Corpus Civilization

Cabo Verde

"Be back by dinner."

"When's dinner again?" Arsene rubbed his hands together anxiously, gazing out the window towards the beach.

"Six-thirty. I've already told you this four times! Arsene, how can you be so air-headed?"

"Okay, six-thirty." Arsene snatched his backpack off the floor. Hastily, he slung it over a shoulder. "Goodbye, Sis."

As he stumbled down the front steps of their rented home, Arsene realized he'd forgotten something important for his adventure. He raced back up the steps, hands already raising to cup his mouth. He took a deep breath before shouting into the house.

"Dad? Dad! Where did you put the tape measure? Dad?"

"What's the yelling for?" Arsene's father emerged from the kitchen, staring at his son with a question in his eyes. "Did you say tape measure?"

"Uh-huh." Arsene began to rummage around in the kitchen drawers, opening and closing them rapidly. "I'm going to finish the colosseum today." He added confidently.

"Is that so?" A deep chuckle from his father. "You've been working at that thing for months now!"

"Years." Arsene corrected. "I had to collect the materials first, remember? That took forever. But don't worry, today it will be finished! Where's the tape measure?"

"Second drawer from the oven. Remember to be back before dinner. And good luck!" Arsene's father gave an encouraging smile before exiting the room.

Seconds later, Arsene was flying off the porch steps and into the afternoon sunshine, tape measure tightly hugged within his palm. His backpack bumped against his shoulder blades, equally as eager to arrive at the construction site as Arsene. The brisk wind skimming over the Atlantic's surface stung his cheeks and tousled his hair, but it was nothing he wasn't used to. Growing up a natural adventurer on the shoreline was enough for his body to condition itself to the fickle climate.

Arsene was adapted to it all: the thick spray of the ocean, the stinging sensation of water in his eyes, the salty taste under the tongue, the sliced toes from wayward seashells, and the continuous hush hush hush of the waves. It was everything he'd grown to love, everything that had granted him inspiration for his building project.

The colosseum idea quite literally drifted ashore one overcast day when Arsene was boredly sifting in the sand for bottle caps. The inspiration arrived in the form of a damp, hardly-legible food wrapper. It was a fading, sickly pinkish color, and it had an odd language scrawled on it that Arsene later discovered was Italian.

Alongside the hieroglyphs he couldn't comprehend was an illustration of a tall hero with curly hair wearing full body armor. Next to the hero was a similarly imposing cylindrical object with many, many layers. At first, Arsene thought what looked like a large cake was the company's marketed product—the food they were trying to sell customers.

"What kind of food is this?" He'd asked his sister when he brought the wrapper back home. "It looks kinda gross. Who would eat this?"

"Really, Arsene? Oh, you're not kidding. Hah! Dummy!"

"What? Arsene honestly had no idea what he was being dumb about. "It doesn't seem like the tastiest cookie-cake thingy to me, if that's what it is. It looks disgusting, like a cement block with holes in it."

At Arsene's pinched nose and exaggerated scowl, his sister shook her head forcefully. Laughter floated into the air between them. She pointed at the gray blob, then at the man standing next to it.

"This isn't food, Arsene. This must be part of a flyer, or some toy. This guy is a gladiator, and this...cookie is a colosseum. It's a building from the Ancient Roman Empire. A place where they pitted warriors against each other until one of them died."