Hadena - District 10 - finished

Name: Hadena Erynnis Sonoran
Age: 21
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 10
Appearance:

Hadena is about five foot five, somewhat bony, but wiry. She has excellent stamina and running endurance from constantly chasing after the seventy goats she's in charge of. Her hair is a dusky blonde in the summer, and goes faintly brown in the winter. It grows straight, but since she hates the way it gets in her face during the day, the braids she uses to keep it out of her face during the day make it wave. Her eyes are dark brown, and her skin is usually pale, but pinked over her nose and cheekbones where she burns from all the hours spent underneath the sun.

Hadena's cheekbones are sharp, well-defined, and she has a small chin and determined jaw. She has dark brown eyes. Her lips are almost perpetually pursed when she's in town, disliking crowds of people, but she's almost always smiling when she's in the fields or the foothills with her flock. She almost always has rope burns on her palms and forearms from roping in her errant charges, but she's found a wonderful, fronded plant that grows in clumps in certain areas that helps it heal a few days sooner.

Personality:

Hadena is guarded, to say the least, but not in the way most people would expect. Her parents taught her hard and they taught her fast how to hold her tongue. Although it's illogical, around certain people she's naturally trusting, and around others she's naturally wary. She has a way with words in that she can, when bored, take the fact 'I spent my day with the goats' and turn it effortlessly into 'I spent all waking hours with hairy, horny men and their harems' and still feel like she's telling the truth. When she's amused and the real answer to someone's question is boring, this is generally the kind of twist she'll deliver. When annoyed, she'll often find a way to turn her answer--if she even deigns to give one--into a sly, or sometimes blatant, insult upon the person who's irritating her.

Hadena's temper is slow, but once it's been given a reason to show itself in full (which is rare, though she shows mild annoyance often enough), it can simmer for years as a grudge. She may spend every effort to make the person on the receiving end of her ire fully aware of her lingering anger, taking her revenge by making them constantly afraid of what she'll do, when her real intent is just to make them jumpy when she has no real intents to do anything, or she may find small ways to settle what she feels is a debt. She has what her mother always called 'quiet fingers', and can slip just about anything in or out of just about anyone's pocket without them knowing it. She's only been caught once, and that's because someone's toddler ran into her from behind and she jumped, startled, and was caught when her hand moved. The Peacemaker put her in the stocks for three days, and she was seventeen at the time. Her parents were sympathetic, since they knew why she'd done it and to whom and felt that her anger was justified, but they also said that the punishment would be for her own good in the end, being a better teacher than a slap on the wrist ever would be.

The reason the common slap on the wrist would never work on Hadena is because she's too prideful to ever allow anyone to know or realize that she's been hurt or felt shame. Acts, like being put in the stocks, that are meant to shame others often frustrate Hadena in different ways than they do the general populace. She finds herself frustrated not by the fact that she's bound in an uncomfortable position out in the rain, day and night, but by the fact that she saw a flower in the neighbor's garden that she wanted to pluck so she could press it for her mother.

One thing that will always serve to irk the even young woman is when someone tries to coax her into talking about her feelings. Emotions, in Hadena's book, are not something meant to be shared. If the person you're talking to has to ask what they are, then they don't deserve to know. When asked about how she feels, her most common responses are to either ignore the question outright, or purposefully answer it in a way that makes the inquirer appear foolish to anyone who might overhear, discouraging said inquirer to ever ask similar questions in the future.

Despite being quite comfortable with letting people know when they're bothering her, Hadena does have a softer, lighter side to her person. Seen almost exclusively in the company of her goats, Hadena likes to sing or hum to herself, and on days when she thinks the goats will be sleepy (sunny days), she sometimes brings her violin out and plays to them. She likes to dance to music no one else can hear, even though she knows she looks like a three-legged chicken when she does, and will cause physical damage to anyone who causes damage to her fun when she lets herself have it.

To help prevent people from trying to 'save' her from her loneliness, Hadena makes a habit out of painting herself as a selfish, bored narcissist, but if it came down to her life or another person's, since she's spent half her life making a point not to care about people, without hesitation she would put her own throat to the guillotine and let the other person live their happy life, since in death she wouldn't be losing anything she hasn't let herself have.

History:

Hadena had a fairly average childhood, raised the oldest of two children in her parents' household. Her younger brother, Acmon--named for a species of butterfly, as Hadena is named for a species of moth--was always the more social of the two of them. Hadena preferred to observe and listen, mostly unseen or ignored, and make snide comments only to herself to avoid the boredom she only very rarely experiences. Acmon, on the other hand, was of a mind to see and be seen, and by the ripe age of eleven had already decided that he wanted to marry the black-haired girl four houses north of them. The girl was smitten with him as well, as much as a child can be, and their mothers were certain that despite their youth they would be married someday. But then Acmon got the fever, and their family couldn't afford the costly medicine required to save him. They went to the apothecary, desperate to save their little boy, but Acmon died only four days after his temperature began to rise. He was still only eleven, and Hadena was sixteen. That was the same year she watched one of her few friends be locked into an arena and slaughtered. It was then that she began to slowly, effectively wall off the inner sanctity of her heart, deciding never to make herself feel that pain again. It wasn't worth it.

Hadena's best friend until this time was Sentinel. Close in age, and simultaneously working off each other's strengths and checking each other's faults, the two somehow managed to maintain a quasi-balanced friendship that, at first glance, would seem to many an impossible phenomenon. Just as mothers and fathers had giggled about Acmon and his childhood girlfriend behind their backs, the same parents did much the same giggling behind Hadena and Sentinel's. But when Hadena's brother died, she wrote off all close relationships for fear that they would someday destroy or be destroyed. She knew what people said about the two of them, even if she ignored it as best she could. Concerned for him, she wasn't going to let herself hurt him. But, concerned about herself, she wasn't going to let him hurt her, either. He kissed her, giving her every reason to stay, but Hadena struck him and ran, terrified that she might cause him the same pain her brother had caused her if she stuck around. Sentinel disagreed with her reasoning, to say the least, which she barely tried to fully explain to him, not wanting to give him more reasons to argue with her about it. But not being one to chase a lost cause, he didn't push to stay.

Hadena already had experience with herding goats when she turned nineteen and was no longer eligible for the reaping, which she had somehow escaped. Her father had begun teaching her how to handle a rope and a staff when she was but a child, and she'd shown a particular knack for it. She and another person usually watch the seventy-goat flock, but the goats are the least desirable animal to watch because they allow their guardians no amount of rest, so she's often alone. Hadena doesn't mind it. The only thing that could ruin her time spent up with the spirited, wiry animals would be a chatty girl to trail her around all day. Even a chatty boy might be preferable, for they generally talked about more things that she might be interested in, and they didn't get offended when she ignored them.

Hadena currently lives alone, unless you count the two guard dogs her family trained years ago that help her herd the goat flock. Her company is theirs, that of the occasional plant she brings back from the fields to try to cultivate, and her violin. Her father inherited it from his great-grand father, who had it before the Dark Days and somehow managed to save it for his son and the sons after him. Her own father's fingers had gotten too stiff for the delicate motions the instrument requires, so he gave it to her, hoping it would help to open her heart to others a bit more. He knows some of her reasoning for not looking for someone to spend the rest of her life with, but he most certainly does not agree with it, and her decision of solitude causes her mother an insurmountable quantity of distress.

At least once a week, Hadena visits Sentinel's mother with something she's found or made while herding the goats. Usually it's a tiny dreamcatcher she's spent hours clumsily weaving together, binding or gluing small, bright stones into the waxed thread. She knows they make the woman happy, and Sentinel's mother hasn't been healthy in a very long time.

Codeword: odair
Comments/Other:

Hadena is a skilled violinist, but she can be strange in that if anyone ever mentions how well she plays, she'll make a point not to play for a while, as if to prove she does it for her own enjoyment and not for that of others. She's also talented at catching just about anything in a loop and length of rope or cord, and she's spent every day in the foothills practicing using her six-foot staff for various things, most of which could earn her a whipping if the Peacekeepers ever found out.

She cannot draw even a blade of grass, and she can barely cook enough edible food for one person, another reason she thinks it would be safer for society if she never married.