. marley welch | district 8 | fin {

[ . N A M E { Marley Welch
[ . A G E { 18
[ . G E N D E R { Male
[ . D I S T R I C T { District 8



[ . A P P E A R A N C E {

Close enough to start a war
All that I have is on the floor
God only knows what we're fighting for
All that I say, you always say more

He'd never really been one to care much about his appearance. For years he'd spent his time doing things other than fixing up his hair -- like unravel all the spindles of thread his mom had at home and pull his baby sister's hair. But since then a lot has happened. His figure, once plump and heavy, is now toned and lighter. Perhaps a fortunate genetic trait, because his interest in food never seemed to lose him.


Before his change, his feet were fat little things that seemed to always have some sort of dirt underneath the toes and sticky stuff in between each one. The soles always seemed to be covered by a black adhesive, allowing small pieces of hay scattered around the house to be stuck to his feet. He'd been told by his grandmother that the way to know where someone's been is by looking at their shoes, looking at their feet. And if you were to look at Marley's at that moment in time, you'd tell the he went everywhere. There couldn't be a blackened foot without a source, now could there? So in this case, the source was the powdery dirt in the front yard, the dark ashes that spewed out from the fireplace, hidden away in a private room in the Welch household. You could tell that he liked mischief, with all the small chunks and scars that had so easily been crafted amongst the toes and the tops of the feet.

I can't keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb, I can't breathe

His legs -- much like his more muscular father -- had always seemed to be his body part. The body part that he'd never want to lose no matter what. Even though he was not interested in his appearance at the time [this time consists from age 10 to 14], he always seemed to be wiping away at dirt on his legs when he wasn't busy getting them dirty again. It wasn't like he was intentionally trying to wipe the dirt off because they looked ugly with it on, it's just he had an unreasoned relationship with his legs, and the thicker the dirt, the thicker the distance between the two were.

You could tell he liked running, even if he did seem to carry a bit of extra weight. It wasn't hard to tell he'd ran so much as a child that his legs stood out among the rest of his body. Long, bulky, but still managing to carry enough jiggling fat to not look too abnormal. If one observed him when he sprinted around town and through the small thicket of trees in his back yard, someone might compare him to a wannabe professional. Of course, running was not a profession, but by the movement of his legs, with far strides and powerful steps, you could single out that he'd ran for all of his life.

So I won't let you close enough to hurt me
No, I won't rescue you, you to just desert me
I cant give you the heart you think you gave me
It's time to say goodbye to turning tables
To turning tables

The one thing he never failed to be selfconscious about, though, was his stomach. Patchy little scratches from tree branches lined the sides and front of his stomach from the times he'd run through thickets of trees shirtless. He'd always been confused why he'd carried more weight than everyone else in his family, but his mother had just told him it was nothing that he should be worried about. Him being naturally shorter than everyone was obviously a good reason, plus the slow metabolism he'd gained was not helping either. Whenever he'd eat, it seemed like it never digested, it found its way through his body and stuck in places he didn't want it to.

He'd always tended to have an attractive face though. Strong jawline, brown eyes, kissable lips, and short brown hair. He wouldn't ever worry to much about it though, because at the time, he was not interested in boys or girls or anything. His focuses included mischief, learning how to sew, running, and reading. It all changed though, when he hit puberty.

Under haunted skies I see you, ooh,
Where love is lost, your ghost is found,
I braved a hundred storms to leave you,
As hard as you try, no, I will never be knocked down,

It came like a thief in the night. And in a matter of months his once bare face was covered in stubble. The oils that his body were now producing amazed him and the first time his armpits stunk after he ran ended his lifelong love forever. He wasn't social enough to be around people that had hit puberty before him and let him get a whiff of the stench, and his dad was never around enough to let him smell either. His mother mainly stayed inside all day, and his sister was 8, she hadn't even developed the glands to produce it.

Meanwhile, while dark hair began to sprout on his knuckles, he'd realized what'd he'd been missing. The beginning of all of the drama of his teenage life had not even been a factor until now. He'd began to throw away all of his adventurous tendencies and traverse through more emotionally dangerous trails. These usually included secrecy, confusion, arguments, backstabbing, contemplation, side-picking, favoritism, broken hearts, knotted stomachs, and a few cases of emotional disability. He loved all of it.

I can't keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb, I can't breathe

And eventually he became addicted to his looks. When there was a speck of dirt, there was spit covered thumb wiping it off. When there was a scratch, there was an article of clothing covering it up. Fortunately, his growth in height lead to a much slimmer young man. And after a few months since puberty had hit, the scent of the bacteria that was most associated with sweat had been gotten used to, beginning a self-indulgent revolution involving lots of push-ups, crunches, jumping jacks, and things of that nature. But for some weird reason, his love of running never came back.

[ . P E R S O N A L I T Y / H I S T O R Y {

Weep for yourself, my man,
You'll never be what is in your heart
Weep Little Lion Man,
You're not as brave as you were at the start

He'd never been normal.
There'd been times where he'd had normal moments or normal tendencies, but they were short little sporadic time spans that ticked quickly away before they fell swiftly to the bottom of a massive cavern of abnormality. For example, his smaller sister, Katheryn was once a toddler. She toddled, as toddlers do, around the house and clapped unrhythmically and put her fingers in her mouth and pulled at things. The strange thing is... Marley would do the same. Marley was not a toddler. He was 8 years old and had a perfectly healthy mind. He knew why he did it on the inside as well -- he was interested on why people did certain things and why some things interested one person while they annoyed another, but he could never seem to take the time to actually formulate a good response to give when someone asked, "What exactly are you trying to achieve?" He'd copy people's actions and experiment with things and touch things that other people normally wouldn't touch because he was curious. And unfortunately, curiosity was the root of all the abnormalities he had.

The normalities would pop in when he'd subconsciously understand that what he was doing was considered weird and it was not normal. He would realize that people thought he was weird and he temporarily had a care in the world for those people. He'd then switch into a steretypical brother that had a steel-like grip as he pulled Katheryn's blonde tufts and slap her back just to hear her scream. Then he'd laugh. It wasn't that he liked being mean to his sister, because he actually hated it, but he liked the pleasure it brought to the others. "Oh, he's just being a kid," they'd say, and he'd finally feel like he was being considered normal. But then a day or two later he'd forget about all that and go back to the carefree 8 or 9 year old he was.

Rate yourself and rake yourself,
Take all the courage you have left
Wasted on fixing all the problems
That you made in your own head

His love of running came out of nowhere. One day, his mother had decided to take a day off of work from sewing, something that surely was to be special. She'd said, "Let's go on a picnic or something, let's just go have fun!" And Marley had always been one for fun, because fun always seemed to have an outlet for adventure, and Marley loved adventure along with mischief and being carefree and a lot of other things. When Marley had reached an age of 10, Katheryn had reached the age of 5 or 6, and she was perfectly able to form little mispronounced syllables and she had begun to actually form her own opinions on things. The ability to walk had surely been redefined for her in the few years since she was three, allowing her to slow walk, walk regular, and even a little wobbly quick walk, which always seemed to have her laughing more than Marley deemed necessary.

Of course, the picnic was nothing fancy. Mother had packed up some bread in a woven basket and along with a few peaches from the peach tree in the backyard washed off in some well water and small canteens of water and milk. They wandered off deep into the District, the kids not knowing exactly where they were but excited nonetheless. Of course, the kids' mother was not dumb, her hands were too full to carry Katheryn and Marley was not up to the challenge to carry Katheryn enough to get to the best possible picnic place, so she had to settle for an okay spot on a hill. When they'd reached the hill, Marley's mother said, "Quick! Up the hill as fast as you can!" Marley always obeyed, and one this fun certainly was not to be turned down. He began to sprint, and so began an addiction that lasted until his early 14th year.

But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
Didn't I, my dear?
Didn't I, my...

After his days of running had became a daily routine, his mother had began to let him take up sewing. She carefully taught the craft that it was, ecstatic that he might finally be able to style his own clothes. He learned faster than expected, and before he knew it he was fashioning clothes for the weirdest of things. The empty sugar jar, the generically crafted wooden chairs in the kitchen, the headboard to his bed in his bedroom, the worn down shoes he wore to run with, and an assortment of other weird things. Luckily he always seemed to have enough fabric, seeing as his dad would sneak yards of fabrics night by night as he walked home in the darkness after a long day of working in a textile mill.

He then began to fashion regular clothes, but he never found an interest in making his own. Of course, that was the case until the thing that changed his life came. Puberty. With the sweat and the stench that came from it, he immediately dropped his addiction with running. He finally came to the realization that life would be much funner if he weren't imitating children and took a step into what could be his life. He began to delve deeper into what was cool and what was not, and after months of not running he began to take up exercise other than running. He knew that the sweat would come, but he had became used to it.

After super quick growth spurts and the exercise he'd taken upm he finally became happy with his appearance. He knew his hair looked good, he knew his lips looked good, he knew his legs looked good, he knew his body was toned, and he flaunted it. Others hated him for his looks, and it got to him more than it should. He went through phases where he became the carefree boy he once was and he through away all of his clothes that he'd designed and he stopped worrying about clear skin and he went out and what he flaunted was nothing that ever should be. But then when people began to nag on him about THAT, he switched back into the perky boy he was.

Through many boyfriends and kisses and alcohol drinks later, he became the 18 year old he was now. Knowing that the only worries in the world was when he was going to make a new friend, get another kiss. Perhaps he wouldn't... of course, he was 18, and his risk to be Reaped was never higher.

[ . C O D E W O R D {

[ . O T H E R {

lol i really didn't mean for him to be like.. a real character. I meant for him to just be cannon fodder, if you will. sorta just like a character to try to get in the Games. but I actually think I'd have to think about him going in if he were to get Reaped. gahh. contemplation ;-;