District 10: Mary Sheppard

Mary has long, curly light brown hair that reaches a little past her elbows. It is slightly tussled, with many split ends. The center of her head shows a bit darker shade of brown than the rest. A bit of hair covers her forehead, reaching over her eyebrows but not into her eyes. She is thinking about cutting it off. Her eyebrows are thin and light, while her eylashes are thin but long. She has an oval shaped face, light skin and no freckles. Her lips are light pink, the upper one being thinner than the lower. Her eyes are shaped like almonds, and are medium brown. She has small, elf-like ears that look sort of weird. Not a big fan of them.

Mary is very underweight, at 65 pounds. She is 4'9", and finds many things hard to reach. Her arms are thin, and don't have as much muscle as some, but a fair amount. her legs are the same way, and are long. Mary is an excellent runner, with great stamina, and her eyesight is very keen. She is very stealthy. Mary has very sharp joints, and doorknob knees. You wouldn't find that very attractive in any situation, really.

Mary usually wears a simply t-shirt and loose pants. During winter, she wears a pale yellow coat that was once her brother's. She loves going barefoot.

Mary was born of Raven and Weise Sheppard. She was especially close to her mother, and they spent nearly every day learning together or playing. Mary found it nice to go outside and help her mother watch the sheep. Occasionally, she'd be the cause of catching a runaway. Back then she didn't know that her dad hit her mother when she was asleep, and her mother didn't want Mary hearing her scream. It was always quiet crying, so she never noticed it.

Then, one day when Mary came home from school, she found her dad hurting Raven. That scared her, and she had - of course- run to her mother and tried to hug her. But Raven wasn't in a good position to get Mary out of the room when her dad took his fist down on her. That was the beginning of Weise's abuse of his family, and it didn't ever stop. All Mary did was grow to dislike him more and more, but she never hated him. Not even now.

The next year, when Mary was eight, she made a few close friends. Their names were Siprah and Landon, a girl and boy, who she loved talking to and playing with. She had met Siprah because she was their neighbor, and Landon had stopped some older children from seriously injuring her on "accident." At first the bond wasn't so great, but eventually they were closer than 'to' and 'too'. It was rare one of them was a third wheel.

When Mary was nine, Siprah and her were talking was talking, when they found Landon standing by her house with a wide grin, and two hbands behind his back. They had run up and begged to know what it was, when he brought forth three cookies. As you can guess, immediatly they had started eating it. They were too busy eating to notice Mary's dad come outside, when he snatched the cookie right out of Landon's hand. It was sudden, and startled all three of them. Mary had warned them to go run somewhere. They were lucky, but she wasn't.

One afternoon, when Mary was eleven, her mother took her to the hills were she letthe sheep graze and left her in charge for an hour. She loved watching them, and talking the the ones that got close enough to her. Occasionally it seemed they tested her, but she always ran fast enough to catch up to them and guide them safely back to the herd. A sheepdog would be useful, but they didn't have one. When her mother came back to see every single animal safe and there, she let Mary do it more often. It became her job, and she was officially a shepherdess. By the time spring came, she was being taught how to sheer a sheep.

Every now and then someone would try and steal one of her "friends" and the peacekeepers would become involved, but not often. Mary's naturally shy nature caused for her to get a little bosessed with the sheep, and she ignored Landon so much he stopped visiting her, and only waved in school. She doesn't know it, but he has a crush on her. Siprah, on the other hand, is always walking over every weekend to tell her things. Mary doesn't really participate in the conversation except to nod and shake her head.