where is your heart if not inside you [Zori]

Dario spent the morning buried underneath stacks of papers, his fingers parsing delicately across the yellowed relics left by his abuelo Carlos. The codex spread across the old oak desk listed dates and names, and as much as Dario had deciphered, the disappearance of various relations during the rebellion. Markings of plots across a map, with circles on areas particular to differing districts. Longitudes and latitudes coordinates with words in chicken scratch containing questions unanswered (particularly when they had been written, as Carlos started forgetting things a few years ago).

He'd discovered the bits and pieces scattered across the old man’s home. No more than a single shanty he’d taken to living two the twenty years after his wife had passed, Carlos had never been one for keeping order, and the stacks of various cans, containers, and papers initially caused Dario’s mother to say that they should burn the whole thing and start over. His father had rebuffed the request – in a moment of nostalgia – and left Dario to clean every last inch. Clean it out and make it nice, and you can come stay here when you want, eh? A generous gift from his father always came with strings, and this was clearing of more than twenty years of refuse, dried mysterious stains of the floor and walls, along with particularly troubling holes along the wall.

Two months had come and gone when he found the lockbox, along with the radio. The hanging lightbulbs overhead kept flickering at night, and at first, Dario had sensed this was from faulty wiring. When his tio came to check the powerbox he found no issue, other than the ragtag construction was much like its previous owner: breaking down, and giving way to age. Unsatisfied – because Dario was rarely satisfied with a single explanation – he kept searching for another source of disturbance under the garbage and remnants. Along the southwest corner, just outside the little kitchenette had been an odd feature to the wall, jutting out slightly with a faded capitol posted pasted overtop. Carlos had never been a man to speak well of the capitol, no matter how long it had been since the dark days. Dario’s curiosity led him to peel away the poster with images of smiling capitolites (Glory to Panem! read the uninspired caption).

He found the false door, and behind it, the beginnings of a mystery.

Dario had spent long nights with his grandfather, and tended to him before he passed. There was something about the quiet between two souls, one so young, one passing, that made him realize how lucky at all he was to have the life he did. He liked to listen to the stories that Carlos would tell about years gone by, how much simpler life had been when he was a boy. There was a greater sense of harmony, a big family that looked after and out for one another. He would whisper out his life to Dario, who would capture every word on his note pad. He kept the words close to his heart, and closer still when Carlos began to grow sick.

He knows one day that he will get old, and that he will be fragile. He wants to have the same sort of family that would cherish him and know him; Dario knows that the melancholy comes to remind him of his abuelo but that it is sweet, in a way.

There were the nights that came toward the end, where Carlos would begin to speak of the train, and the weeping. Each night was the same story, frightful men coming to their homes to rip them from their beds, and march them off toward the trains. There was no order, no pattern but the same people were shuttled away. Carlos remembered seeing the eyes of his sister, Marisol, he would say, over and over like he was reaching for a glass of water, one he would never find. Dario would often hush him to sleep, but could not shake the thought that there existed another story.

His father said they were all tall tales. Dario was always searching for conspiracies, as though his youthful paranoia could provide explains to help feel better about his own place in the world.

There was a little radio box tucked into the little hole, along with maps, and papers. A record player, with records that must have been older than Panem itself. He remembers weeping at the sight of all of it, as though there was some great answer amongst it all. But Dario spent months, and months more poking and prodding at each of the papers, and begging his father to help translate his abuelo’s writing. He lost his mind years ago, Dario, His father would say, not believing a word. He’d been over ninety years old, and not a once spoken of his childhood to his father, other than to say life was different.

He is on a mission through the ratmas markets. His mother said that she needed a nicer set of yarn for the sweaters she was knitting for the winter (but not the kind that Tia Ana Sofia got – you know her stuff is garbage), and had knocked on his shanty’s door until he opened. She had her arms crossed across her chest when she walked in, and made eyes at all the papers scattered across the floor, as well as the desk near the kitchen (You know, if you spend this much time in here rather than out there you’re not going to ever find someone; she said, to which he gave an exasperated teenage boy sigh). He was forced to abandon the calls he’d made across the radio, same as always, stating his name, and what he was looking for (anyone, aside from the static that was returned).

He haggles with the man selling, noting that the prices are higher than need be (ratmas is a time of giving, amigo) until he stops, a chill running down his spine.

A child ambles along the market, singing, … Con cariño ver a quien amo… and Dario turns from the man gathering his set of ordered yarn and wool, ignoring the curses that begin to fly at him for walking away after negotiation. He sees Yani teetering along and walks slowly, until she’s a few feet from him, and kneels, forgetting himself and the crowd that pushes past and around him.

“Hola Chiquita. ¿Cómo te llamas?” She stops, and she turns back to the older woman behind her, and then to Dario. He presses from his knees to his feet and begins, “Disculpa, soy Dario y…”

Before seeing a woman that looked like him, and his grandfather.

He does not know how to describe the feeling – there were other people that looked like him in district eight but there were so few, and fewer still that spoke a forgotten language – other than that his heart beat a little fuller. He was suddenly brave, or bolder than perhaps he should’ve been.

“Where are you from?” He says, not unkind, but curious.