*knocks twice and falls over through the doorway* Hey! Didn't see y'all there! So yes, hello, hello, Thorne and I are alive. Yes, it has been yet again after Ardit and Faven's set of intros almost another two months since our last update but have no fear! We are riding to your rescue once again. Last intro set we met Ardit Kazazi and Faven Tatum from District 1 and 5 respectively, by Tyquavis and Enobariasteeth. This intro set is between Vigour Floros and Xolanne Navarrete, our D1 and D10 girls, where Thorne has Vigour's intro first up, and I (Paradigm) follow suit with Xolanne's to close out the chapter. Thank you guys again for waiting patiently with us and not ringing any fire alarms or such chaos, I appreciate it a lot. Here we are, Intros Set II, Chapter #7: Moments of Clarity, featuring Vigour Floros and Xolanne Navarrete.
Vigour Floros: District 1 Female P.O.V (18)
Argyris Manor, District 1; 2340 hours. Nov. 8, 82 AD.
It was because of the crows that seventeen-year-old Vigour Floros chose to replace art with war.
It was because of death that she transformed her life, spinning the onyx strings of tragedy into a new kind of beauty, one which was easier to find in the darkened world around her, comprised of steel, sweat and self-assurance.
She stares wistfully out of her bedroom window, the view as strange to her as it had been seven months ago when she moved in with her aunt, the room feeling as bleak and foreign to her as it had then, too. It's simple enough to the point where it feels militaristic - fitting, perhaps - with beige walls and white curtains that oscillate back and forth with the stiff breeze of her open window, a far cry from her bedroom back home in the Floros manor.
Her room used to be full of life and spirit, lived in, for Panem's sake, with the most gorgeous view of the rolling hills and viridian vineyards beyond the glass panes. It had been a reflection of herself, lively and messy and full of sheafs of paper and half rolled-up paint tubes, yellow ochre and titanium white and phthalocyanine blue, the colors carelessly crusted onto the caps and left on the easel with whatever painting Vigour had been working on that day. It used to be full of expression and passion, bursting at the seams with limitless color and creativity.
Just like me, Vigour thinks sourly, vision blurring out of focus with the sudden arrival of tears. She takes a long swallow from the crystalline glass - her fourth tonight, since Aunt Lydia had told her she'd be staying with her fiancé for the weekend - and exhales, her temples pulsing with an oncoming headache. "Shouldn't have let me try wine, Dad," Vigour whispers bitterly, the words soft on her breath, the cloying sweetness of the wine starting to acidify in the back of her throat.
It's not his fault, of course, but it has become a ritual habit for Vigour to abandon her health as a way to cope with her stress. She drinks when her aunt isn't home, over-exercises in the training center, and has begun sleeping at random intervals during the day, her mental health deteriorating quickly and quietly with the move.
Once Vigour's inspiration abandoned her, she began to feel as if that ability to express herself had been lost; her innate sense of self, growing dull and muted, and the world, once so colorful and full of excitement, quickly following suit. Her eyes became a dirtied lens that could no longer see the beauty ensconced within the world, instead seeing pain, sweat, and bullshit, feeding herself lies so thick she was choking in them.
Training is going to make you forget about them.
Volunteering is going to give you purpose again.
Winning is going to bring back the girl you used to be.
It's the only lie worth telling herself anymore, her own hubristic nature doing nothing more than assuaging her newfound insecurities. Not that anyone around her could tell, of course. If I can't be the artist I was meant to be, then I'll simply conquer the summit another way, she affirms, lips twitching in the barest hint of a smile.
As a girl, her father used to reward successful grades from the academy with a new bird of paradise, avifauna imported from somewhere along the expansive shores of District Four. The motivation to train harder came simply from looking forward to seeing what kind of bird her father might bring home next; each becoming just as special to her as the last. They were my friends, she thinks morosely, crossing her arms on the sill and resting her chin on them.
And anything that made Dad proud was always worth achieving. But without him, training took on an entirely different meaning; it has given her that purpose; not unlike what artistry had once done for her, with years spent with a brush in hand or a pen clasped between her fingers, paint and poetry flowing from an innate well of imagination that never ceased to flow. War itself is an art, with silver blades and carefully choreographed footwork.
Career training has filled a hole left inside Vigour. Made her feel real again, as if the delights of military strategy were something akin to written prose. The stanzas of her youth, so full of rich imagery and emotion, have been replaced by short orders and comprehensible directives without a meaning deeper than the surface, her mind now focused on how to dismantle the enemy instead of how to best capture the outstretched wings of her birds with a series of brushstrokes.
She sighs deeply, the sound harsh against the desolate void of crickets and the prenatural stillness that comes with the night, the world waiting and tensed before her, and she before it. Everything feels still, like the hollow gaping hole left inside her, and she rests the side of her head against the window frame, close-cropped hair allowing her to feel the tickling sensation of the breeze against her scalp and the iciness of the metal frame.
It doesn't matter anyway, Vigour thinks, attempting to bring the glass to her lips without moving from the sill. The wineglass falls onto the carpet, a splatter of dark alizarin crimson on another plain canvas; and yet she remains stilled, surprised at how resentful the splash of color makes her feel.
Life had already begun to take a sour turn with the untimely death of her father, crushed by an unsteady support beam on a work trip away from the Floros manor. Howl Floros had been a practical man, one whose architectural skills were nearly unparalleled in terms of craftsmanship and artistry, and there was something poetically ironic about his artistry having ultimately done him in. The homes he had built were a reflection of the art he created, a vivid and well-loved world of complex colors and palettes, whether it be in paint or in stones and lumber.
His death had changed Vigour and her mother, affecting both of them for the worse. Her mother began to experience more frequent depressive episodes, made apparent by the muted sounds of broken glass and endless wailing that Vigour could hear through the walls her father had built with his own two hands. Her mother had been distraught with the loss, and yet the tragedy that had befallen their family did nothing to bring them closer together. If anything, it had driven Vigour and her mother further apart, the divide in the house wedging itself deeper between them.
And she too, mourned openly, crying herself to sleep most nights on the floor of the glass-plated aviary her father kept, lying beneath the menagerie of her feathered friends as they slept in their untouchable lofts high in the air. Surrounded by the beautiful plants in the botanical gardens beneath, Vigour had felt at peace, allowing them to lull her into a false sense of security, the stars forming a blanket of glittering tears above her.
Somehow, it was the best sleep she had ever gotten in her life.
The world, in all of its beauty, seemed to mourn Howl Floros, and she too grieved with it, barely speaking with her mother over tense dinners and hallway encounters. Crows began to appear in the eaves of morning, resting on the roof of her mother's side of the manor, sometimes nestling onto the balcony for hours at end, as if the crows in all of their sadness and sorrow had found a home with her mother. Like dark shadows descending on a life full of beauty, the crows symbolized nothing but anguish and pain for Vigour, flocking, their cawing so jarringly different from the peaceful symphony of chatter she had become accustomed to in the aviary.
She picked up the brush again, too, one night when the hopelessness had rooted itself deep in her skin, and she painted for him, three paintings full of natural beauty and melancholy. She dipped her brush in the water again and again, colorful acrylics now muted, yet it felt as if her father was sitting beside her as he always had, with crinkled crow's feet in his eyes and his hands, callused from years of toil, guiding her own.
Her biggest mistake was leaving the canvases out in the open.
In a hurry to rush toward training - the day to day grit and gruel keeping her in a routine that took her mind off the grief - Vigour had forgotten to hide the art, and when she returned home, the manor was flooded in a sea of white armor, Peacekeepers milling like ants about the grounds. She had wanted to scream, wanted to tear out her hair, pushing past them with a growing sense of dread and dissonance in the pit of her stomach. Once she got to the aviary, Vigour had collapsed to her knees, tears springing to her eyes.
Spread across the gardens beneath were hundreds of her birds, nearly unrecognizable; a myriad of color laying still upon trimmed hedges and flowers now sodden red with the lifelessness of her companions. Many had been shot down from the skies, some had their heads and wings torn, feathers carpeting the ground beneath her feet. Vigour wanted to vomit, wanted to slam her fists into the ground, wanted to scream. But at the center of it all, behind a swaying yellow banner of peacekeeper tape, was the body of her mother, just as lifeless and soundless as the birds that had once lit up the aviary in cheerful chirping and chatter.
In her hands was a rifle, in her stomach, a wound that mirrored the birds. And all Vigour could do was stare at her mother, a scream dying on her lips as a surge of grief overtook her and she began to sob, twisted choking noises that made her back shudder as despair eclipsed her senses.
It became so easy to hate her mother for what she had done, for how selfish and hurtful it had been to leave Vigour stranded with virtually nowhere left to turn, nothing left to find solace in save the artistry of a new ordeal. She shuts the window and stands, staring at herself in the adjacent mirror, all harsh angles and prominent cheekbones, her jawline sharp and her chin sharper, angled above broad shoulders and muscles built with hours of sweat and discipline. Vigour wouldn't call herself beautiful, not by any conventional means, but the progress that the hardened edges of her body represents to her is nothing short of beauty.
Beauty is pain, and pain is art; her musculature is synonymous with the aspirations of a younger version of herself, reveling in the wonders that the world had to offer. She can see it in her eyes when she looks in the mirror, appraising the definition of her abdomen with the same eyes that once fawned over the way the red-crested turacos would call back to one another, the noise throaty and distinct. It satisfies her that she feels over-exhausted from the senseless persistence in training, that she can find distraction in something as wearying as training has become. Vigour's eyes shift subconsciously to the small slip of paper she has tucked into the frame of the mirror, one of the few things she had chosen to take from the Floros manor in a fit of grief.
It is the last thing she had written, before her inspiration dried up like a used inkwell, words that are nothing more than a slight impression on the paper, scratchy swirls of dark ink written in her signature loopy scrawl. The poem, while short, is still as legible and impactful as the day it had been written, the day when she had first laid eyes on the harbingers of her eventual misery.
"They come again and again,
To feast on the flesh of the forgotten.
Beaks like blades, dark wings, dark omens,
Colorful feathers have been shed for black."
Xolanne Navarrete: District 10 Female P.O.V (17)
The wolves are back. Their cries can be heard rippling through the air, tearing up the sound barrier with their ferocity, strength bounding in between the tree branches above seventeen-year-old Xolanne Navarrete head. It is a calming sound for her, and it has always been a common sound for as long as she can remember. She sits in the backyard of her home, quaintly nestled into a rocking chair with a book in her lap. She'll stay out for a little while longer as the wolves keep on howling adventurously.
There is a sadness to the cry, one permeating with melancholy down to her bones and into her spine, suffusing the crisp air into a tantalizing droplet of honey on her tongue. She wonders, briefly, if the matriarch wolf is crying for her lost partner in the expanse of District 10, where one would surely be hunted by snipers and Peacekeepers looking for some fun. Whereas many others outside of her pueblo would be locking their doors and staying inside when hearing the wolves cry, Xolanne is inclined rather to tilt her head back and close her eyes. She wouldn't go up to one and expect to be able to pet it, of course, but regardless of the fact, the sound is peaceful.
Her mother tells her that she is too adventurous, like one of those animals out in the brush. A word that holds a lot of weight, as Xolanne closes the book on her hand. It isn't a book, but really a thesaurus, for something stirs in her gut whenever she looks at a well of knowledge that sits freely open for her to consume. Always looking on the horizon for what there is to learn, than to sit in her own mess with what she's already learned and never grow. It gets her some strange looks, yes, but it is nothing Xolanne has never dealt with before.
She can already hear her father's little complaint that he always seems to rise at her concerning her focus on knowledge. "Our ancestors back in the day did not have the time and privilege to learn about the world. They were fighting for their survival."
Xolanne understands where he's coming from, and she would not dare bring up a counterpoint. A Chicano never did that, Xolanne Navarette never did that. They expected a boy, and she has no idea what her name would be instead, but a boy's name wouldn't fit her, even with her spirit. Girly things have never really stuck to her side, even as she sits in the rocking chair with a dress she weaved herself, for the buttery rouge she sees the other girls in the schoolyard wear on their cheeks only complicate the issue on how ridiculous they look.
Another howl sends chills down her spine, Xolanne looking up, away from the thesaurus clenched in her lap. The howl is sharper, and it sounds as if it is much closer than before, as if it is just almost over the brick wall separating her and the Navarrete household from the outside. One- one couldn't leap up and over the wall and hurt her, could it?
If it happened to come to that, Xolanne would be ready. No, a stronger word than that. Prepared? Not good enough, either. Looking through the iron barred windows into the back side of the house, Xolanne sees her grandmother inside, sitting by their open fireplace. Her sister is tending to the coals with a fire poker, one hand placed on her belly. Pregnant, or at least what the local town physician says, but Xolanne knows better than that.
"One too many rice cakes at breakfast, Etenia?" she giggles, but that only earns her a ruler slap across the knuckles that evening for being disrespectful.
Xolanne rolls her eyes at the concept of the lack of available humor in her life. Her father has never been the man to celebrate tradition the way his grandfather would've, a man Xolanne has never met. Yet, somehow, even as her father promises her one day, when she's seven and she's skinned her knees too many times playing baseball with the other boys in the pueblo, since the District 10 townsfolk would never allow a Chicano to play with them until she were older, tradition would not be thrust into her like sticking a picture to a wall with a thumbtack.
Tradition, where her grandfather teaches her father that one is to not mix with those of a different culture. It is never expounded upon, or so her father claims, whether it meant romancing a District 10 townsfolk outside of the pueblo, or if it meant the simple overlap of culture leading to the collapse of everything she's ever known. Xolanne figures it'd be the former, but there is too much in her life to worry about beyond if teaching someone how to fish or herd cattle is breaking a sacred law.
The reaping is tomorrow, and all Xolanne can think about is how hot it'll be when she's pinned in between all of the other girls. Her dark hair is killed by the humidity, strands of wispy twine tacking between her fingers as she rolls a strand back and forth, waiting for the escorts that never seem to stick around longer than a single year to pluck an unlucky child away from the district.
They always die, and Xolanne has seen too many of District 10's kids pass on. Death is such an archaic word to her, a word that does not mean the end as one would think. When she dies, her physical embodiment may be no more, but she'll still very much be alive. She'll be floating, perhaps even see-through, but she will not be dead.
She could do it, Xolanne resolves soundly. She could win the Games, perhaps, as her father makes her knock hands into the punching bag hanging up in the back room by the basins where they wash out their clothes.
"One must defend themselves if they exist," her father places a finger under Xolanne's chin, making her connect eye contact. "Are you a sitting duck who'll be devoured by lions when they come for you?"
"No." It does not take long for an answer, but it is not immediate. The grip on her chin tightens.
"No?" her father questions, raising an eyebrow, frowning. The ever knowing frown, where she's disappointed someone, broke some law she didn't no existed, and her tangible spirit breaks more day by day until she'll retire into the sky.
"I won't be a sitting duck, Father."
She could go and fight a coyote or a wolf tomorrow after the reaping, if she wants. If she did that, however, it means blowing off Santiago. Her brother-in-law, as it has been tradition ever since his eighteenth birthday, when he survives the Hunger Games reapings, goes with Xolanne to the highest peak they can find in District 10, whether it be manmade or all natural, and shout at the top of their lungs, hearing their voices echo into the expansive desert sky.
They could get in trouble, if trespassing is involved, but it only makes Xolanne grip onto Santiago's hand tighter than ever. He is married to her sister, Xolanne looking back inside to see Etenia lock eyes with her. Her sister holds the gaze for a single second too long, causing Xolanne to look back at her thesaurus. There is no crime for hanging out with her sister's husband; she'd never do what her sister always accuses her of, stealing someone away for her when Etenia finally achieves some happiness of her own.
Happiness would not be the baby she is carrying, however. Xolanne cannot think of any higher burden. Children are a gift, or at least, her mother believes that to be so, at how she's blessed with two daughters and even if there isn't a son in her bloodline, Etenia's child could be a boy.
"And if Etenia and Santiago have a boy?" Xolanne questions, stirring her soup lazily with the spoon sliding around the curvature of the bowl like a planet revolving around the sun.
Her mother, Paloma, smiles agedly, cracks appearing across her forehead and into her cheeks. "If it is a girl, then we will be blessed for that, too."
Santiago's last name is Del Monte, which is not Navarrete. Her father holds the name with pride, but Xolanne can tell that it hurts her father unlike any other sensation out there in the world that he will not have the chance to continue the line any further beyond a 'nee' status. Traditions that apply to him matter, but it only makes Xolanne roll her eyes.
"And what if I decided I don't want to get married, Mother?" Xolanne asks, shortly after, when her mom turns back around to pull the bread out of the oven. Xolanne has to walk back into town, out of her pueblo and near the Justice Building to go and get the bread, since the two shared pueblos do not have their own market in the middle of their dirt roads. "Have we considered that?"
Xolanne has never felt an interest in marriage, or at least, nothing yet. No one has arisen through the crowd of cornstalks and bean plants and cypress trees as someone worth investing in, and she's sure, from the outside, that she is not someone anyone would want to invest in either. All of the boys she's met – well, not all, but a good 98.9% of them can be lumped together into one sad sack of testosterone – would only insult her if she asked them out for a date.
She's never excelled at science and mathematics in school, Etenia's strength, while hers lies in language. It lay in the fields and sewing, in the sharp points of needles that thread through fabric and knit scarves to keep her neck warm in the winter. Her strengths lay in the gloved paddings that surround her hands when she boxes into the punching bag hanging on the hook rusted four times over. No man, certainly no boy, is going to want her to be stronger or smarter than them in the fields they are told to excel at, and Xolanne feels her own shortcomings settle on her pulse points like triggers injecting sorrow into her veins.
She could announce to everyone, once the reaping is commenced, and everyone has mourned their last drop of sorrow, to meet her in the thicket of trees where the magnolias interlock by the water wheel and she'll wrestle with one of those wolves that love to howl so much and break her concentration. Her parents would hear of it through word of mouth and abandon their posts, such as leaving the sheep to herd themselves into a self-contained slaughter, and there'll be burning bread left in the oven. Etenia would walk at a snail's pace, clenching her stomach, but Santiago would be skipping ahead without his wife…
Xolanne could do it, she knows she could. Tackle nature head-on, send herself spiraling into the dirt and scuff up her knees until she's coughing hard enough that she expels a lung. She could live off of the land for a few days until the searches would begin, but Xolanne wouldn't want to return. Why return to a land where all that is expected of her is to push out a boy into a world of pain and deceit?
"When will you tell them," Xolanne nods at her sister's stomach, at the child she has down there, inside of her, "About the Games, Etty?"
Her sister scowls: she's always hated that nickname, it steals her importance. "Hopefully, I'll never have to."
Xolanne wishes she could be that wistful.
She could-
Xolanne quits that line of thought. It is rude and disrespectful to laugh in her sister's face like that, and her family has always stressed the importance of how blood is thicker than water over any other mantra she's ever heard of before.
Her mind has wandered, and the adventure is calling out to her again, but another foolish little dream.
She opens her thesaurus again, searching for a synonym for repugnant. Repugnant that the Games still exist, repugnant that she is eligible for them... repugnant for the concept of needing to carry a boy.
The wolves howl, and Xolanne Navarrete simply flicks over to another page.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was Intro Set #2/Chapter #7: Moments of Clarity, where we have met Vigour Floros of District 1 and Xolanne Navarrete of District 5, again written by Thorne and me, Paradigm, respectfully. Thank you to LordShiro and charliel12 for providing us with these two ladies to our horrors and hopeful talents. Chapter #8: Moments of Secrecy, will be focused on Cleo Silverlock from D12 and Pavlov Erdos from D7 as our next tributes you shall meet, and we are actually going to have this ready and posted by next weekend, or you might as well just kill us. We've got room to grow and expand!
Thorne and I would love to know what you think! Thanks to those who reviewed last intro, it meant a lot to both of us to have your commentary! Thanks so much as usual for reading! Have a great day! We love you guys so much; bye!
~ Paradigm and Thorne