The Boy Who Sang About the Stars

Chapter 2

From a distance the city walls had looked to be the height of your average house, but standing in front of them now they were at least triple that size. The walls appeared to be made of some sort of large clay bricks and were painted with an array of designs. One painting in particular caught my attention, it was of a man in a chariot guided by horses gliding across the top of the waves. I smiled to myself at imagining how cool it would be to travel the ocean on the back of the Greek version of a convertible. I walked up to the wall to get a closer look at the design and brought my hand up to touch it.

"Adam, I wouldn't do that" the Doctor said. I looked away from the painting to face him.

"Why not?" I asked. It wasn't in a museum, at least not yet, whats the point of seeing history if you couldn't touch it? The Doctor didn't answer but he nodded his head quickly up to the top of the wall. I looked up to the top and was greeted by a group of soldiers giving me a death stare and training their weapons directly on me. My mouth went dry again and I lifted my hands up in surrender. I didn't know if the Greeks knew the sign for surrender, but I prayed to God that they did. I had no intention on dying today.

"Now fellas! He was only admiring your artwork! Werent you Adam?"

"Uh yeah!" I called up. "Its very pretty!" I mentally face palmed. Pretty? I had soilders training their weapons on me and I was using the word "pretty" to defend myself. What fantastic last words.

"See! No harm! Now would you blokes be nice enough to open the gates so we could come in?"

I could hear the guards talking amongst themselves but I was too far away to make out what they were saying. My arms were getting tired from holding them up in surrender for such a long period of time, but before long the sound of large wooden doors could be heard and a soldier walked out of the city walls and over towards the Doctor and I.

"Who are you?" he inquired.

"We're travelers. Just passing through, we need a place to rest for the night."

The soldier looked rather skeptical, I wasn't sure if he was buying into the story or not. Granted it was partially true, but he didn't know that.

"Youre security seems rather tight. What's the big occasion?" The Doctor asked pointing up to the guards who were still ready and eager to turn me into a human shish kebab.

"Theres been a lot of trouble lately. We're only trying to make sure no one else gets hurt." the soldier replied. He looked me over and shouted something up to his men and they lowered their weapons. I hadn't realized I was holding my breath in until I exhaled a sigh of relief.

"What kind of trouble." the Doctor asked.
"Stay around long enough and you'll see" the soldier replied. "You two seem harmless enough, we'll let you in." He began walking back to the wall and the Doctor followed in pursuit. I looked back up at the top of the wall to make sure a spear wasn't headed my way and ran after them.

We stopped at a large wooden door that was about half the height of the wall. The soldier walked through the doors I assumed he was going back to join his little posse on the wall.

"So you ready to check this place out?" The Doctor asked, he smiled and held out his hand which I stared at for a couple seconds.

"Dude, I'm not holding your hand."

"Sorry," he said pulling his hand back and adjusting his jacket. "old habit of mine"

"No worries" I shrugged and looked out past the city doors. I could hear the muffled hustle of people going about their daily routines. I smiled and started walking towards the noise, I hated cities with their commotion and corruption, but something about this one was pulling me forwards. From a distance the whole thing had seemed drab and boring, but now that I was about to upclose and personal I couldn't help but want to take a look around.