A Friend From The Past

[Lost_Warrior]

I think this belongs here...if it doesn't kindly move it I really do have a friend named Brendon, and he really is the type that would do the thing in this story, and I really was thinking of him when I wrote it for English class in 10th or 11th grade. I'm sure the style and the mistakes reflect that.

 

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I blinked slowly in the dark and sat up. I could see the outlines of the rough stones making up the walls in the old ampitheater. I knew I shouldn't be there at this hour. It was my friend's idea of a joke. Go ahead, Brendon, get me trapped in an old, crumbling, Roman ampitheater, I thought. Lost in the lowest level and unable to find my way out, I was forced to spend the night.

 

The reason I'd awoken wasz that I'd thought I'd heard something. A noise outside. But no one ever came here, this place wasn't even well known. Unless it was my friend, I wondered, and called his name. But it wasn't Brendon. It sounded more like cheering. It echoed through the mazes of worn stone corridor so that I could hardly tell it came from the direction of the central arena. Over the cheers I thought I could somehow make out the distinctive clank of sword against sword. I started to think I was dreaming and drifted back to sleep.

 

It was the voices of two men that woke me a second time. They were laughing and seemed to be joking, joyous of the victories they had apparently just won. Then I remembered where I was, how I had gotten there, and why this couldn't be happening. Why I couldn't possibly be seeing two Tracian gladiators turning the corner, sweat mixed with blood staining their armor. I stared in wonder at the pair, holding their plumed helmets under their arms so that I could clearly see their faces. They looked to be about twenty-five or thirty, with short dark hair and I could tell by their mannerisms that they were not new to combat.

 

The one on the right looked at me with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. He appeared slightly older than the other, his battered armor slightly more battered. I stood, prepared to run, but he put up a hand to stop me. When he spoke to me, asking what I was doing there, I was more surprised than frightened. He spoke English! I wondered where he had learned my language, because I knew he should be speaking Latin. If this was really happening. Which I knew, it shouldn't have been. But somehow I knew it really was happening, and I wondered if I was really seeing ghosts or if I had somehow accidentally traveled time.

 

I told him I had come with my friend during the day and that I had gotten lost. He gave me yet another strange look, as if no one from my time ever came here. Then he laughed and put out his hand. Nervously I took it and he pulled me close to him and put his arm around me, saying something to his friend in Latin. It should have made me nervous, but for some reason it didn't as his friend took the corridor to the left, and my new friend led me to the right.

 

We walked down the long hall and through the maze of old stones, and he asked me if anyone else from my time knew of this place. I told him I didn't think but a few people did, as I had only heard about it from a friend, and no one ever seemed to mention it. He told me I was the first of my kind he'd seen here, that no one had been to the old arena for what must have been hundreds of years. Since the last tiger was slaughtered and the last battle fought. I asked him then, how he knew my language. He told me that we were only hearing each other's thoughts, and that he was really speaking Latin to me. I found it hard to believe, but so was everything else that had happened. His name was Thrax, he said. He had been captured in war, trained and enslaved as a gladiator. He had won his freedom but had continued to fight only because he wanted to, and had helped to train other gladiators. He had fought his last battle in that old ampitheater, and had "died by the sword" as in the oath he had earlier taken. His fight was the last before that type of sport was banned an the arena was forgotten, overgrown by vines and lost to the world.

 

I told him that he must have been there a very long time, as I knew those games were outlawed centuries ago. Times had changed alot since then, the Roman Empire had fallen, but somehow gladiators were still remembered. Remembered in books, and movies, and were still idolized even hundreds of years into the future. He seemed surprised, being the bottom rung of Roman society, no more than a slave, that he could still be remembered. He also asked what a movie was, but try as I might, I could not seem to get him to understand. Things which I had grown up with were so completely foreign to him that I had no idea how to explain. I tried to tell him how we could recieve information in a matter of seconds through modern technology, how almost everyone could read and write, and how modern sports and entertainment had changed so much that he would hardly recognize them. He looked sad that the things he had loved were almost lost to the world, and amazed at how complicated life had become for modern people. I told him it wasn't that bad, after all, we grew up with it. We were used to it. I said I doubted most people would be able to handle being gladiators anymore. Most couldn't take the training, and most don't know how to handle a sword. Nor would they want to, no longer understanding the sense of courage and honor that years of hard training and close battle brought. It saddened both of us that the ideals he had so upheld had been lost to the world.

 

We had been busy talking and I hadn't noticed just how far we had walked. He had me at the entrance of the old ampitheater before I knew it, but my friends were no where to be found, so we just stayed and talked. Brendon showed up as the first pinkish rays of sun caressed the sky and chased the stars away, only to find me trying to explain how my wristwatch worked...to someone he couldn't see.

[Antiochus of Seleucia]

I assume you recieved an A+ for that? I bet the teacher was very confused about all the historical stuff

[Lost_Warrior]

lol I have no idea what grade I got on it now. I have long forgotten