter of Gaia.
Juno. Gentle, eternal.

Victoria. My true name.

Not my given name. Not a name I’ve ever used. But I know it. It vibrates through my core. And suddenly, I know them too. Not from mythology books. Not from lectures or dusty temples.

From memory.

Not imagined. Remembered.

The sky above shimmers. Twilight bleeds into midday and back again. Time no longer moves forward. It spirals.

I studied Roman history. I wrote a thesis on myth-as-memory. But this isn’t academic. This is real. This is not an excavation—this is immersion. I’ve stepped into something that never crumbled, never fell.

Time, rewritten.
Reality, restructured.
Purpose, unclear.

I step beneath the Pantheon’s dome. It no longer feels like entering a monument. It feels like walking into my own origin.

Each column radiates something different—air, fire, water, earth. The symbols carved into the ceiling pulse with light, forming and reforming in ancient script I suddenly understand.

One word repeats over and over, echoing not in the room but inside me.

Return.

This place, this moment, this impossible version of Rome—it’s not about worshipping gods. It’s about remembering who we were before we were told who to become.

It’s about names. Real names. The names that came before history, before control, before forgetting.

I am not just a woman who studied myth.

I am myth.

And I have returned to be remembered.

I look again at Jupiter and Juno. They are no longer still. Their eyes are alive. Watching. Waiting. As if this moment has happened before. As if they, too, remember me.

And now I remember them.

The story end kay mujay pata lagay kay yahatak story hay.

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