MEA CVLPA: A* Narrative for IGCSE First Language English
Sarah O'Rourke - Dec 02, 2025
This narrative was written by Kalli Y for her coursework when she was in Year 11. It is the best narrative I’ve ever read from a student for either coursework or exam route of IGCSE First Language English.
Kalli masterfully showcases a powerful emotional journey, a complex story structure used for effect, amazing setting-specific vocabulary that brings Ancient Rome to life, and characters who feel real and whom you care about.
I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do!
Video lesson on Settings in A* IGCSE Narratives
MEA CVLPA by Kalli Y
The men arrive without warning.
They are peculiar-looking creatures—these sudden strangers—clad in neither tunic nor armor but a clinging fabric smoother than creased linen and tougher than soft wool. Wielding a gleaming cylinder-shaped contraption with a wiry serpentine tail, they battle the earth with thunderous surges of air, as if they have bound Aeolus, god of winds, to their will. All the while, they speak melodically, like in song, but the speech is incomprehensible.
Perhaps they have seen him, Eupalia thinks, perhaps I will find him.
She glides towards them on silent feet, drifting through the crowd of howling merchants in the bumbling forum and the she-wolves prowling outside the Lupanar before reaching the foreigners.
“Have you seen my father? He came into town to buy me honey dates. If you see him, will you tell him to come home?” she asks expectantly in Latin, then in Greek when they continue to ignore her.
Eupalia frowns. She knows they are savages, but they look so unlike the barbaric Britons from the North she’d seen fighting each other to the death on Saturnalia that she dared to hope there was a chance they understood the common tongue.
Defeated, Eupalia starts to slip away into despair. I must find him. I must. Yet, what if I don’t? The thought sinks its claws into her chest, and suffocating panic grips her body. Tears prick her eyes, and she shakes her head violently, trying to clear the burning helplessness. Father would never have faltered like this.
The urge is consuming—an unrelenting need to find him. It is possible he is just slow? After all, his limp means he moves slower than most. Yet Eupalia knows there is more. She needs to tell him… To save him. But from what?
“Montruoso Vesuvio.”
The words cut through her haze like a blade. Eupalia freezes, breath hitching in her throat. The first word she doesn’t understand, but the second… the second is familiar, igniting something distant, a fragmented memory buried deep under layers of stone and ash.
One of the strange men exclaims again, his voice thick with horror and disbelief as he stares at whatever he has found beneath the ground, “Oh, Montruoso Vesuvio!”
Pain rakes her brain, the words striking harder this time, and the ground begins to tremble.
Raindrops are falling.
Warm and soothing against her skin, they linger like smoke. A few slip down her bare shoulder before Eupalia reaches out. Fingertips that touch lightly come back heavy, stained in shadow. She grasps too late that it is not rain but ash. Falling ash.
Everywhere Eupalia looks is a swirling torrent of death and blazing fire. People cry and shout, scrambling and jostling, frantically trying to find their families. Some fall to their knees, praying to the gods for help, but the heavens have long been smothered by darkness, and not one deity hears nor answers. Half the forum lies in ruins; priceless wares scattered against cracked cobblestones. Where their owners are, Eupalia does not know. She does not even dare to think of the fate of the she-wolves within their weak-walled wolf-den.
“Venus Pompeiana spare me!” an old woman wails, voice hoarse with terror. Eupalia turns instinctively, but the speaker is lost in the chaos, swept away by the many faceless figures fleeing through the ash-choked streets. They are running towards Stabiae, she realizes, but whether they will be safe there is uncertain. The wrath of the mountain is all-consuming.
Suddenly, Eupalia glimpses him. For a moment. Time stands still. Amidst all the chaos is her father, an impossibly tiny frail statue against raging Vesuvius, white hair now dulled grey by dust and ash. His walking stick, a necessity ever since the accident that took Eupalia’s mother, is gone. Instead, in trembling hands, he clutches a small bag of honey dates.
“Father!” The cry barely has barely left her lips and she is already running, running for him, away from the masses, away from Stabiae, away from any hope of safety.
She’ll never reach him. He is too far away.
But he senses her presence anyway.
Blue meets blue as they lock eyes. Eupalia’s breath catches as she sees her regret mirrored in that achingly familiar gaze. He knows she won’t reach him either. His lips part, whispering words—words she cannot hear but knows all the same. I love you.
Eupalia’s heart twists, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her breaths come in sharp, ragged gasps, each one harder than the last, as the acrid scent of ash threatens to strangle her. Everything burns.
“Father,” she manages to choke out between agonizing sobs, “I love y—”
Venus falls.
Marble glimmers, gilded wings aflame. For a heartbeat Eupalia wonders if their patron goddess has descended to save them.
She tries to forget the hollow clang of stone meeting bone.
Scattered honey dates roll towards her. Eupalia never gets to finish the sentence. She could, but no one else would hear it.
No.
“No!” Eupalia howls, the word torn from her throat, raw and jagged, “Give him back! Give him back!”
She crumbles to the ground. The world is spinning, her vision swimming through the veil of smoke and tears. My fault. This is all my fault. If he hadn’t come to town to get my dates, we would have left by now.
Her heart hurts.
I didn’t find him sooner.
Her head hurts.
I didn’t find him.
Breathing hurts.
Didn’t find him.
Thinking hurts.
Find him.
When Vesuvius draws her into his embrace, it doesn’t even hurt.
—
The men arrive two thousand years later.
Perhaps they have seen him, Eupalia thinks, perhaps I will finally find him today.
