beau(regard soleizos) | d5 | wip
May 5, 2019 20:36:00 GMT -5
Post by sadniss everdeen on May 5, 2019 20:36:00 GMT -5
beau
seventeen
district five
-4.7
Deneziel Soleizos was a simple man. He loved the land, and he loved the things that lived on it.
He was a farmer first; his grandfather's mother had tended the ground at the beginning, only growing richer as it traded hands. It wasn't big, this plot, but it was home. Every inch of it. The towering spruce in the back corner stood stoic like an old friend, barely a sapling when his great grand-mama planted it. A family of songbirds returned every spring to a nearby juniper bush. Cattle roamed the hills that littered the southeast - he regularly fed handfuls of dandelions and clipped grass to the snuffling calves that would wander to his fence, and saved apples for the wild horses that came only to him.
Everyone always said the Soleizos farm belonged in District Eleven. Bursting with dense, leafy vegetables and hardy roots that grew through winter's frost, it was a patch of carefully-crafted chaos in a sea of identical green grass. Working with the earth for so long gave Deneziel an acute appreciation for the web that connected all living things to the ground.
Unsurprisingly, his wife was of the same stock.
Pyrah grew up on the back of a horse. She knew how to braid a lasso like her own hair by the time she was eight and could call the sheepdogs into pasture with a single whistle. She wore through boots like a horse did shoes, howling and hollering through the fields, and got in endless trouble for staying out past dark. They were in the same class at school and he saw how she was always staring out the window, pencil tap-tap-tapping on her empty notebook, desperate to be back out and thundering through the plains.
Deneziel loved her from the beginning, as free as the deer that would cross the fences to come and visit. He would bring the finest feed to her ranch - slow and steady, laden down his cart with the wobbly wheel - and offer it without his papa knowing, just to see her smile. "Extras," he said, grinning, "to keep them strong." He'd receive a beating when he got back home but it was worth it, all worth it, to wave back as she rode by his farm and to smile back when she sat next to him in class and kiss back when she kissed him one night, all alone except for the fireflies and the junebugs and the thump-thump of his jackrabbit heart.
"You better treat her right," papa said when he realized it was hopeless, "better than a new seedling in the sun."
And he did. She hung the stars in his sky and he was the ground under her feet. He loved her spirit, her drive, her determination. He loved how she got whatever she wanted and clutched it in an iron fist. He loved how people would listen when she talked, and when she cried out in the face of injustice, it was a bellow.
Pyrah's fire was only fueled by her best friend. With their mounds of red hair, people often thought she and Birdie were siblings. It didn't surprise him - they were louder together than they were apart, and they burned with that same brightness, poorly masked. Pyrah knew her before she was Birdie, before she was Roberta, before she was much at all - just a girl in bare feet and a thread-bare dress wandering through the tall grasses.
("I'm T-Rex Bird," said this tiny spitfire with dirt smudges and missing teeth. "pyrah," said pyrah, unbothered by the unconventionality of it all. "want to see a cool bug?")
Pyrah still called her Rex. In some ways he was jealous; only for a split second, some nights, watching them interact with an easy grace that came from a lifetime of knowing each other. It never lingered long. Pyrah had a heart big enough for the entire District and then some to spare.
Trouble followed them. More like they brewed it, stirred it up like the cold water in a lake after a storm, agitating the clear waters and leaving a ripple in their wake. They staged a sit-in on the Mayor's lawn; waved picket signs with the slaughterhouse's beleaguered workers; fought tooth and nail for the District to grow their own feed. They were the first to voice their displeasure and the last to bow. Deneziel caught intimate glimpses into their planning, their drive, late-night meetings in the barn spent slapping mosquitoes and plotting out another protest. All that drive and nowhere to channel it. "it's not enough," Birdie said once. the crickets echoed her frustration. "they aren't listening."
Until then, Deneziel had been a silent witness. A pillar. Part of the scenery, tagging along only to be closer without giving himself to the cause. But Pyrah muttered her agreement, stalks of sweetgrass chewed between her teeth, and he'd move the world himself if only she'd stop looking so sad.
And so he opened his mouth, and that was the beginning of the end.
seventeen
district five
-4.7
Deneziel Soleizos was a simple man. He loved the land, and he loved the things that lived on it.
He was a farmer first; his grandfather's mother had tended the ground at the beginning, only growing richer as it traded hands. It wasn't big, this plot, but it was home. Every inch of it. The towering spruce in the back corner stood stoic like an old friend, barely a sapling when his great grand-mama planted it. A family of songbirds returned every spring to a nearby juniper bush. Cattle roamed the hills that littered the southeast - he regularly fed handfuls of dandelions and clipped grass to the snuffling calves that would wander to his fence, and saved apples for the wild horses that came only to him.
Everyone always said the Soleizos farm belonged in District Eleven. Bursting with dense, leafy vegetables and hardy roots that grew through winter's frost, it was a patch of carefully-crafted chaos in a sea of identical green grass. Working with the earth for so long gave Deneziel an acute appreciation for the web that connected all living things to the ground.
Unsurprisingly, his wife was of the same stock.
Pyrah grew up on the back of a horse. She knew how to braid a lasso like her own hair by the time she was eight and could call the sheepdogs into pasture with a single whistle. She wore through boots like a horse did shoes, howling and hollering through the fields, and got in endless trouble for staying out past dark. They were in the same class at school and he saw how she was always staring out the window, pencil tap-tap-tapping on her empty notebook, desperate to be back out and thundering through the plains.
Deneziel loved her from the beginning, as free as the deer that would cross the fences to come and visit. He would bring the finest feed to her ranch - slow and steady, laden down his cart with the wobbly wheel - and offer it without his papa knowing, just to see her smile. "Extras," he said, grinning, "to keep them strong." He'd receive a beating when he got back home but it was worth it, all worth it, to wave back as she rode by his farm and to smile back when she sat next to him in class and kiss back when she kissed him one night, all alone except for the fireflies and the junebugs and the thump-thump of his jackrabbit heart.
"You better treat her right," papa said when he realized it was hopeless, "better than a new seedling in the sun."
And he did. She hung the stars in his sky and he was the ground under her feet. He loved her spirit, her drive, her determination. He loved how she got whatever she wanted and clutched it in an iron fist. He loved how people would listen when she talked, and when she cried out in the face of injustice, it was a bellow.
Pyrah's fire was only fueled by her best friend. With their mounds of red hair, people often thought she and Birdie were siblings. It didn't surprise him - they were louder together than they were apart, and they burned with that same brightness, poorly masked. Pyrah knew her before she was Birdie, before she was Roberta, before she was much at all - just a girl in bare feet and a thread-bare dress wandering through the tall grasses.
("I'm T-Rex Bird," said this tiny spitfire with dirt smudges and missing teeth. "pyrah," said pyrah, unbothered by the unconventionality of it all. "want to see a cool bug?")
Pyrah still called her Rex. In some ways he was jealous; only for a split second, some nights, watching them interact with an easy grace that came from a lifetime of knowing each other. It never lingered long. Pyrah had a heart big enough for the entire District and then some to spare.
Trouble followed them. More like they brewed it, stirred it up like the cold water in a lake after a storm, agitating the clear waters and leaving a ripple in their wake. They staged a sit-in on the Mayor's lawn; waved picket signs with the slaughterhouse's beleaguered workers; fought tooth and nail for the District to grow their own feed. They were the first to voice their displeasure and the last to bow. Deneziel caught intimate glimpses into their planning, their drive, late-night meetings in the barn spent slapping mosquitoes and plotting out another protest. All that drive and nowhere to channel it. "it's not enough," Birdie said once. the crickets echoed her frustration. "they aren't listening."
Until then, Deneziel had been a silent witness. A pillar. Part of the scenery, tagging along only to be closer without giving himself to the cause. But Pyrah muttered her agreement, stalks of sweetgrass chewed between her teeth, and he'd move the world himself if only she'd stop looking so sad.
And so he opened his mouth, and that was the beginning of the end.
