Carter Woods :||: District 7 :||: FIN

:: APPEARANCE ::
A skinny boy who looks like he could do with some meat on his bones, he is also taller than most of the kids his age. His mama likes to tease him and say he stretched overnight when he was fourteen, but Carter knows that it’s only been a few inches and he welcomes the change. He was always skinny as a kid and back when he was short, he was the prime target for bullies. Once he started sprouting, though, the bullies started backing off and Carter began carrying his own weight. He was never quite able to keep up with his growth rate, though, and retained a lanky look.

His dark skin is stretched over his bones, the color a seemingly genetic trait. His mother is a little lighter than him and his father is darker than him, and his shade just doesn’t seem to match any of his relatives. His dark hair looks like a messy collection of corkscrew curls that just won’t stay in place. When he was just a little boy, he would grow it out, but once he started running around and playing, he had to cut it short to keep it out of the way. Keeping his hair short also meant less maintenance and fewer tangles when he washed his hair.

The almost equally dark eyes are small and make him look like he is drowsy. When he smiles, a small but bright grin, his eyes disappear into slits barely smaller than the actual size of his eyes. His ears are also small yet they stick out, giving the appearance that they are larger than they actually are. With a long face, his ears give him a clownlish look and gave the bullies much to pick on when he was younger. His upper body is small with not very wide shoulders, but his legs are oddly built due to amount of running he continues to do.


:: PERSONALITY ::
At just fifteen, Carter is in the mindset that all he needs to do is be a boy. Restrained by no adult duties but given more freedom than a little boy, he could spend his day running around the woods and playing with his friends. After his punishment for provoking a peacekeeper—he had been lucky—he has cut back on his activities, although he will not refuse an opportunity to throw axes with his best friend Liam. His mother does not get on his case as he does well in school and continues to hold up his grades. His father would show more concern if he had the time to, but Carter is used to it by now. He knows why his father leaves home early and comes home late, and he is thankful that he hasn’t had to work in logging just yet.

Although he is less likely to jump at an opportunity to mess around, he still holds a competitive edge—he just directs it at something else now. When he was younger, he and Liam would often do random sorts of competition just to see who was “better”. As he matured, he became more introspective and realized that the only way to improve was by beating himself. He would never let Liam beat him, though, and would always put in 110% when they were having another of their competitions. He still takes losses very hard and if he does lose, he will proclaim a rematch immediately.

The only people he cares about are his family and his boys. To him, they are his world and he doesn’t need anyone else. His mom likes to tease him and ask when he’s going to become friends with girls or even talk to them, but Carter doesn’t see the point in having friends who are girls. In his mind, girls are annoying and always complaining—why would he want to put up with that? Even the girls that he likes, he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time with them. Instead, he devotes his time to being with his best friend and his younger siblings. As his father is frequently working all day, he thinks it’s his job to be the man in the house. The older he gets and the more he realizes how hard his mom has to work to keep up with the family, the less he thinks of housework as chores. Of course, there are still some jobs he will never do, but he is more eager to help out, even if it’s just distracting his younger siblings.

:: HISTORY ::
Born into a District 7 middle class family, Carter was raised to live as humbly as possible, something that would help as the family grew larger and Carter became older. As a toddler and only child, he was given a large amount of freedom and often spent his days running around. However, he always wondered why his father was hardly around and although he would ask his mother, he never understood what it meant to “provide” for a family. All he could understand was that his father would come home late at night and was always too tired to play with Carter before he went to bed.

His younger brother Andrew was born after Carter had celebrated his sixth birthday, and it was the first time he had to be responsible for someone. Of course, his parents started him off easy by telling him not to drop the baby, but as the baby got bigger and another one came along, his parents would ask more for him and he grew to resent Andrew. His little sister Celia was born two years later, and Carter described their relationship as love at first sight—but not the romantic love. It was as if they bonded even though they couldn’t communicate. As a young 7 to 8 year old, he loved Celia way more than he cared about Andrew.

But the family kept growing bigger and Carter couldn’t play favorites anymore. Pretty soon, he just started taking care of all of them until Andrew was old enough to help out around the house as well. Suddenly, it became a lot easier to hold his siblings and he had developed enough skills that he could whip something up. His duty to his family didn’t hold him back from having fun, though. He met his best friend Liam when they were really young, as if they were born to be friends. Of course there were other kids in their group, but when it was just the two of them, the world opened up. They participated in the local games, but they sometimes would sneak off into a more dense area of trees and work on their axe throwing with axes they “borrowed” from their fathers.

When they were younger, they were also stupid enough to provoke the peacekeepers, an activity that Carter had long since stopped from doing—unless cleverly prompted by Liam. However, he had once been caught and while the peacekeeper was not too happy, he had let Carter go with “a day in training”. During his punishment, he was forced to run laps through the day and whenever he wanted to stop, he was beaten around a little to remind him that he couldn’t stop. Ever since that day—his parents wouldn’t let him forget it either—he always had an itching to run and he found it difficult to be at rest.

It was after his altercation with the peacekeeper that he began to bond with his father. His father had been stern with him about slacking off and doing something stupid that could put his family in danger. But after his father had given him another share of beatings, they began to talk and it was then that Carter realized why his father was working those long hours, even though they seemed okay financially. It was also then that he realized how he needed to contribute more to the family. His father told him that he didn’t want Carter to work in logging until he had finished his education, though, so he was resolved to work more in the house and help his mother.

NAME :: Carter Samuel Woods
AGE :: 15
DISTRICT :: Seven
GENDER :: Male

CODE:: odair