foundation / zori

[Wonder]

lyle tabus
17
d8

If he’d had his way, Lyle would have never left the house today.

Disgruntled and displeased, he brushed his calloused fingers through the birds nest that had settled on his head. It was long past time to wash it, probably to cut it, but there was an ideation and liberty to growing it out. If it wasn’t cut straight, layered properly, if it grew rampant, perhaps that was was his own middle finger to an establishment he refused to rebel against. It was the tiniest of footsteps, the smallest dip of the big toe into the ocean. An act of misbehaving that wasn’t absurd enough to wind you up on your knees getting lashed at in the town center.

He huffed whilst hooking his socks to his feet, and hawed as he wrestled with each hole on the wrinkled white button-up he’d carelessly swept off the ground. This was simply as put together as Lyle was going to get today. Rarely did he love to go out on his days off. What was the point of even calling it a day off if it didn’t consist solely of time to oneself? After a long week of dying strips of yarn and bolts of cloth, there was one place that Lyle dreamed of - and that was his bed.

Which is why he’d groaned heavily as his friend Dario had mentioned the night before that he had something to show him. Lyle had known Dario for most of what he’d considered his conscious life. Maybe six, or seven? A block over, Dario’s large family seemed to inhabit the whole street. It was a world so unlike his own, coming up with just his mother and father. Lyle prided himself on finding comfort in each inch of his childhood home, but Dario’s house - it was more than that. There were multiple stories imbued in every room, more than just a simple memory of a mother and son - generations.

Dario had once told him that his family had once been much larger. That was hard for Lyle to imagine. As he trudged out the front door, the sun greeted him with a cheeky fuck you. Cute. Brushing his hand up to wave away the harsh realities of day, he scrunched his nose as the familiar scents of the neighborhood took away what little sleep had clung on for dear life. Home. The resilient textile district was all Lyle had ever known. Outside sparse Capitol broadcasts demonstrating a life of lavish, a cut scene to a district here or there for the reapings, there was little Lyle knew of life outside the fences. Lush greenery did line the borders of the district, so perhaps more untamed trees standing hundreds of feet tall? Or more factories, a second district eight exact copy building for building of where they lived now? Cities that had never even heard of Panem? Locations not marked on any map made by anyone, citizen or Capitol.

Stop.

Physically and mentally. Not today. Lyle scuffed his feet along the ground, kicking up small pebbles as he built trenches with his toes. An underground tunnel per - he’d always been a dreamer, but lately he’d found that they had gotten a bit out of control. Dario always had such grand ideas of taking down the Capitol, but that was never Lyle’s thing. As far as Lyle knew, no one in his family had ever been directly affected by the Capitol, never reaped, never hurt. They did their jobs, and food was on the table. The Tabus’ weren’t trouble makers and it wasn’t time to start now. It’s not time to start now. It’s not time to start now. He repeats the mantra like a staccato in his mind, each syllable popping along to a step. After a minute of humming, the words seemed to lose all meaning, it was all under control now. Deep breath. In, out.

He arrived at Dario’s door on the exhale. Without knocking, Lyle creaked the door open ever so gently as to not raise alarm. Even though he’d been given permission many a time just to come in, the act of just walking into someone else’s home without announcing frankly seemed like a death wish. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing? ”Hello,” he said with a loud yet reserved tone. ”Mr. Cortés, I’m just here to see Dario." He paused. "It’s me, Lyle.” He didn’t know why he’d added on the last bit as if his shrill stammering wasn’t enough to give away who it was. Real casual.

Peaking in each room as he passed, he sauntered through the familiar landscape. It had started to become comfortable to him, Dario’s place, well his grandfather’s. Though not his own, there was room here for him to rent. It was a comfort knowing that there was somewhere that didn’t make Lyle feel as though he was taking up space.

”Alright,” he mumbled as he found his friend tinkering as per usual. ”You got me out of bed so this better be damn good.”

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Dario Cortés

Punch in, punch out.

Dario had stared at the timeclock as though he might find another meaning. Maybe somehow, he’d come to a different conclusion, that even as he started to sweat under the fans of the factory floor after just a handful of minutes inside, there was more than this. An existence that hadn’t come to feel as though he was spinning a wheel toward nowhere. But men and women brushed past and stuck their cards into the machine, which buzzed and snapped out a curled set of numerals in ink.

It was just a machine, after all.

So he pressed his cardstock in and slung his knapsack into a cubby of the breakroom, just as he had many evenings before. A few men sipped paper cups of burned coffee that would help them get through the evening. Dario dragged his feet along the concrete floor toward his waiting stool and set about the day’s pattern on the table before him. A cotton set of pants, perhaps for spring or summer in one of the more humid districts. He took in the dotted lines, the way to lay the fabric, all the little details he needed.

And then he drifted into a rhythm – the same he felt possess the men and women across the factory floor – placing fabric, stitching, cutting string with scissors, measuring, laying out and starting again.

He doesn’t remember the hours whiling away, or the laughter of the women that told a joke about the foreman. That someone passed around a birthday card, or a sweet looking girl got Dario to tell her what his younger brother’s name was. He’d turned his mind off and drank in the night so that when the clock buzzed and the shift was over, Dario blinked a bleary set of red eyes, walked to grab his knapsack, and set about for home like no time had passed at all.

Andrés was asleep by the time he settled up the stairs and into his bedroom. Dario could hear the boy snoring from the top bunk, curled into the star patterned sheets like a swaddled child. Andrés would be gone by sunrise, which gave Dario only a few hours rest before he’d be woken by the clamoring. Still, he liked the few minutes they shared, whispering (what a fucking morning, eh?) and (let’s play some cards tomorrow?). Little pieces of light to complement the sunrise peering through the window.

Morning was café from the bubbling tin, toast and butter, his mother saying he was too skinny and his father reading a newspaper so closely Dario believed ink would smudge across his nose. He hurried, coming alive at all the plans for the day – the collection of maps to look over, tinkering with the radio, Lyle coming to see him – that he burned his tongue downing the espresso.

His grandfather’s place had been a short walk from their own, a few streets over and nestled between two much larger buildings. The squat brick house with a gently sloped tile roof was well worn, and Dario always took time to admire it before grabbing the key from under the matt and making his way inside. His father would pop in from time to time to make sure the place was clean, or to help his abuela with odds and ends. But more or less Dario had turned it into something of a workspace.

When Lyle called through the house, Dario sat at the edge of a table, scratching careful marks into a yellowed map. He took an old wooden ruler and measured, then remeasured. He brought the pen across and formed a dark black line from one dot to another, and made a notation. Static hummed alongside him. An old wooden radio with a circular metal front and bold brass knobs crackled to greet Lyle’s approach.

“Eh, cómo estás Lyle?” Dario pulled back his wooden chair with a squeak. “You ready for this?”

They had the sort of friendship that went unquestioned, a steady pairing that seemed to bring out all the right notes from one another. Dario didn’t think too much about it because he never had to.

“So I’ve been looking over these maps again, about where the radio towers outside the district should be – to see about a pattern. You know? Like my grandfather said about the war bunkers that they built with radios? And so I was trying to change the frequency to see if I could hear anything, and, well,” Dario waved his arms in front of himself, and felt his heart beat a little faster. He turned to press his hands against the cool of the paper and point out the markings he’d drawn. Even as tired as he was, he couldn’t help but beam.

“So I got up early the last couple of mornings, and then I spent the days just trying and trying, and then – voila,” He moved to the wooden radio, and turned the dials. After a moment, the static changed, and from it, a set of chimes began to play, over and over.

“Eh?!”

[Wonder]

lyle tabus
17
d8

“Moo-ey bee-en, ay too?”

Lyle tripped over his own tongue as the non-native language was butchered mercilessly. It didn’t matter how many times Dario ran over the pronunciations, after years and years the words would never come out the same way. It was pretty embarrassing. It wasn’t as though Dario mocked him for his attempts, maybe a slight or two but all of it was in good fun. It was all laughable. There was no world in which there was an expectation for him to become bilingual. Lyle Tabus was no polyglot. Heck - on the best of days he was hardly a.. sologlot? Solingual? English. He could barely speak English.

As Dario stood from his chair to welcome him, Lyle greeted his friend with a small smirk and a curt nod. Neither boy was domineering in shape or size. To Lyle, Dario’s jumpy nature was much more warm and welcoming, definitely the more approachable of the two of them. It was Lyle’s lankiness that made him a little bit inept and awkward. A little like a pool noodle, or some bizarre primate with long dangling arms. Alright, maybe that was a little dramatic.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Which was true.

There’s a butterfly living in his stomach.

He’d learned about it a long time ago through the saying, you know, having butterflies in your stomach. But the saying didn’t really make sense if you took in to consideration the butterflies themselves. Why would a perfectly healthy and active group of butterflies ever just leave? Surely they would hatch eggs over time and those in turn would incubate and spring more life. It’s not as if he ever kept his mouth open over a twelve hour period and watched them fly out, though that would be gross. The only other alternative was that he had a gut full of dead insects, grosser. So the only sane and logical explanation for his hyperactive abdomen was that inside Lyle’s stomach was a fully alive butterfly.

Over the years, there had been just a small little quiver through Lyle’s body. It wasn’t painful in any way, or uncomfortable, really. It was almost like a reminder. Just a little nudge that said, ‘Hey Buddy’ consistently through the day. It happened as he walked in the door of a residence that wasn’t his, Hey Buddy It happened as he spat out the worst Spanish anyone in the world had ever heard, Hey Buddy. And it definitely happened as the radio started switched through to the right frequency.

Hey Buddy.

Lyle found himself tracing water lines across a map with his index finger as Dario excitedly talked about his discovery. Panem history was all so recent. Most of the relevant events to their country had happened within the last century and a half, and it was all accessible to a certain degree. Second or third hand stories of relatives were chock full of information all pooled together through groups of friends sharing their own collective family history. He’d always loved listening to Dario’s family stories, but the chimes ringing out of the radio were daunting.

That, he mentally poked towards the wooden box, was more than just some story, that was a discovery unlike anything that Lyle had ever witnessed. ”Eh?” He repeated his friend. ”Eh?” This time louder as he motioned an open palm to Dario’s radio. “That,” he couldn’t help but feel dramatic as he targeted a radio with his suspicions. “I don’t know, Dario, what if that’s like, some sort of trap, and they’ve sounded some alarm to come get you.” Fuck. ”Or maybe, maybe -“ Lyle stepped away from the table as he washed his hands through the sky, “It’s like, a subconscious mind thing that we can’t hear between the chimes and now whenever someone snaps their fingers we’ll go on some homicidal rampage. Or maybe,” he stretched out each vowel to really make the point home, ”maybe it’s just illegal. You’re crazy.”

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Dario Cortés

Chimes played out their song, and Dario closed his eyes. His grandfather used to tell stories from his rocking chair about the war. Bits and pieces of a history that Dario had held onto, tight against the memories that dared to fade into oblivion. His abuelo was keen on their family’s story, so much that Dario had been infected with the same nostalgia that returned to him each time he entered his grandfather’s house.

He was feverish then, listening to a set of forgotten tones echo out the radio and across the hall. He wished he played guitar so he could strum out the same chords. Where his father had sworn off the tales as a man who’d always inflated the truth, here was fact, as far as Dario could hear, that what his grandfather told him was real.

There were few things in his life that felt so affirming. Not the nonsense job he held in the factory, or the dead end that school had offered. Even his friendship to Lyle called into question the danger of comfort, that as good as they were together, he feared the risk of waking up one day in his bed buried in covers and realizing all the best years had been an accumulation of nothings. That he could die like his grandfather, searching for an answer to the question, who am I?

But these chimes seemed to say, keep looking.

Lyle’s skepticism was the only piece to drown out the sound. Dario opened one eye and watched the philistine wave away meaning. He had always had a way of bringing Dario back to earth. Dario took in his words like weights in his pockets, to keep himself from floating off and away. But today – as Lyle mentioned the capitol setting a trap, or mind control – he was too far gone, too high up to come back down.

Crazy.

The word stung in a way he didn’t expect. Dario folded his arms across his chest and tried not to hunch his shoulders underneath the doubt.

“You don’t think they could still exist? It’s not like they took down everything after the war, you know?” His grandfather had mentioned the rebels bomb shelters, full of paraphernalia, rations, hopes, dreams, and, at the end of the war, bodies. Men that had been killed or left for dead after the final assault on district eight. Some of his grandfather’s brothers had fallen there, and the rest had returned only to be disappeared again.

He turned back to the table with his maps and placed his palms flat across the surface. Leaning forward he drew close to a map of the district, its boundaries, and the set of dots marking the radio towers and possible spots of the bunkers. Dario could see them, the hollowed-out concrete, overgrown with moss, full of bones but stories, too. A short distance from the wall. A tangible piece of the past that may not have yet crumbled to dust.

“If they’re out there, that means that what he was saying was true. That there might be things from before the war, things that haven’t been seen in years.” Dario smoothed his hands against the map. “And that’s just the first part, you know? The first part of finding them.”

[Wonder]

lyle tabus
17
d8

Is history sin?

Who's in charge of the divulging of information? Certainly there were huge chunks of time that had never and would never be covered. Heck, realistically outside of what little was taught in school, most of the history Lyle knew was third or fourth hand information through Dario. Lyle didn’t have a long or exciting lineage. Lyle’s mother and father had both been only children to laborers, and there wasn’t a rich elaborate story of trials and tribulations. His grandfather was a dyer, on his mother’s side - he met his wife, Lyle’s grandmother in the factories. Or was it in school? Or had that been his grandparents on his father’s side? Nana was really good at baking, she made excellent little pecan tarts caked in brown sugar that warmed your entire body in just one bite. Certainly she had lived through the rebellion, and yet - she never mentioned it, not to Lyle. He could smell her cooking, feel the lace doilies carved into snowflakes that he’d trace with his thumbs. He could remember her pastel pink dress with splotches of old cooking incidents sporadically stained throughout. But what else?

Lyle pressed himself to remember anything. A story, a moment, anything that could indicate that there was any moment in time where perhaps things looked more exciting than they were in the Tabus family. War times, rebellion, the forced indoctrination of his community; it’s all there in the cobble streets of Eight. Buried beneath stone and mud is the decayed blood of rioters who took a stand for their beliefs. It’s fact. That much Lyle knew. The Games confirmed that every year. And yet as time passed, it almost felt like that sultry reminder was all that remained of the rebellion. A story of loss. A triumph for the Capitol. Life moved on.

It wasn’t as if Lyle hadn’t asked.

Braiding down strings with his fingertips, squeezing down the excess dye like a cow and udder, he pestered his father for any sort of detail. “Did grandpa ever say anything about the war?” The red plaid button-up of his father didn’t turn as the man hoisted bucket after bucket of color, organizing the mess of a room. “It’s better not to ask, it upsets him Lyle.” He grumbled. Don’t ask. That was it. The Tabus story wouldn’t be passed down through generations, it stuck with who it belonged to.

History. To whom did it belong? The person who lived it, or to those who would spend years spreading it?

It all seemed like a dangerous fairy tale. To chase after pieces of a story that wasn’t told in full. A bias told through the perspective of one. They. They this, they that. Who was they? Dario seemed so intent on finding them as if finding them would finish what was told to him after years and years. Just as much as the Capitol had tried to push in the narrative of dirty rebels and their fruitless attempts at coup, Dario had been indoctrinated with the ideals of a life of perceived freedom. Lyle was exasperated.

He watched as his friend traced along the maps, lining out dots and points of interest. Was it Lyle’s place to shut down the dreams of his friend? This was dangerous, all of it. Even the thought of leaving - they had it good here. All of them. A stable job, a steady income, family. Sure the peacekeepers took their authority too far every now and then, but it wasn’t ever anyone that he knew personally. What lived beyond the fences of the District was uncertainty, instability, rebellion. Lyle pushed towards a chair and huffed as he sat. ”Who are you even trying to find Dario? Or like -“ He paused. “what?” They, they, they. Like an excited puppy, Lyle watched as Dario jumped from thought to thought erratically. It all seemed so, so.. neurotic.

”Or like, what happens when you find them, you know?” Lyle tripped over his words, it had always been an issue when he was nervous. It was hard to make any sort of argument to any one when he couldn’t help but hesitate and stumble through sentences. He lacked any sort of authority to his trembling voice as he tried to bring his friend back to reality. ”What happens if like, a shelter breaks while you’re inside? Or you find rebels and they’re now cannibals who haven’t seen food in ages and they think, hey what a nice piece of meat?” He could feel the anxiety coldly slip through his pursed lips. Not able to meet his friend in the eye, Lyle brushed his legs with the palms of his hands, gripping them to keep grounded. ”How would we -“ Lyle stopped to correct himself, unwilling to be part of this suicide mission Dario had presented. ”How would you even get out there? Is going out there worth getting killed? Or worse, hurt?”

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Dario Cortés

When his grandfather would talk about his brothers, Dario struggled to imagine himself and Andrés having to make the same sort of choices. Whether or not to keep working in a factory, hands run raw from all the scrubbing of clothes, or to take a rifle and a chance for a better life. To say goodbye to his mother and father, to everyone he’d ever known with the chance he’d die on the battlefield, with no one to bury him, or for anyone to know that he’d fallen. That the only ones who would bury his body were the same friends that would be disappeared by the capitol, whose stories were erased from history as easy as embers turned to ash.

How could the choices he made ever compare to those that his grandfather had?

Where were they now, he wondered, smoothing out the map once more, his right index finger tracing back and forth between the set of dots he’d drawn.

He furrowed his brow.

His grandfather Carlos had said he was too young when the war broke out to join a brigade. He’d begged his eldest brother, then a second lieutenant, to let him enlist. He was all of nine years old and spoke of how he’d grabbed onto his brother’s vest with both hands, refusing to let go. The Imberline boy down the block was barely bigger than he was, even three years his senior, so why couldn’t he come along, too? His voice always grew soft when he mentioned his eldest brother, and how he’d loved the brass buttoned jacket he styled himself with, like a real soldier. His mother had sewn epaulettes onto the shoulders of it for the better part of the evening the night before he left.

'I watched her hold him, and whisper into his ear how much she loved him. She said she’d pray over him until he came home. Made the sign of the cross on his forehead. Held his hands and I swear they smiled like they knew it was the last time. She’d go on praying forty-three more years,' Carlos took a long drag of a cigar, and swivel a glass of whiskey before downing what was in the glass.

Those days, electricity came and went. Running water was now and again, and when it ran was lucky to be clear if not yellow or brown. Their bodies were shells to be ground down in the factories, bones and flesh broken over presses, laundry, or sewing machines.

But there were the nights when they’d listen to the radio, they’d gossip about the neighbors and cook elote over the gas stovetop. Little moments of dignity, his grandfather reminded him, of times when they breathed in history and shared one another. When their language sang out like a melody, spoken freely in the street. Nostalgia warmed over like a fever, it helped them not to forget what they stood for, who they were. What it meant to live an honest life for and of one another, defined by a world passed on with stories.

'Remembering is a part of who we are,' Carlos would say, holding up a domino as though he were inspecting a diamond.

'Remembering is a part of who we are.'

“What does it matter who they are?” Dario pulled back from his maps and away from his radio to look at Lyle. He looked at the pale boy’s exasperated expression, and for a moment, wondered if he’d ever know what it meant to truly lose a part of himself. Or maybe his family had already lost the part of them that made a difference, that bridged between who they were and where they’d come from, so they forgot who they were.

He relaxed then, feeling his shoulders tense and remember that this was his best friend. This was Lyle.

“They’re a part of Carlos’s – my grandfather’s – stories. They’re men that weren’t older than us when they decided enough was enough. And they gave up every little thing that they had to sacrifice themselves,” Dario felt all of the words spill out of him, his chest heaving, hands waving and expressive as though he were directing traffic, “So that they could have a fucking chance. Hombre, they could’ve just stayed here, but they stood up to the most powerful people on the planet, for us.”

He could’ve laid down his life like they did, or so Dario wanted to believe. He could’ve walked out the district with a rifle and a brass buttoned jacket and taken a bullet through his head just like his great uncles had.

“My family’s out there. My great uncles, and cousins. Carlos said so. Those men – those heroes are out there and no one ever buried them. No one ever gave a shit about their graves,” His voice broke then, shirking off his tenor and lifting an octave. He had to turn and take a breath to catch himself.

“And if it takes a bunch of rocks falling on my head to bury me and find out the whole story was true, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

The chimes continued then, repeating, and filling the silence.

“You really don’t think we could find them? You wouldn’t want to see what’s out there?” Dario couldn’t separate the legend from his heart any more than he could convincing Lyle to take such a risk. “Besides, if they’re cannibals, I’ll tell them to eat you first. You’ve got a lot more meat on your bones than I do.”