Saffron Belleamy -- D4

A mostly pretty girl-smallish and slight, with only the vaguest of feminine curves-Saff is easy to underestimate. While she looks like a strong wind will blow her over, she has a wiry strength and the grace of a ballerina-or a boatman.

While Saffron's face is not her best feature, being a bit long of nose and strong of jaw, she more than makes up for the lack with athleticism and homemade cosmetics. A lot of cosmetics. She's grey eyed and fair skinned-quick to freckling and burning in a strong sun-with a long leonine mass of dirty blonde curls that she's all too happy to augment to a vibrant red-gold with bit of herbal wizardry.

Her feet are quite heavily scarred to the point of near-disfigurement and hands callused. Saff hates her feet and goes out of her way to hide her scars-after all, what sort of dancer has a boatman's hands? At least shoes cover up the fact that underwater debris and boating tackle-as well as some unfortunate shoe choices-have been less than kind.

Extroverted, silly and unreserved with her friends, cool and a bit cruel in the way of teenage girls to outsiders, and every inch the smooth, sophisticated little sylph in the public eye, always hugely ambitious and temperamental, Saff walks a careful line between two worlds. She wants nothing less than the chance to move up in the world-to become a real, proper dancer in the Capitol and doesn't exactly care what she has to do to get there. After all, Mamma always said if you’re going to dream…

A boatman born and raised, she’s more at home on her family’s little fishing boat than on the land. And her kin are good at what they do-healthy and well fed, though, with two older brothers, three nieces, and a horde of cousins to feed, far from wealthy. She’s an outdoorsy sort of girl, well versed with gathering the bounty of the sea, by net and by line and by hand, and most comfortable in the middle of a huge throng of people. Easy going, sweet, and loud, with a stubborn streak a mile wide she’s already got her sights set on her life after the Reapings.

So Saffron puts on a mask, holds her back straight and her chin high, and does everything and anything in her power to catch the eye of the Right Sort of People. It’s no easy task in District 4, but at least she isn’t stuck in District 12, right? Besides, her family will be much better off with one less mouth to feed, and if her dream just happens to be rich and famous, well, petted and pampered on the arm of some rich beau-well, that was only human.

From her earliest memory, they has always been music in Saff’s life: lullabies and fishermen’s songs, Mamma humming a tune and Cedar’s little six string. And she’s always danced, toddling on little baby legs at first, then scraping coltish knees whenever she had half a chance. Music and dance and the sea, that was her life. And if others started to take notice, to say she was a pretty little thing there on her toes, she didn’t notice. Not until people started seeking her out, asking her to dance for them. Then there were festivals and little to-dos at some of the nicest houses in the District, and she was making real money.

It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t often, but it planted an idea in Saffron’s head. She could dance and make money. She didn’t have to be a fisherman’s wife.

Saffron hung on to that idea every time her brothers drove her mad, and every time she was stuck watching seven rambunctious kids while her friends were out on the water. She remembered it every time the lines cut her hands, or her skin peeled like a snake from too much sun. She could be better than this, if she could just last til she turned eighteen. Until that day she would practice, just like her brothers practiced for the Hunger Games, and hope her name was never called.

Of course, it broke her heart the year one of her schoolmates left for the games -but it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her brothers or her cousins, and in the end that’s what mattered. Her family’s boat kept going out, and she had one more year to be brilliant.

From the writers point of view, I know that Saff's dream is probably nine kinds of impossible-but lets not tell her that.