.dillon--broderick--sunday [d12]

It’s funny how much you can tell about a person by their shoes, where they go, where they've been. Kind of hard when you look at Dillon Sunday. He doesn’t wear shoes. Can’t afford ‘em, can’t make ‘em, doesn’t want ‘em. He doesn’t like shoes. Most of the time, he prefers walking around barefoot rather than the lumpy makeshift boots made of damp hand towels, much to his mother’s dismay. She tells him he’ll “catch somethin’”, but he begs to differ. He hasn’t gotten sick once for the seven years he’s trotted without footwear and every evening, just as leaves home to go out and his mother calls out from the kitchen, ranting on how he’ll “catch somethin’”, he simply shrugs and says “Is that right?” However, his recurrent subversive conduct takes its toll once winter rolls around. That’s when wandering without shoes becomes illicit in the Sunday household. No shoes means no night outs. Mother Sunday thought she had him. Now, he’d have to put on something, but no. He simply stays inside all winter, fighting the urge to run outside with buttered toast, tea, and several blankets whose smell is objectionable.

His torso is somewhat normal on District 12 standards; at least on the part of the district he’s from. Although his family doesn’t rank up there with the higher quality of life citizens, he has always had a full stomach. The Sundays have food to go around all the time. How can Dillon afford to buy bread, grains, and milk, but not shoes? Because that’s the rule. “All the money I bring home goes towards food,” his father says. All but Dill complain, but their father doesn’t want to hear anything of it. And so they reluctantly send Dill off to fetch groceries. On his way home, he’ll usually picks at the bread, tearing off warm, toasty chunks and stuffing them in his mouth. By the time, he opens the door, the loaf is half eaten and he is sent off to his room as a consequence. Once the bedroom door is closed, he throws himself on the bed, smiles, and slowly pulls out a large wedge of bread. He eats dinner alone most of the time.

His arms and hands are the only agile parts of his body. They flip and express and when Dill wants to make a point, they go off in a little dance all on their own. When he was young and hardly just a boy, his mother would sit beside his bed, telling him stories just as grandma had. Which was weird because grandma used to tell him stories every night. Then she took a “vacation” and Dill’s mom took over. Hearing her stories were great, but they weren’t the same. They weren’t as warm and assuring, but they did hold promise and the one thing his mom got right were the arms. She swung, and waved, and painted in the air just as grandma had; and it wasn’t too long before Dillon picked up on it and used the technique as well. But his hands weren’t limited to story-telling, for it wasn’t long before he followed his musical avocation. His nimble fingers move rhythmically as they frisk and frolic across desks, fences, and almost anything inanimate. As a child, instrument after instrument, he worked his way into the musical world as deep as he could. He learned to play the hardly operative trumpet he found at the dump, and was fluent when it came to playing his great grandfather's "little guitar". Nobody he spoke to had recognized it when he went inquiring, so he just assumed it was a little guitar. It made a higher pitched, almost tropical sound. It reminded him of District 4. He kept it with him and learned how it worked. He and his fingers had learned everything there was to know. Except for its name.

His face is seemingly normal. For a 6 year old. Dill’s condemned with a baby face that just never grew up. It’s ample and his cheeks are just a bit full and portly, but for the most part, they’re in proportion with the rest of his body. His nose, like his cheeks, is full, but evenhandedly short and almost stubby. And then there’s his mouth, the provenance of the many facial expressions he puts into action when the time is right. There’ll be times where he bites his lip, pulls them back, and lets them recoil. In some ways, he’s a walking emoticon. Although his mouth may be expressive, his eyes are per contra. Dull and monotonous, they are usually set and fixed on something outside the interacting persons’ range of view. Never do they look straight at the your own, and they flit away often enough. The only thing his eyes do are imply a veiled unhappiness of some sort. But being that they belong to Dillon Sunday, that’s impossible. Dill’s a happy boy.

Dark tousled hair sprouts from his head and curls back just like his mother’s. He cares for his hygiene just as much as the next guy, but when he wakes up and starts to get ready, all he does is remember that he’s in District 12 and the low level of standard that is recognized throughout the community. And then he leaves the compound hairbrush--already laced with his grandfather's ratty strands of hair, mind you--sitting at the counter, untouched. The little water that makes it through the pipes of his home should be leading to his shower, but with a few alterations from dad, it goes straight to the boiling pot. Parallel to the “money rule”, Dill’s father also established the Sunday norm in which all water would go to the pot in order to heat their food and that each family member would have to find some means of their own when it came to washing themselves. Most of the time, his friends' families have been generous enough to let him borrow their shower every now and then, but he's had trouble finding a perpetual place to shower and not having to worry where he's going to bathe next.

He doesn't hold much regard towards what he wears, but it is notable that he usually goes around in very old, but surprisingly very well preserved clothing, bearing in mind that they have been handed down to every male in the family since his grandfather, meaning his father, 2 uncles, and his 4 older brothers. As for his leg wear, he prefers storing away the old family breeches and wearing his khakis instead. They're not too bad, considering he's had them for a couple of years. The only grime that has accumulated on them were nothing more than a few splotches of mud; hardly noticeable unless they were being looked for.

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