[.}Themba Kilera{.][>District Seven<]
Jun 9, 2010 6:26:50 GMT -5
Post by WT on Jun 9, 2010 6:26:50 GMT -5
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[.}Those Basic Facts{.]
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Ask for Themba.
He's lived [or survived] 16 years (nearly 17).
Make no mistake- he's male.
~[.}\paint/.me.a (picture){.]~
Without fail, the first thing any give person notices about Themba is how tall he is. We’re not just talking tall, either- I mean he. is. tall. At seven-foot-one (215.9 centimeters, if you so please), the guy can’t help but be imposing. He might not even be done growing yet- he is only sixteen, after all. It does help that he grew at a steady pace instead of in short bursts, so he is completely used to his long limbs and handles them beautifully. Many tall people are clumsy for the first few years that they’re tall, and that takes away some of how daunting they can be, but for Themba to stumble is almost unheard of. He just doesn’t. It’s a little creepy, actually.
Luckily, for all his height, he’s not that big a person; he’s the long and thin type, partly because being a District worker leads to him being half-starved most of the time and partly because he’s just naturally very lanky. He’s also very gentle in his control over his motions; he moves not just smoothly, but carefully, having retained the dexterity he learned while working with paintbrushes when young.
Not that most people really pay attention to how he moves when they just see him walking down the street or something. It’s not the thing that occurs to people, especially since he makes it seem so natural that people don’t really notice it, so they usually pay more attention to his features.
Themba is a relatively good-looking guy- not so much that he ever had many girls whispering about him, but enough so that a few were pretty put out when he and Aisha made their relationship clear. His straight black hair, always a little haphazard but never truly messy, comes down to the bottoms of his ears and provides a nice frame for his face. His features are a little bit sharp, perhaps, but well-placed; blue eyes, a softly pointed nose, and thin lips are all evenly proportioned and placed.
One thing about himself that Themba dislikes is his skin. Not that it’s bad or anything; indeed, he has remarkably clear skin and has always been grateful for that. It’s just that between his natural complexion and spending so much time inside, he’s just very pale, and oftentimes people do a double take when they find out that he and dark-skinned little Ayane are related. Except for Aisha’s parents (who have disowned her and by extension them) and his own parents (who he barely sees anymore), they’re all the family each other has, and he wishes it was easier to make people believe he was really her father.
Not that it really matters, because at the end of the day all the confusion and odd looks mean nothing, so long as Ayane is there and they’re together.
~[.}sing--me.a./s/o/n/g/{.]~
Themba was always the calm and chary type, never one to get riled up easily or step into something without looking at it first. The years since Aisha's Reaping have emphasized that trait and strengthened it, so that the first thing that people usually say when they try to describe him is how very cautious he is. He always double- and even triple-checks his work, making sure the margin of error is as low as humanly possible; he never takes risks unless there's no way to get around them; even his interactions with other people are done carefully, as though he's trying to keep himself distant despite his natural amiable nature. It start off as plain fear that if he wasn't careful, something would happen to him and then there will be no one to look after Ayane- or, worse, something will happen to her directly. Time has eased that fear some, but the trait has taken hold; it fit in well with the hard-to-ruffle attitude he already had, and he's gotten used to being careful about things.
Being careful makes him very reliable, though. If you want to make sure a job gets done on time, talk to Themba. He hasn't been late for anything since he was thirteen (or if he has, he isn't telling), and all those checks make sure anything he's in charge of runs smoothly and efficiently. He can also always be counted on to keep his head under pressure (it's very hard to crack his calm demeanor), and when he was still in school, students with disputes often came to him because he was known for judging each side of the argument fairly and equally. It helped that he enjoyed helping his classmates out.
Not that he ever smiled about it much. Themba isn't the sort of person who smiles at everything. It isn't difficult to earn his smiles, per se, but you definitely do have to earn them, and his laughter is quite rare indeed. He's a serious sort of person, the type who often looks at things from a technical perspective first and an emotional perspective later. This makes him come across as stern and even uptight to strangers, but people who get to know him will learn to read him- to recognize a small smile as an expression of great joy, to realize that the quiet chuckle is his version of a laugh. Most also have to get used to the fact that even these, he doesn't give out easily. When he does, though, it's worth it, because no matter how small or quiet the other signals are, his eyes light up in a way that makes you feel like making him happy was the best thing you did all week.
One thing that's hard to notice in your first few minutes meeting him is his patience. Themba never gets angry at his daughter for acting like a two-year-old; he scolds her and reprimands her, but understands that she's doing the best she can and responds in kind, only raising his voice when she's actually asking for it. He can sit with the same blueprint for hours, going over it again and again to perfect it far past the point where most people would have gotten sick of working and gone to do something else. He even goes through difficult conversations without getting overly frustrated- not, to be honest, that he has too many of those.
See, for all that he doesn't generally go seeking people out to talk to them, Themba's an amiable person and will gladly engage in conversation if approached. He's also very cooperative, and sees no reason to try and "win" a situation if he can reach a perfectly acceptable compromise. His friendliness is somewhat belied by how very blunt he can be, though. He sees no reason to use ten words when three will suffice, and has a tendency to forget about that lovely thing known as tact. Don't fish for compliments around him; he may compliment you, but only if it's really his opinion, and if he thinks that the dress you're wearing is really ugly, he won't hesitate to tell you. (He'll also get very confused when you yell at him. Didn't you want an honest answer?)
In recent years Themba has, somewhat understandably, turned into a pretty major cynic. He tries to see the best in people and in life, but he always seems to return to the worst. Oh, wha ta nice young lady- she's going to die in the Games, no doubt. Ah, the sun is shining and birds are singing and little children are happy- what do you want to bet the sun will be out for weeks without end and it'll turn into a droubt and the birds will die and that will make the children sad? He tries to keep his mouth shut on these thoughts, but he can't help but voice them sometimes, and he can be a bit of a killjoy when he doesn't look out.
But while he has other faults, Themba's biggest problem is without a doubt his tenuous hold on time and reality. He has a tendency to slip back a few years; he'll get up in the morning and start trying to get ready for school, or he'll wonder aloud when Aisha is coming home from work, or- perhaps worst of all- he'll look at Ayane and ask her what her name is and whether she needs help finding her parents. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it scares Ayane out of her mind. It doesn't do great things for him, either; after a while, everything comes crashing down, and Aisha's death hurts like it just happened. It's hard on both of them, and he tries to fight it, but it's a difficult thing to grasp onto and harder still to control, especially since he has no way of protecting Ayane.
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[.}The Others{.]
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His heart (when it’s not lost to the past) is all for Ayane
His daughter, Ayane, is all that’s left of Aisha
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[.}Play It All Out{.]
------------------------------------
~[.}/tell/ .me.a. L E G E N D{.]~
Themba was born to a family of five: his parents, two older siblings, and himself. A year later, a younger brother was born, and he grew up with three siblings. For a long time the family was lucky; first the oldest son, then the daughter (they were older than Themba by a significant margin) made it through the danger years without being Reaped.
The trouble started when Themba was twelve. His older brother and sister, like much of the District, working in construction. His brother's job was to test equipment, and his sister worked in experimental building designs. Due to their natures, the two firms worked closely together, so in some ways it was little surprise when the same accident killed both of them. A new kind of drill hit the ground wrong and blew up, knocking out a support beam that sent the framework of the building tumbling down. Both siblings were under the building when it fell, and were crushed almost instantly.
The family was badly rattled. Themba's parents drew into each other, hiding from most of the rest of the world. It became Themba's responsibility to look after his little brother, who was only ten months younger but acted like a five-year-old due to some kind of mental crossed wires that slowed his development significantly. This was fine with Themba; he and his brother got along great, and their parents had always been a little bit distant anyway. If it wasn't for the Games, there would have been no problem.
As it was, there was a huge problem. Themba was about to turn thirteen and his brother had just turned twelve when the younger of the two was called to be District Seven's male tribute that year. Themba panicked and tried to volunteer, but by the time he got the words out, his brother- who didn't really understand what was going on- had already agreed to take the position.
Themba's mental state would have deteriorated very far and very quickly if it hadn't been for Aisha. The two had met several years ago and been classmates often enough to become friends, and had just entered into a slightly hesitant relationship. She carried him through the weeks after his brother's death, pointing out things that were sure to make him smile and reminding him that he still had his parents to think of.
Aisha Pilayar was alive, in a way many of the District’s residents weren’t. She was the kind of person who lived in the moment, who never let the past stay with her because she knew she had the power to change the future. She was also beautiful, with auburn hair, light brown eyes, mocha-colored skin, and a smile that lit up her entire body. Themba fell head-over-heels, and for the first time in his life, he rushed into something: a relationship with her.
To some extent, she rushed right along with him because her family had suffered the same way his had; one older sibling had died in a construction accident and another had been stolen by the Games. She was terrified of dying young, and wanted to make sure that she managed a relationship with this lovely young man before it all ended for one or both of them. Her parents weren’t entirely approving, but they understood, and stayed out of her business; his own adored Aisha, and sanctioned whatever the young couple wanted.
Shortly after he turned fourteen (she had gotten there a few months earlier), they got their parents (grudgingly, on Aisha’s side) to give them the consent they needed to legally marry as minors. They did okay for some time, living for three months in relative happiness and security; Aisha kept her job as a singer and piano girl at a local bar, Themba took up as an apprentice architect, and both kept up with school the best they could. (He always wanted to be an artist, a painter, but you can't make a living like that in the Districts, so he settled for the next-best thing: the art of buildings.) The event at the end of those three months- namely, Aisha became pregnant- changed very little; the only difference was that Aisha had to cut back her working hours some, and Themba took up the slack and supported her when the combined hormones from being a teenager and being pregnant began making her emotionally unstable. She became very cranky at times and once or twice was even driven to fits of throwing things at him, but both were mature enough in the end to work it out (living in Panem tends to make adults out of children far too early), and stuck together.
Things would have been fine, had it not been for the Games. Aisha had just turned fifteen (Themba was still a few months behind) and was about a month away from giving birth when she was Reaped. Despite the obvious desperation of the situation, there were no volunteers; it was a hard year, and no one was willing to step up to the plate. A frantic Aisha was sent off to the Capitol, still balloon-sized, and entered the Games a few weeks later.
The Capitol didn’t deign to do anything about the baby- after all, it wasn’t their fault some kid had gotten herself knocked up eight months before the Reaping- and Aisha ended up giving birth onscreen, during the Bloodbath. Her two allies- her District partner and a girl she had befriended while in training- defended her, and she came out of it alive, though weak from giving birth. All three defended the baby ferociously, and even most of the other tributes backed off rather than try kill the little girl- Ayane Pilayar-Kilera, her mother named her, because that’s what they had planned on calling a girl. Ayane- the color of sound, or really the design of sound, giving homage to both Aisha's music and Themba's art.
Back home, Themba smiled, but cried.
Aisha made it far, in many ways because of the baby; sponsors poured in after the birth, giving her a huge edge. In the end, though, she was killed taking a bullet for the baby. (That was huge on the recap that year.) Her friend Kima, the girl from another District (the District Seven boy was already dead), fought like mad to come out of the last few fights (there were five tributes left then, including her), and made it. She kept the baby with her, and on the tour of Panem she united little Ayane with her heartbroken father, a scene that took the Capitol by emotional storm. (Good emotional storm, mind you. They were all very happy; most had already forgotten how tragic Ayane's mother's death had been, and were just overjoyed to see such a touchingreunion. Gotta love Capitol people. So fickle.)
Themba just wanted himself and his six-month-old out of the spotlight. He thanked Kima for her support of Aisha and protection of Ayane, promised in an undertone that if she ever needed anything she could send someone to him, and then hid away until the cameras and people were gone.
The time-slipping started then, and so did the rapid aging. Themba was already too much of an adult for his age, but loss and fatherhood (despite Ayane already being beyond the difficult first few months) accelerated it. He seems much older than he ought to these days- and it doesn’t help that he has that tendency to slip around in time, sometimes sending himself back to the days when he was fourteen and mature but carefree.
He no longer goes to school- with Ayane, he can't attend, and a lot of people drop out around his age anyway. He does still work as an apprentice architect though, and looks forward to the day he can become a real one. It's not painting, but it's a kind of art all the same, and he loves it almost as much as he loves Ayane.
[.}Those Basic Facts{.]
------------------------------------
Ask for Themba.
He's lived [or survived] 16 years (nearly 17).
Make no mistake- he's male.
~[.}\paint/.me.a (picture){.]~
Without fail, the first thing any give person notices about Themba is how tall he is. We’re not just talking tall, either- I mean he. is. tall. At seven-foot-one (215.9 centimeters, if you so please), the guy can’t help but be imposing. He might not even be done growing yet- he is only sixteen, after all. It does help that he grew at a steady pace instead of in short bursts, so he is completely used to his long limbs and handles them beautifully. Many tall people are clumsy for the first few years that they’re tall, and that takes away some of how daunting they can be, but for Themba to stumble is almost unheard of. He just doesn’t. It’s a little creepy, actually.
Luckily, for all his height, he’s not that big a person; he’s the long and thin type, partly because being a District worker leads to him being half-starved most of the time and partly because he’s just naturally very lanky. He’s also very gentle in his control over his motions; he moves not just smoothly, but carefully, having retained the dexterity he learned while working with paintbrushes when young.
Not that most people really pay attention to how he moves when they just see him walking down the street or something. It’s not the thing that occurs to people, especially since he makes it seem so natural that people don’t really notice it, so they usually pay more attention to his features.
Themba is a relatively good-looking guy- not so much that he ever had many girls whispering about him, but enough so that a few were pretty put out when he and Aisha made their relationship clear. His straight black hair, always a little haphazard but never truly messy, comes down to the bottoms of his ears and provides a nice frame for his face. His features are a little bit sharp, perhaps, but well-placed; blue eyes, a softly pointed nose, and thin lips are all evenly proportioned and placed.
One thing about himself that Themba dislikes is his skin. Not that it’s bad or anything; indeed, he has remarkably clear skin and has always been grateful for that. It’s just that between his natural complexion and spending so much time inside, he’s just very pale, and oftentimes people do a double take when they find out that he and dark-skinned little Ayane are related. Except for Aisha’s parents (who have disowned her and by extension them) and his own parents (who he barely sees anymore), they’re all the family each other has, and he wishes it was easier to make people believe he was really her father.
Not that it really matters, because at the end of the day all the confusion and odd looks mean nothing, so long as Ayane is there and they’re together.
~[.}sing--me.a./s/o/n/g/{.]~
Themba was always the calm and chary type, never one to get riled up easily or step into something without looking at it first. The years since Aisha's Reaping have emphasized that trait and strengthened it, so that the first thing that people usually say when they try to describe him is how very cautious he is. He always double- and even triple-checks his work, making sure the margin of error is as low as humanly possible; he never takes risks unless there's no way to get around them; even his interactions with other people are done carefully, as though he's trying to keep himself distant despite his natural amiable nature. It start off as plain fear that if he wasn't careful, something would happen to him and then there will be no one to look after Ayane- or, worse, something will happen to her directly. Time has eased that fear some, but the trait has taken hold; it fit in well with the hard-to-ruffle attitude he already had, and he's gotten used to being careful about things.
Being careful makes him very reliable, though. If you want to make sure a job gets done on time, talk to Themba. He hasn't been late for anything since he was thirteen (or if he has, he isn't telling), and all those checks make sure anything he's in charge of runs smoothly and efficiently. He can also always be counted on to keep his head under pressure (it's very hard to crack his calm demeanor), and when he was still in school, students with disputes often came to him because he was known for judging each side of the argument fairly and equally. It helped that he enjoyed helping his classmates out.
Not that he ever smiled about it much. Themba isn't the sort of person who smiles at everything. It isn't difficult to earn his smiles, per se, but you definitely do have to earn them, and his laughter is quite rare indeed. He's a serious sort of person, the type who often looks at things from a technical perspective first and an emotional perspective later. This makes him come across as stern and even uptight to strangers, but people who get to know him will learn to read him- to recognize a small smile as an expression of great joy, to realize that the quiet chuckle is his version of a laugh. Most also have to get used to the fact that even these, he doesn't give out easily. When he does, though, it's worth it, because no matter how small or quiet the other signals are, his eyes light up in a way that makes you feel like making him happy was the best thing you did all week.
One thing that's hard to notice in your first few minutes meeting him is his patience. Themba never gets angry at his daughter for acting like a two-year-old; he scolds her and reprimands her, but understands that she's doing the best she can and responds in kind, only raising his voice when she's actually asking for it. He can sit with the same blueprint for hours, going over it again and again to perfect it far past the point where most people would have gotten sick of working and gone to do something else. He even goes through difficult conversations without getting overly frustrated- not, to be honest, that he has too many of those.
See, for all that he doesn't generally go seeking people out to talk to them, Themba's an amiable person and will gladly engage in conversation if approached. He's also very cooperative, and sees no reason to try and "win" a situation if he can reach a perfectly acceptable compromise. His friendliness is somewhat belied by how very blunt he can be, though. He sees no reason to use ten words when three will suffice, and has a tendency to forget about that lovely thing known as tact. Don't fish for compliments around him; he may compliment you, but only if it's really his opinion, and if he thinks that the dress you're wearing is really ugly, he won't hesitate to tell you. (He'll also get very confused when you yell at him. Didn't you want an honest answer?)
In recent years Themba has, somewhat understandably, turned into a pretty major cynic. He tries to see the best in people and in life, but he always seems to return to the worst. Oh, wha ta nice young lady- she's going to die in the Games, no doubt. Ah, the sun is shining and birds are singing and little children are happy- what do you want to bet the sun will be out for weeks without end and it'll turn into a droubt and the birds will die and that will make the children sad? He tries to keep his mouth shut on these thoughts, but he can't help but voice them sometimes, and he can be a bit of a killjoy when he doesn't look out.
But while he has other faults, Themba's biggest problem is without a doubt his tenuous hold on time and reality. He has a tendency to slip back a few years; he'll get up in the morning and start trying to get ready for school, or he'll wonder aloud when Aisha is coming home from work, or- perhaps worst of all- he'll look at Ayane and ask her what her name is and whether she needs help finding her parents. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it scares Ayane out of her mind. It doesn't do great things for him, either; after a while, everything comes crashing down, and Aisha's death hurts like it just happened. It's hard on both of them, and he tries to fight it, but it's a difficult thing to grasp onto and harder still to control, especially since he has no way of protecting Ayane.
------------------------------------
[.}The Others{.]
------------------------------------
His heart (when it’s not lost to the past) is all for Ayane
His daughter, Ayane, is all that’s left of Aisha
------------------------------------
[.}Play It All Out{.]
------------------------------------
~[.}/tell/ .me.a. L E G E N D{.]~
Themba was born to a family of five: his parents, two older siblings, and himself. A year later, a younger brother was born, and he grew up with three siblings. For a long time the family was lucky; first the oldest son, then the daughter (they were older than Themba by a significant margin) made it through the danger years without being Reaped.
The trouble started when Themba was twelve. His older brother and sister, like much of the District, working in construction. His brother's job was to test equipment, and his sister worked in experimental building designs. Due to their natures, the two firms worked closely together, so in some ways it was little surprise when the same accident killed both of them. A new kind of drill hit the ground wrong and blew up, knocking out a support beam that sent the framework of the building tumbling down. Both siblings were under the building when it fell, and were crushed almost instantly.
The family was badly rattled. Themba's parents drew into each other, hiding from most of the rest of the world. It became Themba's responsibility to look after his little brother, who was only ten months younger but acted like a five-year-old due to some kind of mental crossed wires that slowed his development significantly. This was fine with Themba; he and his brother got along great, and their parents had always been a little bit distant anyway. If it wasn't for the Games, there would have been no problem.
As it was, there was a huge problem. Themba was about to turn thirteen and his brother had just turned twelve when the younger of the two was called to be District Seven's male tribute that year. Themba panicked and tried to volunteer, but by the time he got the words out, his brother- who didn't really understand what was going on- had already agreed to take the position.
Themba's mental state would have deteriorated very far and very quickly if it hadn't been for Aisha. The two had met several years ago and been classmates often enough to become friends, and had just entered into a slightly hesitant relationship. She carried him through the weeks after his brother's death, pointing out things that were sure to make him smile and reminding him that he still had his parents to think of.
Aisha Pilayar was alive, in a way many of the District’s residents weren’t. She was the kind of person who lived in the moment, who never let the past stay with her because she knew she had the power to change the future. She was also beautiful, with auburn hair, light brown eyes, mocha-colored skin, and a smile that lit up her entire body. Themba fell head-over-heels, and for the first time in his life, he rushed into something: a relationship with her.
To some extent, she rushed right along with him because her family had suffered the same way his had; one older sibling had died in a construction accident and another had been stolen by the Games. She was terrified of dying young, and wanted to make sure that she managed a relationship with this lovely young man before it all ended for one or both of them. Her parents weren’t entirely approving, but they understood, and stayed out of her business; his own adored Aisha, and sanctioned whatever the young couple wanted.
Shortly after he turned fourteen (she had gotten there a few months earlier), they got their parents (grudgingly, on Aisha’s side) to give them the consent they needed to legally marry as minors. They did okay for some time, living for three months in relative happiness and security; Aisha kept her job as a singer and piano girl at a local bar, Themba took up as an apprentice architect, and both kept up with school the best they could. (He always wanted to be an artist, a painter, but you can't make a living like that in the Districts, so he settled for the next-best thing: the art of buildings.) The event at the end of those three months- namely, Aisha became pregnant- changed very little; the only difference was that Aisha had to cut back her working hours some, and Themba took up the slack and supported her when the combined hormones from being a teenager and being pregnant began making her emotionally unstable. She became very cranky at times and once or twice was even driven to fits of throwing things at him, but both were mature enough in the end to work it out (living in Panem tends to make adults out of children far too early), and stuck together.
Things would have been fine, had it not been for the Games. Aisha had just turned fifteen (Themba was still a few months behind) and was about a month away from giving birth when she was Reaped. Despite the obvious desperation of the situation, there were no volunteers; it was a hard year, and no one was willing to step up to the plate. A frantic Aisha was sent off to the Capitol, still balloon-sized, and entered the Games a few weeks later.
The Capitol didn’t deign to do anything about the baby- after all, it wasn’t their fault some kid had gotten herself knocked up eight months before the Reaping- and Aisha ended up giving birth onscreen, during the Bloodbath. Her two allies- her District partner and a girl she had befriended while in training- defended her, and she came out of it alive, though weak from giving birth. All three defended the baby ferociously, and even most of the other tributes backed off rather than try kill the little girl- Ayane Pilayar-Kilera, her mother named her, because that’s what they had planned on calling a girl. Ayane- the color of sound, or really the design of sound, giving homage to both Aisha's music and Themba's art.
Back home, Themba smiled, but cried.
Aisha made it far, in many ways because of the baby; sponsors poured in after the birth, giving her a huge edge. In the end, though, she was killed taking a bullet for the baby. (That was huge on the recap that year.) Her friend Kima, the girl from another District (the District Seven boy was already dead), fought like mad to come out of the last few fights (there were five tributes left then, including her), and made it. She kept the baby with her, and on the tour of Panem she united little Ayane with her heartbroken father, a scene that took the Capitol by emotional storm. (Good emotional storm, mind you. They were all very happy; most had already forgotten how tragic Ayane's mother's death had been, and were just overjoyed to see such a touching
Themba just wanted himself and his six-month-old out of the spotlight. He thanked Kima for her support of Aisha and protection of Ayane, promised in an undertone that if she ever needed anything she could send someone to him, and then hid away until the cameras and people were gone.
The time-slipping started then, and so did the rapid aging. Themba was already too much of an adult for his age, but loss and fatherhood (despite Ayane already being beyond the difficult first few months) accelerated it. He seems much older than he ought to these days- and it doesn’t help that he has that tendency to slip around in time, sometimes sending himself back to the days when he was fourteen and mature but carefree.
He no longer goes to school- with Ayane, he can't attend, and a lot of people drop out around his age anyway. He does still work as an apprentice architect though, and looks forward to the day he can become a real one. It's not painting, but it's a kind of art all the same, and he loves it almost as much as he loves Ayane.
