Avalbane Tam, District 11

Name: Avalbane Tam
Nickname: Ava
Meanings: Avalbane: white orchard | Tam: palm tree | Ava: like a bird

Age: Twelve years

Gender: Female

District: Eleven

Appearance:
---> Morgan Lily

Avalbane looks first and foremost like an angel.

For an eleven year old, Ava is small, petite some might say. She is obviously not the correct height for an eleven year old at only 4’10”. Some say it’s because of the trauma of District Eleven. Others proclaim that she’ll just grow into her height at a later age. She’ll never be very tall, and it is very well because of her family’s status and because of the District she lives in. She’ll also be very slight with a frame one would always liken back to a child younger than she. Despite her malnutrition and the jobs she’s been given, though, she has never broken any bones, which might account for a strain of good genetics. She is, however, slightly under the weight for her height, being at most only 76 pounds in weight on good days.

Like all good appearances go, it’s best to start at the top and make your way down. After all, most people look at the face first, not the feet. Avalbane’s face is round and cherub-like, and more often than not it is splayed with a light red natural blush. Her eyes are a bright, but somehow a sad sort of blue. They seem to bore into you as if she can see your innermost fears. They are wide, childlike, innocent, and placed a little farther apart than most people’s eyes. They are more often than not a façade, for her maturity is more than a child’s should be at this age; she’s had to grow up, and quickly. Avalbane’s eyes are separated by a petite nose, and situated below the nose is a mouth still thin with infantile youth. Her straight brown hair falls to about two inches below her shoulders. When the sunlight touches her hair, one can see sparkling in it red highlights, courtesy the genes her father gave her.

The girl has nimble hands that have already borne many, many blisters for her youth. Long, spindly legs almost don’t fit her angelic appearance, and yet, oppositely, they do. When she runs she seems to fly on the ground, and when she walks she makes not even a sound. “Look at me!” She seems to cry out as she runs, “I choose to walk on the earth, but, really, I can fly!” She bites her nails and has a strange habit of sucking her thumb when she’s scared or surprised beyond words; both are habits she’s had since a very young age and both are habits she’s tried and failed to break multiple times. She has pale skin as if she never sees the light of day despite her work in an orchard. This skin was courtesy her father, as her mother was dark-skinned. The only horrid marking that mars her light skin is a horrible lash scar on her back right shoulder where a Peacemaker whipped her when she was nine.

Ava wears clothes that don’t easily stick to the trees she climbs into in the orchards. Actually, they’re hand-me-downs about ten years overdue for stuffing into the fire and getting rid of. The only really new articles of clothing she wears are her shoes, which are usually less than two years old, and the real silver bracelet with a cross that seems almost too big for her spindly wrist. She’s never seen without it, as she never takes it off… unless she’s bathing, and few people watch her bathe.

Because of her size, Ava is often mistaken as puny and worthless. She’s fast on the ground, perhaps one of the fastest, but she’s a sprinter, not an endurance runner. She’s got enough muscles to shimmy up a tree, even a tree with no limbs close to the ground. But in the sky, or as close to it as she can get, is where she really shines. She can jump from tree to tree, she can move without a single leaf belaying her position. She can blend in, and is especially good with muds and paints. She’s not particularly strong weapon-wise, but who needs strength when death comes from above then scurries back into a tree in less time than it takes to unsheathe a sword? As such, she can’t handle heavier weapons and prefers knives that hide easily and don’t hinder her progress in the trees.

Personality:

To understand Avalbane is to understand the wind. Her personality is very fleeting, as is she. She’s more likely to run away than to fight, to hide than to confront, to reveal nothing than to talk. But, just like the wind can whip up gales so strong they can blow houses over, Ava can turn into a blindingly different little lady. Like the short-winded tornadoes, though, Ava’s fury and emotion also ebbs quickly. It is not, however, her most redeeming quality.

One of the youngest of the siblings, Ava was always pushed to the back, the loved one, the one everyone wanted to save. She learned to be shy, as fleeting as the wind she felt course through her hair when she climbed the trees. When she wasn’t in school, she was working, and when she worked she strengthened herself physically as well as mentally. In the trees she was alone, and she began to shy away from anyone else just to climb into a tree again. She is not very steadfast, she’s more like the hummingbird who darts from place to place searching for that sustaining nectar, knowing the nectar will keep it alive for another day. Her nectar is the sun and the closer to it she is, the happier, the more at peace. She is not comfortable on the ground. She never has been; her instincts are not set on fight, they’re set on flight.

Person to person, she’s a shy little beast, hardly even saying her name much less trusting the person she’s speaking to. She’ll come around, but very slowly. If only you were a plant or an animal, particularly a mockingjay, because then she would open up and talk to you for hours. Forcing her to talk only makes matters worse. She shuts down, she becomes a shell, and she refuses to do anything other than what she wants. Cajoling her or similarly offering her treats or prizes to speak also doesn’t work, unless that treat happens to be the purest honey money can buy. Honey is, beyond reasonable doubt, her weak spot. While it hasn’t been put to the test whether or not she’ll kill for the viscous liquid, there is no doubt that she’ll at least try.

To watch a tornado, full of itself, rip apart the very being of a person by tearing apart all that the person has in the world is much like watching this girl when emotion strikes her. Sometimes the emotion—though the emotion is mostly anger, it can be some other surge of emotion—comes on quickly, but sometimes the emotion is slow in coming. Either way, you’ll know when it’s risen. It doesn’t come in a tantrum, it comes in sheer force. Forget the girl who runs away at the slightest sound; forget the girl who’s shy beyond belief. If she had it in her to be a cold hard killer, she’d likely be one in these times of intense feeling. Resolute, confident, killing, with adrenaline to boot, she’s fearsome. She’s been punished several times for things she’s done in this state. But it doesn’t last. It never lasts. Soon it’ll wear off and she’ll become skittish and shy again. But her power is always slowly building for the next lash.

Family:

Mother:
Cara Tam nee Hawthorne, female, deceased
Father:
Platt Tam, male
Siblings:
Charmaine Aspinwud, female, nine years older, married to Routa Aspinwud
Landon Tam, male, eight years older, married to Karrat
Roam Tam, female, six years older
Fuejie Tam, male, deceased, five years older, participated in the 45th Hunger Games
Idareid Pernium, female, two years older, married to Liefe Pernium
Moroe Tam, male, one year older
Avalbane Tam, female
Navia Tam, female, two years younger, twin to Valencia
Valencia Tam, female, deceased, two years younger, twin to Navia

History:

Nine years of children will kill a woman, but, amazingly, Cara Tam nee Hawthorne survived. There were countless births before this one, and more than half of those births had been abortions. One had been a stillborn male. Why she’d kept giving birth even when her children were starving and begging for food whenever she turned around, she knew of only one answer. Her husband, Landon Tam, had delivered her out of the misery of District Eleven. They still lived there, but she felt sheltered within his love. And he’d always wanted a big family. That’s why she persevered through the children. If he wasn’t happy, she wasn’t surrounded in love.

Avalbane was named for her pale white skin, such a contrast to her dark-skinned mother’s skin and her tanned father’s skin that she startled the midwife into silence. She was healthy, if a bit small, but her cry was fierce and her limbs kicked with much the same ferocity. That aggressiveness slowly turned to shyness. Always held, always tucked away, she was a very docile creature. As she grew, she was given the most food—though really it was her mother eating more for her in the early days—and she was always an object of wonder. She was different.

Two years and perhaps a couple months after her birth, Cara died in childbirth giving birth to twins. Named Navia and Valencia, it was apparent that something was wrong with the two. Navia was stronger but she was, to put it simply, stupid. Valencia died within a year of birth. While the family mostly focused on Navia, it was Avalbane who kept their attention. The last child who might stand a chance in the Games if she were to be chosen. The last to make a stand. Her sister, Valencia, would certainly die.

Small boned and light, looking frail enough to fall apart if even the littlest stare was set upon her, when it came to working, Ava was always up in the sky. Not literally, though she wished she could grow wings like her wonderful mockingjay friends, but standing on the topmost boughs of a tree with it swaying underneath her made her heart soar. She grew like a beanstalk when she aged, but her diet of few nutrients kept her abnormally smaller than her body should have been. She stayed small enough to climb the trees of the orchards and to imagine that she would fly away with any puff of wind that blew past her frame.

But her fantasies were noticed. At first they were held at subtle annoyance, but as she continued, she began to be punished. Small things at first. Hand slappings, small whippings to the butt. Once a Peacemaker, at the age of nine, lashed her so hard against her back that she fell out of the tree, breathless for a full minute, before finally realizing what had happened. Enraged, she leaped up and spat at the Peacemaker. The whole way to the stocks and the whole time in the stocks, she didn’t quit glaring. She never forgave the Peacemaker. She swore she’d kill him one day. But her temper wore off and she became a shy, meek creature again after the memories of the stocks were easy enough to push out of her mind.

Still dreaming her fantasies, she’s learned to conceal her doings. She’s grown, and despite the fact that she’s now twelve, there is little doubt whether or not she’ll enter the games. No tesserae on her back, one vote for her first year, she’s a far cry from being the one to enter. But luck doesn’t always favor the angelic.

Codeword: oDair