Bea Monroe D11 WIP

Bea is a quite a unique little girl for her age. She's very free-spirited and original, loving things like paint, color, songs, dancing, and anything involving moving. Though these actions aren't typically original, for a girl frowing up in district 11 they are and they aren't like they are in our life. Bea makes paints out of berries and other things she can slip into her pockets when she's harvesting food. Her and her sibling's walls are covered in paintings she draws with her fingers. She loves colors like bright green, berry, orange, golden yellow, and maroon. She loves singing the songs of district 11 that she's grown up all her life knowing, songs of her people, her district, her history. They are very similar to the African American spirituals that we know today. Her grandparents passed them down to her parents and they taught them to her and her siblings. The Monroe house is filled with these songs, making the days bareable. She and her friends and siblings love to dance in the orchards, streets, and anywhere they can and Bea's always climbing trees and furniture and doing cartwheels and running around. The girl has so much life and energy.

She is a very lively girl, always the sunshine, positive and good at making others smile. It's easy for her to make friends and loves talking and laughing. Even though life is difficult in district 11, she makes the most of her life and is too naive and young to acknowledge the real terribleness that is district 11. That doesn't mean she doesn't know of it. It's all around and twelve years of seeing it makes it the norm.

Bea is typically happy-go-lucky but she's also can get frustrated quite easily. Though she loves her siblings, it's not unusual for fighting to occur. Since she's so bold in her behavior (an orange personality) she isn't hesitant to get into a bit of restling with the boys. It's never true fighting though. There are no hard feelings, just fun. In the end, Bea never really does anything out of meaness or spite. She's a bit young for those types of traits to surface. At her age, her life is full of innocence and pure heartedness.

Bea is the third of five children of Sanders and Olea Monroe. Their children go in order as Rowan (boy-16), Filly (girl-15), Bea (girl-12), Luly (girl-8), and Salem (boy-5). The whole family works in the orchards from the strong but worn father to the frail, petite mother to the young, muscular eldest son to even the youngest child of only five. Bea and her siblings don't attend school too often because district 11 works on a share crop system. The harder they work, the more food they recieve for the family (they get a percent of how much they harvest, a small percent of course). So it is a typical day for Bea to have her sister Filly or her momma to wake her, Luly, and Salem up at dawn so the whole family can work picking berries, oranges, apples, and other fruit. Occasionally they'll find work harvesting grains or vegetables or herbs but their most steady work is in the orchards. On working days, the family doesn't typically get home until the sun sets. And during the harvest season, it's much, much later.

So, almost every morning before the sun rises, momma or Filly pulls little Bea out of bed and helps her, sleepily, into her overalls. Usually poppa or Rowan would carry her and Luly and Filly would carry little Salem. Her momma, Olia, is much too frail to carry anyone. It's lucky if she can work for more than half an hour at a time before needing to sit down and rest if she can get to the orchards at all. Her health has been poor for years now and she isn't likely to be mobile much longer. Probably not ill to the point of mortality as long as food is on the table but she is getting progressively weaker and fainter. If they had professional doctors, they would know what the condition is but they don't so the family has to see their mother wither away.