Rye Cambridge, District 11 [finished]

     Rising to an only-slightly-above average 5'11", Rye is not exactly huge, though what height he has can come in use around the fields. Due to his disability (more on that later) and his very physically demanding work, his body has compensated by providing much upper body strength. He doesn't look like a professional bodybuilder or anything, to be clear: exceptional use of his upper body over several years has simply given him the sort of physique that relying on one half of your body for strenuous labor for several years will provide. His voice is a deeper, hushed bass that hardly seems to carry; while the pitch agrees with his build, the natural volume inclination will occasionally surprise people expecting a stereotypical bold-voiced, tough-skinned farmer.

     Rye has light brown, almost dirty blonde hair that he keeps cut quite short, as pictured above. His skin is very weathered from spending many long, hot days working in the fields, thus giving it the texture of soft leather and permanent light tan color. (His hands especially bear the effects of a lifetime of brutal farming labor; the skin of his palms is rough and quite thick, and it cracks quite easily in drier weather.) His eyes are an unexceptional brown, like the dark earth he works splotched with specks of tan of his skin or even the faintest greenish-orange on an unripe peach. Those eyes are framed by short, thick eyelashes, ruled by thin, dark eyebrows, the right of which bears a thin vertical hairless scar near his nose due to a previous incident involving falling with a scythe in his hand.

     What does draw people's attention to Rye, however, is that his left leg is completely paralyzed due to a small polio outbreak when he was young. (Being the son of poor bakers in an even poorer district, there was no worthwhile doctor nearby and no money with which to buy a doctor's treatment.) Because of the disease, his left leg, while still matching the length of his right, is irreversibly locked with a slight bend at the knee, with the leg ending at a withered, slightly shriveled foot. Fortunately for him, the leg can still bear enough weight that he is in some sense mobile; however, do not expect him to get anywhere quickly. His walk is somewhere between a gait and a hobble: which is to say it's somewhere between "good enough to get by" and "slow enough to earn him whippings when he doesn't work quickly enough in the fields".

     In general, Rye is a fairly agreeable guy. When in a good mood, he's not overly energetic or quick to speak. That's not to say he's unfriendly; he's just more of a listener than a speaker. No conversation is unwelcome... but neither is any silence during that conversation. He wants you to feel welcome to talk but finds the value of conversation to lie in its sincerity. Because of this, he's often accused of being shy--which, truth be told, is only slightly true. In actuality, Rye is a very transparent guy who simply says what's on his mind almost all the time--and if there's nothing he thinks to say in reply, he'll sooner give a polite grin than try to think up some common nicety.

     However, this transparency does swing in both directions. While he does enjoy conversation, Rye does have a temper that can and will unabashedly turn on in the flicker of a flame. All it takes is a couple of insulting remarks or a threat to very quickly find that this seemingly hushed farmer has plenty of words at his disposal. That's not to say he'll go looking for arguments, per se; he'd much rather life stay as simple as possible. But if you make your points loudly known, he has zero objection to making his rebuttal even louder. Rye will not be cut down, no matter who you are--be you coworker, Peacekeeper, or President of Panem himself.

     Because of this, the most significant key to igniting Rye's temper lies in his disability. From the day he started working in District 11's fields, even the slightest negative comment towards his ability to do his job will set him off in a blaze. He is to a degree embarrassed of his imperfection, and he absolutely refuses to others use it as leverage against him. Rye demands equality: first for his dignity, then for his safety. If he can't be seen as equal, he figures, how will that affect his livelihood? To lie down and play sick means to have given up. To that end, Rye is defiant; he will not accept what cruel punishment must be in store from a government who would see him as a failed worker.

To that end, it must be mentioned that Rye is only just barely tolerant of Panem's governing system. He is by no means happy with the way things sit, but as long as he meets quotas, he gets by. Therefore, he loathes the idea of taking tesserae, but in a district as poor as Eleven, there are years when he has no choice. He is more loyal to his family than to his political leanings and finds no use in starving his parents and two younger sisters to make a statement that would simply get him (and possibly them) killed.

     Rye Thomas Cambridge was born to Hunter and Angel Cambridge, two of District Eleven's then most famous bakers, in the year of the fortieth Hunger Games. The oldest of three children, Rye is the only boy; he is the older brother to two girls, ages 8 and 10. Because of the significant age difference, he does feel quite a bit of responsibility for them and does do his best to ease their hungers and troubles, though the former may not always work out.

     From a young age, Rye had always been a very unremarkably content child... at least until his fourth birthday. That September day, his parents noticed that their usually bubbly son would spontaneously burst out in tears and clutch his left leg until his parents would calm him, rubbing his leg lightly and trying to make him laugh, even as the outbursts continued into the night. The next day, the outbursts became more and more frequent, and the tears became groans and whimpers... And the frequency and intensity of the fits grew and grew till it was all Rye's exhausted, emotionally drained parents could do to calm his top-of-his-lungs screams.

It was then that the fever arrived, seemingly growing warmer and warmer with each passing day. His parents wanted, as any parent would, to find some sort of care for their child--but where could they go? District Eleven was no place of medical care, let alone the money to pay for it. His parents only did what they knew to do for any other disease: have the person drink plenty of liquids and pray like hell that it got better.

And after a few weeks, the fever did lift, and the shrieking became less powerful, finally dissolving into the occasional frown. What took its place, however, was that Rye had simply stopped walking. His left leg became more and more rigid with each day until it finally froze with a slight bend at the knee. Paralyzed.

By this time, word had gotten out in the surrounding community that the Cambridge boy was having raging fits by the hour. Business, perhaps out of sympathy, had increased at Mr. and Mrs. Cambridge's bakery, but people frequently asked, sometimes only half joking, how the little "spicy loaf" at home was doing. The pain of a stricken child at home was stressful enough, but the Cambridges pushed on: these people simply didn't understand their situation, they resolved.

As Rye grew up, the paralysis never improved--and neither did the comments at the bakery. Mr. and Mrs. Cambridge had had multiple incidents, a few even leading to shouting matches, with several neighbors who had gone so far as to call in Peacekeepers to complain about Rye's inconveniences on their lives. The friction built and built until finally--and to this day, no one's sure of the source--a vicious rumor started. Word had it that the Cambridges had, with all their baking knowhow, intentionally poisoned their son in order to gain sympathy and thus more business at their bakery.

Though it was not true, Rye's parents' (as well as the bakery's) reputation plummeted. By Rye's 11th birthday, though he had obviously gotten some control over his reaction to the pain, Rye was forced to sign up for his first rounds of tesserae and his first--and so far only--job, which entailed only the best District Eleven had to offer: fourteen-hour work days, brutal scrutiny by the authorities, and little pay for working as a farmhand.

As Rye had become a source of income for his family's struggling bakery, they were able to keep their heads half above water... for now. Business wavers, but the bakery just barely gets by. Two more mouths to feed now live at the Cambridges', but Rye is doing the best he can to keep his family afloat and his sisters out of the Hunger Games. Each day brings Rye another opportunity to provide, and so he takes each day at a time.

OOC: I liek Mudkipz.

P.S. Also, pressing "preview" while I was typing this up seemed to toy with the codeword... I can prove I know it in a PM if the little image isn't showing up, if you'd like.