"Jenny, come on! You can't be serious! I'm so happy that you are here and we only have so little time left to show you our Pompeii and you faint..." Livia was standing above me, as happy and lively as I remembered her from her previous visit.

"Oh give her a break, sister, not everybody is as insensitive as you."
Someone, who obviously prevented my senseless body from hitting the stone steps of the museum, defended me.

"Ok, fine Marcus, but if we want to take her around we must hurry. She can't stay after the loop resets."

"Hello, Livia," I muttered, standing up with the help of the handsome stranger. Looking closer at him, I recognised him as the blacked-haired Roman boy from my dream.

"Great, you are up, I'm so happy you came, I knew you would," she blurted out excitedly, hugging me.
"This is my brother, Marcus, and now we can go."

I looked at Marcus. He smiled at me, rolling his sky-blue eyes, pointing significantly at Livia who was already walking down the road ahead of us. Apparently, he found his sister a little exhausting and very annoying.

"Come, you two!" Livia called, slowing down a bit so we could catch up with her, and we entered Pompeii together.

Yes, not the present day ruins but the ancient town, with its people and the everyday, early morning activity and confusion. There were no ruins now, apart from quite a few buildings that were damaged, and being repaired after the earthquake. The houses still had their roofs. The strange roads with their high curbs and stepping stones had water from the town's many fountains and the overflowing aqueduct running through them, adding some freshness to the summer heat.

A morning like any other, with people rushing to many different temples, to the market, to one of the fountains to get water or to their favourite tavern for a late breakfast or an early lunch. Everyone greeted Livia and Marcus as we passed, while nobody seemed to notice me.

"They can't see you," Marcus told me, responding to my unasked question.

"How come?" I had so many questions and as Livia suggested, only a little time to ask.

"Livia will explain to you the time loop, the sibyl knows better," Marcus said, winking at me.

I felt a blush spreading on my face. He winks and you blush? I chided myself silently. Are you becoming like Laura now? What was wrong with me; I didn't react to boys in this way. But Marcus was so... different, with his short, light blue, sleeveless tunic and all the rest...

We reached a particularly busy road and stopped in front of the town's bath. It was such a perfect summer morning. Everything looked normal.

"Listen," Livia said.

And even as she said that, I noticed that some things seemed off. There were light tremors running through the ground. The people who were used to them didn't pay any attention, but I could feel them. Another weird thing I noticed were the dogs-- their constant barking filling the morning air. As if they sensed the approaching danger.

We crossed the road and stopped in front of the house that I remembered from the tour as The House of a Tragic Poet, with its famous mosaic next to the front door, and the frescos based on Greek mythology inside.

"Is this your house?" I asked Livia.

"It is, since the earthquake. Our parents died then and our family house was destroyed. We were very little at the time, I was only four years old, Marcus six. So we moved in here, with our grandmother. It used to be her house." Livia explained.

"Where is your grandmother now?" I couldn't resist asking.

"She is not here," Marcus responded before Livia this time, "she died days before the eruption; she is not a part of the loop. That's why the loop is set on us."

Instead of starting to understand at least something from what they were saying, I was getting more confused. I shook my head to clear it but it did not seem to help, so I simply followed the two inside the house.

The ground floor was quite large, with yet more rooms upstairs. The room which we entered first was dark and cool, having only a couple of little empty holes, serving as windows, facing the road. As the ground shook again, stronger this time, I noticed that there was a little more light coming in from the back.

"Come," Marcus told me, following my look, leading me across the large room, towards the light.

Its source was a door opening into a little garden surrounded by tall walls, full of aromatic plants and a little fountain, at the back of the house. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

"Jenny." Livia called me back inside, motioning for me to join her where she was sitting on the floor, in a circle created by some unusually shaped bronze lanterns and other strange objects. I sat down between her and Marcus, unsure of what would happen now.

"She loves this oracle stuff," Marcus laughed, teasing his sister goodnaturedly.

Livia shot him an annoyed look but didn't comment.
"Ask what you want to know," she told me seriously.

"Ok," I said, suddenly not sure what to ask. "Your time loop?"

"That was grandmother's idea. Seeing that the people just wouldn't leave the town when she foretold the eruption, she decided to protect them. She meant to send me and Marcus away, into safety, and set the loop on herself. But then she fell ill and it was obvious that she wouldn't live until the day of the eruption..."

Livia took a deep breath, shaking her head sadly, before she continued, "The only person remaining with the power to carry the loop was me. Knowing that, how could I leave everybody here and run away? They had all done so much for us after our parents' deaths; we are all like a big family. Marcus felt the same way, and decided to remain with me.
So, we created the loop, starting from the day when grandmother died and resetting the morning after the eruption. As long as we are here, the loop is safe and the people don't notice anything."

Noticing my puzzled expression, she added, her voice deep and mysterious, "Imagine time as a long, silver ribbon. A ribbon alive and growing. Our nonna... tied a knot, making a little loop on this ribbon, thus creating our small world where the time repeats itself because it can't go on, with all the town and its people trapped, but protected within. Only Marcus and I can leave sometimes." She paused, waiting for my next question.

"Livia, why are you rushing so much?" More than once she had said that we must hurry, making me feel curious.

"That's because out of all the possible days when you could enter the loop, you chose the worst one. The eruption will start any moment now, and by tomorrow morning we will be all buried here and the loop will start all over again. You must get out of here before that happens," she enthused, trying to make me understand.

"Because...?" I asked again.

"Well, I don't really know," she admitted after a while. "It has never happened before, we have never tried to reset the loop with a stranger inside."

"Okay, I get it I think," I said.
"Just one more question then. How come you speak such good English?"
They both laughed, exchanging meaningful looks.

"Livia," Marcus spoke, still chuckling, "apart from being a great sibyl and a good time-traveller, is very skilled... at her exchanges. She managed to smuggle a great number of books in the loop over the centuries, and we learned a lot of things from them."

Livia lifted the edge of her tunic to show me my flowery dress that she was wearing underneath.

Of course she did a lot of exchanges, I thought, she had a lot of time to do them.
I reached for my bag, taking out my copy of Alice, and offered it to Livia, "Then I have something for you."

"Great," she said, her blue eyes, a couple of shades darker than her brother's, sparkling with excitement, "I haven't read this one yet. Now hold hands, you two," Livia commanded.

I looked at Marcus who was offering his hand to me, and gave him mine.

"Why?" I asked her, unsure and confused again.

"Oh Jenny, you seem so well-read, you do know about how we, oracles, work, don't you?"

She was right, of course. I did know, I remembered now. They all had someone who was close and knew them well. An interpreter who could translate their strange visions and chaotic sentences into clear prophecies. It was Marcus who would show me now what Livia, the sibyl, wanted me to see.

Livia winked at me, seeing that I finally understood.
"I wouldn't stand him around otherwise, you know, he is quite insupportable sometimes..." she said, grinning.

I noticed Marcus sticking his tongue at his annoying sister, but he didn't respond. They were like two fighting teenagers, well used to this kind of quarrels. Just like siblings in my own century. The thought made me smile, wishing I had more time to get to know them better...

"Come on then," Livia repeated and we finally held hands, looking at her.