Perdita Nummum

I don't like where I am now. I'm in good company but I would prefer to be away from the glass and the lights. I don't like being pinned. I want to be free.

The visitors like to peer at us and it's good to see humans again although they are not recognisable as the people with whom I used to associate the most in my youth. They seem more colourful somehow in the way that they dress. More variety. Less flesh or...no. That's not quite right. Similar amount of flesh but differently exposed.

Sometimes they point a rectangular tablet at me which flashes even more brightly than the light and I am momentarily stunned by its starkness. I've not noticed it having an adverse effect, this lightning bolt of Jupiter. It flares, I wince as do my companions and then we are left until the next face looms before us to examine us and engage in discussion. It is starkly intimate, this peering at us while we are presented for view, completely immobile. We are much more social than this and should be in the world, providing and being part of the everyday fabric of life, not exhibited like pieces of art. I feel naked and vulnerable like this, like a marble statue. But they were designed to be stared at. I prefer to be closeted somewhere darker or on the move.

This life of exhibition is one for which I am not purposed and I would break out of it if I could. Here, I am misplaced.

I feel very old now I've emerged. I have been around for centuries and I've not radically changed that much in that time. I hear snatches of language, some of which I recognise. Before I was manhandled into this glass box, I was well travelled and experienced lots of different tongues, although stresses in accent and inflection seem different somehow. Less pronounced somehow. And the words are new sometimes.

Let me take you back to the beginning. I don't remember exactly where I came from. When I was buried, there was a familiarity to the smell of the soil around me and the dampness so my instinct is to claim that I came from the earth. Not quite as far down as the Styx or Plutonian pits but in the dirt nonetheless. In my present form then, I am a couple of thousand years old but before my metamorphosis, I was bound, inert, raw.

When I emerged, I realised that I had been wrenched from my home forever and my discoverer was intent on making me something very different. In fact, I am only a very small part of my original form. I don't know where the rest of me is, although sometimes when I've been gathered together and placed in close quarters with others of my kind, I sense a similarity between us, in our very essence which is magnetic almost. When we touch, in the noise that that makes, I can hear the chimes of origin.

I have been wrought into what I am now. Hammered roughly and bruised into existence, all traces of my organic state flattened and shaped. I like what I am now. I am versatile and there is no doubt as to my popularity. But something has changed since my unearthing because I am confined now whereas before I lived a life of variety and endless scope, never living in one place for long before being moved on.

My face has aged over time, because it has become dirty and ingrained with the years of sweat and the grease and grime of the times I've lived in and the rubbing off of those deposits by the many fingers of those who have held me. But really my face is not my own. I wear a mask, a visage which has been tempered into my skin and remains there, morphing my true form. But it has poise, this face of mine, of his.

I remember the day that his features were scorched and pressed onto my surface and we became one. It was hot, so hot, like Vulcan's cave. I was shocked after the attack and was laid down in my new form to rest, to cool. It was the first time that I knew the betrayal of my kind as the stamp was made of the same substance as me, may even have been from me originally. It is difficult to say once separated, what belongs to who but we are all particles of the world.

It was not wielded by my discoverer. He was long gone, receiving pieces like my current form in exchange as he gave my jagged rawness to the swarthy, muscled man who crafted me.

I did not rest for long. I was gathered and presented to someone more refined and this is where my life becomes a blur. Fragments of my journey to where I am today present themselves and then retreat again.

In my early days, I was bright and shiny like a night-time star, drawing covetous glances of desire. I remember being gazed upon by a small child with longing so wide-eyed and innocent that it quite moved me. But I was soon exchanged for a treat and left that sunny warmth to reside in the purse of a baker.

And so it went. From baker's pouch and the comforting production of his kitchen and the smells of yeast and charcoal to the taverna, where he purchased some drink of fermentation, which along with the floury residue from his hard work, mixed to begin the tarnish of my gleaming face and add character to my proud features, levelling them down to a less pronounced profile.

From the taverna owner's money box to the hand of a gambler, salty and bristling with tension, his misery and nervousness palpable as he placed me on the table at the dice game. My time with him was brief. I was gathered up by a poet, a winning gambler that night, and it was not long before we were in the night air, running and bouncing as we ran from danger.

I do not know what happened to the poet as the pouch I was in with my companions was snatched from him. I could smell the detritus of rotting vegetables and the sharp and eager squeaking of the rats before a gentle gurgling of life leaving and a splash, so I fear the worst for him. But I am glad, if in the river Tiber he resides, that I did not end up there with him, in the silt and algae.

This is a snapshot of one evening in my life. An exciting one at that but still one that was typical in terms of the speed of my travel.

I had adventure after adventure after adventure. Sometimes, I would be with the same person for days, weeks; sometimes, I could be with multiple conveyers in one day.

I have been exchanged for dormice at the Colisseum and smelt the blood of the savagery and trembled at the bloodlust of the crowds.

I have been placed in the cleavage of a maiden as she giggled to her patron before hearing the creaking and moans of a midnight dalliance.

I have been handed over into the rough, calloused hand of the laundrywoman where the smell of ammonia burns and colours the air acrid.

I have sweltered in the repellent heat of the fat hand of the greedy, grasping landlord, as he listens to the story of the tenant with no income, chafing against the jewels that adorn his sausage fingers.

I have lain on the eye of a dead man, and would be with Gaius now if it had not been for the mercenary nature of the pyre builder to remove me and place me in their purse for their own use.

I have been covered in the oily secretions of the fisherman as his catch has been purchased, his fingers still slick with the lifeblood of his living and covered with the smell of the sea.

I have been dropped many times, in sand, in gravel, in fountains, in shit, and picked up by random but vigilant passers-by.

And I have travelled and crossed those fisherman's seas into oceans, as the currency of home to a legionnaire, and been buoyed and thrown by the waves of the conquerors' boats, and treaded into new lands where the language is different but the pleas for mercy are the same.

The legionnaire was my last keeper, the last time that I was carried for purpose by a human. I was lost from there, strewn accidentally but trodden soon after into the earth of the world from which I came. He did look for me but the ground had already disguised me and claimed me for its own. Different land mass but the essence of the loam was the same, if slightly more wet. And there I stayed, interred. At first, I was still able to hear the world but as time progressed, it became less and less distinct until I was truly and absolutely alone. For years, I resided in my pocket of soil, waiting.

It was an eternity of longing for discovery. I longed for movement, for the heady life of variety that I had had. But it was not to be for many, many years. I could feel the earth reclaiming me, breaking down my honed exterior with its minerals and its water ingress and the baking provided by the sun. Passing worms were my only living contact.

Until the detectorists arrived.

First, this repetitive chime-like noise becoming more and more urgent. And then, the scrabblings of excitement as they chattered and dug to bring me to the surface. When I was excavated, I was so relieved to feel human contact again. The sights, the smells, the warmth. Feeling the particles of earth being removed after so many years was like an awakening; like discovering sight after cataracts, a veil being lifted from a beautiful Vestal Virgin's face. The thumb caressing my imperial face was a blessing from the gods indeed, removing slippery clay to bring me into the world again. The day was a revelation and the sun breaking through to my essence with the scrape of the spade was a moment that I never thought would come but for which I had longed for millennia.

The light. O, glorious light!

And now, I find myself here. Suspended for view, like a robber at his crucifixion, revered but useless.

And the light. O, the hideous, perpetual light!

How it fixes me in place and constricts my existence!

I wanted to be found but this?

Is this to be my fate now? Forever? Will I never return to what I once was, in all its variety and its usefulness and its power?

I do not want this. Take me. Melt me. But don't leave me here to languish in this case. I beg of you!

***

Bath is a Roman city, not far from where I live, its Roman name being Aquae Sulis. It is a World Heritage Site and is a marvellous place to explore Roman life in Britain. Outside of the baths, Bath is a pretty Georgian city, known primarily for its association with Jane Austen, whoever she is.

But I digress.

I love anything Roman and a chance to visit the baths is always welcomed and so, I did visit this week and one of the things that I viewed in the relics that they have found on site was a case of coins, beautifully displayed but strangely static. I wondered what these coins had seen, who had handled them, where they had been found and so, I wrote this story for the misplaced challenge. I thought it would be interesting to imagine their life if you can call it that really. A coin really does get to experience everything about society and I've conveyed that a little here but ultimately, the object was lost and I often wonder how coins end up where they do.

It was fun to imagine the life of a Roman coin.

One other thing: I don't know Latin and I am not sure that Google knows it that well either but I wanted a Latin title and I like this one. Perdita means lost apparently but it is also a girl's name and I liked the fact that the title sounded like a name. Nummum is coin but I'm not sure what order they should be in, syntax wise and so there is a good chance that it should be Nummum Perdita. Artistic license in this case rules.

Thanks for stopping by! If you do read it, please do drop a comment as I love it when people drop by and it's always good to interact.