“Do you mean to tell
us,” my husband asked, “That the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was
caused by the Forest? An entire Roman city?”
“I do,” Oak replied
darkly.
“Good god man,”
Edward exclaimed, “That's tantamount to genocide. Mass murder at
the very least!”
Oak fixed him in that
cold steel gaze of his. “Your species has some funny ideas about
death. Do you call it mass murder when you decide the badgers need
culling? Was it genocide when the last of the Siberian tigers met
its end.” He paused for a moment, scratched at his chin
purposefully. “No,” he continued, “I didn't think so.”
“What could possibly
have happened in Pompeii to warrant such a barbaric act,” I asked
tentatively.
He turned those dark
eyes to me then. “Let us say that certain...radical...ideas took
hold, and leave it at that.”
