Cambric Forsythe / Eight

If it wasn't for the culture of poverty in the lower and lower middle districts, Cam might have been a handsome man. Instead, his face is etched with the lines of age long before his time, his skin sallow from a lack of good nutrition and splotchy from the stress and strain of daily life in the mills of district 7. His blue eyes are haunted and empty, reflecting back only a sort of sad loneliness that comes from years of self-enforced solitude. His hair is always dirty, long on top and shorter at the nape of his neck and underneath, coated with the after-effects sweaty days at the loom. His nose is wide at the bridge from a break when he was ten years old and got into a fight with a boy at school over a loaf of bread. The break never healed quite right and continues to have a swollen look to it, pulling the focal point down the face from Cam's blue eyes. Shaving is a luxury that Cam often can't afford, and therefore a shadow of a beard is almost always visible on his gaunt face.

Dirty blonde hair may only be an expression, but in Cam's case, his hair is dirty. He washes it infrequently, preferring the idea of saving the soap rather than spending money on purchasing it when he can barely afford to eat and feed himself and his family. His sons eat first, use the water and soap first, and are clothed first. It shows. Cam is clearly underfed and overworked. He constantly looks exhausted and weary and has almost nothing left for himself or his own health at the end of a day. He moves with a slow deliberateness that belies his failing health and coughs frequently.

Underfed, Cambric's body is thin to the extreme, ribs showing through his thin skin. His clothes never seem to fit quite right, tight in the shoulders from the work that he does in the mills, but loose around the waist, where the signs of his emaciation are the most evident. His work is physical, and some muscle is required in order to do the job that is required of him, but that, as well, is quickly deteriorating into nothing. There is a small scar that runs down his left side from the same fight that took out his nose. The wound never healed properly and has left him with the marks on his body. He walks with a slight limp from a later injury.

The exterior is gruff, even rough. A silent man who doesn't speak particularly often, Cambric gives the impression of distance. For this reason, he has no problem keeping people away from himself if he doesn't want them near. Most of the time Cam saves his voice for when it's really important, but when he does speak, his voice is husky, gravely, and his words are very, very important. There isn't much that is worth saying as far as Cam is concerned, and verbal conversation should be reserved for what is really important, such as ranting against the Capitol or correcting or comforting his son, when it's necessary for him to do so. Mostly he simply remains quiet, seemingly unapproachable, but solid as a rock, as many more silent men tend to be.

Cam is the type of man who will give you the shirt of his back, quite literally if he feels that it is important that you have it. He's suffered through many cold winters in order to protect his son, and before her death, his wife, from the cold. He works hard and is always the last to eat, doing the best that he can to make sure that his sons never have to take out any Tesserae. A devoted father and friend, if you can make it into that sweet place that is Cambric's inner circle, you will find a loyal man who will do his best to never, ever let you down. He loves deeply and works even harder than he loves, but this is a side of Cam that only his family has ever really seen because of his unapproachableness.

Protectiveness has another side, however, and Cam can be fierce. He has only preserved his own life to ensure that his son continues to have a living parent. Anyone who gets close to Weaver and Cotton have to come through their father first, and Cam isn't willing to allow anything to happen to his sons. Even aggressive bullies at school risk a visit from Cam if they mess with his sons, and he can sometimes be known to employ unnecessary roughness when he feels that his sons are threatened. This serves as just another way that Cam has distanced himself from the other residents of district eight.

Cambric's family was a bit unusual, at least as far as his memory serves. His father owned a small shop in District Eight, while his mother worked as a seamstress, piecing together the peacekeeper uniforms. The family did better than many, and at least neither of the parents were working in the mills. There was almost always food on the table, and he was well fed while he was a child growing up in District Eight. Besides, there were still a few districts that were worse off than his district was, and Cambric didn't particularly mind the idea of working with textiles and clothing. He learned to sew from his mother, and obtained basic accounting skills from his father. He always considered himself one of the lucky ones. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why he was relatively unpopular in school. The fights were forbidden, but they still happened. When children are put together in the institutional environment that is so popular in Panem, there's always a good chance of bullying, and Cam was one of those children who learned to fight at the hands of bullies. He became strong, but he also began to lose some of his hope as he became older.

*Though he never trained, Cambric secretly hoped that the reaping would draw his name one year. Of course there were others who had their names in the balls more than he did. Some people with twenty and thirty slips of paper when he was lucky to have seven in his eighteenth year. Regardless of his secret death wish, Cam never volunteered. It seemed a foolish occupation, and if his name was drawn, at least his family would be able to say that he left them because the government made it happen. But alas, Cambric made it through his eighteenth year untouched.

It might have been a lucky thing, because it was due to his survival that he met Velvet. She was beautiful, with soft violet eyes that just seemed to match her name perfectly. How he had missed meeting her in school, Cam never quite understood, but they were married after a very short courtship, and Cotton was born ten months later. Cambric couldn't have been happier with his family. But his happiness was short-lived when his father was accused of attempting to incite rebellion and was executed publicly. His mother fell apart, and there was no more family business. Although Cam's mother continued to press on with her seamstress job, Cam was forced to take a job in the mills instead of taking over the shop, and things were very difficult for Cam and Velvet with their young son.

Food was shorter than it had been in his childhood, and Cam always made sure that he fed his wife and his son first. It is for that reason that he will never forgive himself for allowing his pregnant wife to be the first to eat the rotten meat that resulted in the illness that claimed her life. Weaver was saved, but Velvet was gone, and Cam never quite recovered. For the first time, Cam had something to live for.

He blames the Capitol for what happened to his father, and for what happened to his wife, and Cam found his silence in the days following his wife's death. It is better to keep your thoughts to yourself when you are considering the possibility of rising up against the Capitol. He doesn't talk much now, but he does his best for his son. Above all else, he must keep Weaver alive! Cam will do anything that it takes to ensure the survival of his son, and if anything, Weaver is better fed than most, even if it is at his father's expense.

Although Cam has been very distant from the other residents of his district, he makes it a point to remain close to his sons. He has continued in the past few years to work in the mills while planning an escape for him and both boys. As Cotton gets older and there are more and more chances that he might go into the Hunger Games, Cam's sense of urgency has become increased. Whatever happens, he will not, and cannot, lose somebody else to the Capitol, regardless of the way in which he loses the person he loves. He would rather die himself, though he knows that if he's not careful, the Capitol will rain down hellfire on his family as well as himself, and he can't allow that to happen to his mother or his sons.

A couple of notes: I'm also going to be applying Twill. I'm applying four characters in all. I thought I was going to do them in a big bloc, but it's 4:30 in the morning and I really should try to get some sleep. I've just finished this one, so I figured that I might as well pass it through, then work on Twill. Besides, it might be easier to pass the history through on Cambric before I try to work on his son, since the histories will coincide with one another.

The starred section actually references The Long Walk by Stephen King, where the volunteers often have a death wish. It seems reasonable to me to think that some HG volunteers are going into the Arena knowing that they are going to die and happy to do it.

Play by is Devon Sawa.

Also, I want to do a lot more work on the history here, but I've been working on this for two days and I was beginning to get a little bit exasperated about all the polishing. I realize that the bios are locked after they are approved. If the history is sufficient, I can always include my own bio format in my characters list later on. I feel like there's a lot more that can be said, but I'm worn out at this point. I think sometimes by the time you get to history on a bio, you're just tired.