It all happened in the time it takes to sneeze. My nose was full of dust and ash: I closed my eyes to sneeze… and never opened them again. The boiling breath of the volcano covered us in one second. Impossible to escape, impossible to defend ourselves.
But just think: we almost made it! We survived the stones raining down, the falls and the fires. We were walking through the ruins of a ghost town. The red and yellow of the paintings: gone, the blue of the sea: gone, the green of the gardens, the multicoloured marbles: all gone… all the colours had faded along with the sunlight. The world had gone white and grey, as if only the bones of Pompeii were left.
We wanted to run! But the streets had turned into rivers of stones and ash. The earth had gone crazy, thundering under our feet like a wild horse. All we did was fall over, slip and stumble, blinded by dust and shaken by coughing. The children followed us without complaining. They trusted us: adults don’t cry, aren’t afraid of anything and they always know what to do, right? Every time my son looked at me, I tried to smile. We staggered stubbornly towards salvation… but the volcano only needed one breath to extinguish our lives like flames in the wind.
I clutched my baby’s hand tightly. There was no time for words. But we were together, and for that I thank the gods.