Saamina DelMar (District 4) - Finished

Like the curious otters that abound along the seaside district, Saamina possesses the constantly quizzical appearance of someone with a thousand questions. Her features are mobile and expressive, fickle as the weather at sea, and giving easy read to each passing emotion she entertains. A poker face this lass has not.

She moves with a nimble grace that comes from years of scaling rocky cliffs along the shores and dodging treacherous currents and aquatic hazards during her swims. Energy burns almost feverishly in her rapid, flitting movements, as she darts from one exploration to the next. Her body possesses a wiry musculature, but beside this is thin with an intimate knowledge of hunger.

Falling in a heavy tumble of curls down her back is a wild mane of flame red hair. Areas are caked with rime and tangled with the occasional tendril of seaweed, for all the world looking like a water nymph newly emerged from the waves. Despite years spent baking beneath a coastal sun, her skin remains stubbornly pale, but covered with spatters of fine, cinnamon freckles that grace not only the bridge of her nose, but nearly every bit of exposed skin.

A pair of wide gray eyes dominate the unusual face that stares back brazenly at onlookers. A fringing of red-blonde lashes rim them, stuck together by a near constant skim of sea salt that plasters her skin. Delicate ears hold an elfish pucker to them, and along with a slightly snubbed nose and pert lips, they lend an air of impudence to her mannerisms.

The pent up energy of this small girl is nearly ferocious, giving her teachers reason to despair of ever holding her attention in class. Her grades reflect this in their dismal commentary on her academic aptitude. She lacks any self-discipline to apply herself to something as dull as bookwork despite the numerous penalties applied.

Sam is well-liked as a generality. Her quick wit and penchant for starting trouble keeps her peers amused and interested, along with the charming ability to talk her way out of nearly any situation. Despite this, she has few friends and is not well trusted among the others in her district. Most believe that she is to blame for the disappearance of numerous trinkets Her attraction to any pretty bauble is notorious. Although she has never been caught in a theft, it is widely accepted that her pockets are lined with other people's belongings.

Gifted with a pugnacious attitude and a stubborn streak wide as a boat's bow, these whisperings aren't often turned into open accusations by her classmates. Not born with an abundance of physical strength, Sam still manages to hold her own in most one-on-one tussles through sheer orneriness. Living by a motto that one doesn't have to be the biggest or strongest as long as you show them it isn't worth their while to bother you.

Her continued ostracism among the youth of District Four has increased her reclusiveness. When not bound by the requirements of schooling and sleep, she can most always be found along the craggy cliffs, tide pools, and coves that comprise the shoreline of the coastal district. Her passion for the ocean and its vast realms teeming with life has grown to a near obsession that fills the void of societal acceptance. Rather than fostering the friendship of girls and boys her age, Sam is drawn to the dizzying excitement of seeking out and exploring a new inlet or cave. The terrain becoming more familiar to her than most with twice her age.

Living in a world where hunger and deprivation are close bedfellows, and the loss of loved ones is not a tragedy but merely an expectation, can shape a person. Sam had seen it happen numerous times. People usually fell into four categories: Some lived in denial of what happened around them, throwing their time and energy into a facade of cheerful living. Others grew bitter and angry, their voices often involved in whispers of rebellion against the Capitol. Many in District four chose to embrace the Hunger Games, considering it to be their opportunity for distinction and elevation. These were the careers who trained rigorously for the "honor". Lastly, there were those like Sam herself, who disconnected from the community and withdrew, preferring instead to immerse themselves in solitary living that offered some shelter from the probability of loss.

Unlike Sam, her father was one of the instigators for rebellion. He had never achieved anything, or even made much of his inflammatory words, but his hate for the Capital was an ember that burned hotly at his core. Sam grew up with the full belief, instilled by her father, that every 'Capitolite' was a cannibal, a freak, a sadist...not even human anymore in their grotesque mutilations. His discontent was a fact that Sam could recall from as far back as her young memories extended, but the wind that fanned the flame was her older brother's punishment. Brooke was her father's companion, the apple that fell close to his tree. He dutifully echoed any sentiment their father gave voice to…and Sam idolized him. He taught her to tie a hook, mocked her past her squeamishness with gutting and cleaning the fish she caught. He was shy in public, and his speech was painfully inhibited by a speech impediment. Sam was his mouth, her golden tongue interpreting her brother's thoughts that she seemed to understand so effortlessly.

Then one day, in the space of an hour, Sam's world came crashing down around her ears. Their father was deep in his ale, and those timorous words he was known for had grown loud within the pub, to a dangerous level. They were overheard by a peacekeeper who had been standing just outside the door of the establishment. When he came in, demanding to know which man spoke so outrageously about the Capitol, it was Brooke who stood. Too intoxicated to clearly understand the situation, their father just sat, and watched as the peacekeeper dragged his son away. That was all. Brooke never returned. The family was told that he had his tongue removed so it could no longer spread such seditious lies, and he was sent to the Capitol to begin a new live as an Avox.

This event sent Sam's family splintering apart, and their lives skidding out of control in different directions. Her father drank his memories away, and his hate for everything the Capitol stood for grew to a consuming level, but he kept a tight lip on such words from that point forward. In nearly complete opposition, Sam's mother buried her head in an idealized dreamworld. Unable to face the harsh reality that existed, she refused to even speak Brooke's name. With deaf ear turned to her husband's rantings, she threw herself into community-related pastimes. A queen of local gossip, she built herself a special place in the fishing village society.

Perhaps it was her need to escape the memory of Brooke as well that first drove her from the protected safety of the tide pools where he had always accompanied her, and prodded her to investigate further along the more dangerous inlets where waves could toss and break a body against the jutting spires of stone. Here cormorants came to fish, and isolated pools were inhabited by sea otters who pried the abalone free to feast on the succulent flesh. It was in these treacherous areas that the pristine beds of oysters hid far below the surface, and guarded by the overhang of razor-edged rocks and crash of the powerful surf. Sam learned to follow the dexterous patterns of the otters as they dove and dodged these dangers to dig among the oysters for food. However, in a search for similar goods, she also discovered that these untouched beds occasionally produced the creamy, glistening orb of a pearl.

Sam trained herself to swim with the writhing speed of her otter role models, and to hold her breath for extensive periods in order to gather large quantities of shellfish with each excursion. The sweet meat of the oysters was easily sold to vendors at the market, and the rare discovery of a pearl was hoarded away in her secret cache.

In this manner, Sam passed the years from a child of seven, to the brink of adolescence... and her first reaping.