Caden Pond; District 13 [WIP]

The first thing that you will notice when you look at Caden is his mouth. He has full, pouty, pink lips that grab the attention of anyone who looks at him. They are somewhat feminine and have caused him trouble with bullies in the past. He’s grown up hating them, so much so that he used to purse his lips during his days in school. His full lips cover up his full set of teeth. His wisdom teeth having not yet grown in, Caden has 28 teeth. Growing up in District 10, Caden never had a problem with his teeth. Naturally some of them were crooked, but he was complimented on them frequently. After almost a year in the wilderness, Caden’s teeth had gone from a pearly white to a light yellow. He did brush them as often as possible, but it wasn’t his top priority. Nor did he ever use any type of toothpaste. They aren’t disgusting to look at, but they definitely aren’t what they used to be.

Caden’s face was long and in the shape of an oval. He has a tall forehead, which is only enhanced by his widow’s peak when he pulls his hair back. Because of this, he’s grown out his hair to cover his huge forehead. His shaggy dark brown hair sits perfectly messy on Caden’s head. It covers up his forehead almost entirely; the tips of his hair touching his thick, black eyebrows.

Other than that he’s cute. The end.

he's a nice kid. but he gives off that weird vibe. but he really is a good kid, you know.

Caden never knew who his father was, nor did his mother ever speak his name. She avoided the question so often that Caden started to believe that it was an immaculate conception. His mother, Dalia Pond, was only eighteen when she had Caden. But Caden knows absolutely nothing of those eighteen years before his birth and his mother likes to keep it that way. Any time Caden questions his mother about her time in grade school or asks for advice or, God forbid, inquires about his biological father, Dalia is sure to keep the answers vague and quick.

As Caden grew older, his questions became more frequent. His mother began to change the subject immediately to something that Caden loved and loved to talk about, cooking. Caden usually took his mother’s bait and played along. Caden could talk about cooking for hours; he loved the idea of creating decedent meals with small bits of meat and vegetables.

His mother had been a butcher for as long as Caden could remember. It wasn’t a job that a woman took on often, but, living in District 10, it was one of the only things a single mother could do to keep up financially. She wasn’t cut out to be a farmer or to breed cattle. She found it tedious and boring. So, she worked with the meat when it wasn’t running around a field shitting on every little piece of grass. She didn’t sell it to fellow residents though; she simply carved it so that those living in the Capitol weren’t faced with the terrifying fatty part of the meat. She’s instructed to throw out the fat, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out how much money the fat was worth. So, she sold or traded it.

While Caden was growing up, she taught him how to cook with the fat. How he could use it to give vegetables flavor or how to cook it so that it was just as satisfying, if not more, than real meat. Caden grew a love for it and experimented almost every night with different ingredients. And even when he knew it wasn’t going to be a good meal because the ingredients just did not taste well together, his mother would praise him and his talents.

By the time Caden was thirteen years old, the questions about his father had almost completely ceased. He realized that he didn’t need a father because his mother was better than any father could be. If there was a reason that his mother did not want Caden to know about him, it was probably a good one. In the times when most boys his age would be trying to push their mothers away, Caden just grew closer to her.

On Caden’s fourteenth birthday, his mother and he were home together having a small celebration. Just as Caden was about to serve his own birthday dinner (he insisted that he cook), there was a loud knock on the door. At the time Caden think much of it, but in his memories the knocks seemed to be louder and louder each time he recalled them. He remembered the exact rhythmic pattern the knocks were in. He remembered the way his mother had hurried to the door and peered through the peephole. He remembered the terrified look on his mother’s face as she immediately pulled her face away from the door, as if the man on the other side could simply reach through the door and grab her.

In his foggy memories, the next events happened in quick succession, almost all at once and yet, in slow motion, as if it wasn’t really happening. The knocks got louder and increased in pace. This time, a voice accompanied them. “

Dalia?” the voice screamed from behind the door. “Da-Da-Da-Dalia?” This time the voice sang, almost playful. “Come on, baby. Let me in,” the voice cooed before pounding on the door once more. While Caden stood in the living room, staring at the door, his mother ran around the house. She reached into the linen closet and pulled out two large bags Caden had never seen before. She ran to the kitchen and throw out Caden’s birthday dinner. She pulled out a large bag from the freezer; Caden was unaware of its contents.

The pounding continued. “What’s it been? Like Fifteen years? I hear you have my son,” the voice slurred. Caden was stunned, frozen in his spot. Dalia still ran around the house, checking various cabinets and drawers. Her final act was grabbing three of her butcher knives. “DALIA!” he shouted. The words were full of rage and fury and violence. It scared Caden. Dalia tugged on Caden’s arm, but he didn’t move. She kneeled down next to him, pleading, “Caden, we have to leave. Now.”

Caden understood and grabbed one of the large bags from her arms. They walked out the back door, leaving the screaming voice. That was the last time Caden had seen his house. From then on, him and his mother were on the run. Though Caden hadn’t known, Dalia had been planning this for a few years. She had packed various necessities over the years like clothes, soap, weapons, bread, meat, and gauze. She had even been digging a tunnel under the electric fence over the years, covering it with twigs and leaves after the times she worked on it. That night they left the district and camped in the wilderness, moving towards the ruins of District 13.

Caden learned how to cook small meals over a fire and trained his stomach to eat smaller meals and less of them. He taught himself how to use the butcher knives as weapons to hunt small animals with. He knew that the meat his mother brought would not last them forever. He grew and even stronger bond with his mother. And when the night came that Caden asked how she knew that his father would come, she didn’t brush him off as she usually did. “When I told him that I was pregnant, he was ecstatic. But the news, even though I hoped it would, did not change his alcoholic ways. He was dangerous. I couldn’t run very far in the limits of District 10, so, it was just a matter of time.” Through the firelight, Caden could see how hard that was for his mother and he never brought it up again.

They traveled for seven months together. Moving only at night and never leaving a trail. Caden had never realized how wise his mother was when it came to running away, but she had attended to every little detail. They never saw anyone try to find them though, no hovercrafts, no Peacekeepers; it seemed like they had gotten away with it.

They had grown cocky, to say the least. They still kept a pretty tough trail to follow, but they began to move during the daylight. While Caden was far in front of his mother, hunting, a hovercraft appeared above them. After all that time, it was unlikely that the hovercraft was actually looking for them. That didn’t mean, though, that the hovercraft hesitated when it shot a spear right into his mother’s chest. Caden turned around at her stifled scream and began to ran towards her. He stopped though, as his mother looked at him for one last time, mouthing the word stop. Caden was perfectly hidden under the shade of some trees. And as the hovercraft lifted his mother’s body into the air, it never noticed him.

Caden didn’t move from that area for weeks, as if he expected the hovercraft to come back and return his mother. Or maybe he had hoped it would return to finish the job, so that he could be put out of his misery. But, it never returned. Caden considered killing himself. How would he survive without his mother? Wouldn’t it just be better to take his own life than to wait for the starvation to eat away at his body? His mother’s last word to him stopped him from doing that. Her face, her final look before she crashed to the ground, was the only thing he saw when he closed his eyes. She had risked her life to save him in more ways than one. What kind of son would he be if he had let all that work be in vain?

He soldiered on towards the ruins at night by himself. In the beginning, he cried every night. But as he practiced throwing the butcher knives into the tree, he turned his grief into anger. Anger at the Capitol for killing a defenseless woman. That woman had never done anything to the Capitol. She wasn’t in the way. Hell, they weren’t even looking for her in the first place. They killed her for fun. Just because she was there. Caden was left alone with his anger, his grief, his thoughts, and his free will. It dangerous combination. He made plan after plan to revisit the Capitol and get his revenge. But even he knew those were just distant fantasies. His only real goal was just to get to the Wilderness to start a new life with the other rumored runaways.

When he finally got to the ruins and saw that they weren’t ruins at all, he was happily surprised. The people there took him in immediately and assessed his skills. He trained every day and worked in the kitchens at nights. When he heard of their plans to start a rebellion, he was all for it. A distant fantasy now seemed closer than ever. The Capitol had killed his mother, the only person he loved, right in front of his eyes. Everyone in District 13 had a story just like it and Caden knew that together, they could bring down the Capitol once and for all.

roleplaying: #57563E
speaking: #878561
thinking: #9F9D7B
face claim: Alexander Gould