Einkorn Gronveen, District 11

Name: Einkorn Gronveen

Age: 17

Gender: Male

District: In the north of District 11.

Appearance:

At a large Six feet, Einkorn is fairly tall for District 11. Here the toil of agriculture and the constant threat of starvation stunt the growth of many, but he has managed to persist. How? Perhaps by lucky genes, or his constant hope for the best that has managed to make him rise among others, who cower and bend their backs for the capitol. Nevertheless, his tallness is a disadvantage. Though his toils in the fields allow him much respite from the weakness of gluttony, it has also caused several conditions to develop. He is malnourished, and exhausted of body, if not of mind.

His eyes are a dark brown; his hair is a dirty blond, named after the wheat of the same color. He wears it short, so it does not get in the way of his work and his other activities. His build is large, his movements steady, but not graceful. There is no time for any sort of absurdities such as leaping in the fields of District 11. He can haul a bag of wheat that is 150 pounds, and weave any sort of object you could wish from wicker or from the many grasses in District 11. It is an art he holds dear, and his mother showed him as a child.

He wears the straw cap used by so many in District 11, and sports the traditional outfit for farming. Of note are his belt, and a small token which he holds dear. A simple 4 sided star, carved out of quartzite, and attached above his heart. To others, it is a simple gift from his Father. To him, it means much, much more.

For someone who has worked in the farms since he has come of age, the wrinkles and weary, strong hands which he has are natural, even normal among the people here. What he likes to hide from many, however, are the lines which once marked where he was whipped for questioning his teacher, many a year ago, as a child. He has learned much since then.

He has known farming his whole life, but also gathering. Despite the power of the peacekeepers, he keeps a bush or two of various berries to supplement his family’s awful diet of stale bread, spotted, rotten apples, and the very occasional cob of corn, if the Peacekeepers are feeling kind, for whatever reason. His greatest skill is that with the sickle; his nickname among friends is the ‘combine’, for he gathers up the wheat fast. It is a chore for him, but one that will please the Capitol, and perhaps feed his family.

Personality:

District 11 will drain the soul. It crushes creativity like hail crushes the harvest. It silences dissent like a butcher knife silences a panicked rabbit. It destroys free will like drought destroys livelihood. And yet, among this, among the chaos, and among the terror, one boy sees hope. He sees it in the eyes of the children who scurry around their mothers as they complete the October harvest. For Einkorn, this world is a blessing, not a curse. To him, the Capitol is not an enemy, but a test of faith, something to learn from and avoid, not something to fear and scurry from.

Once he was like them, afraid and uninterested in protecting people. Yet he has passed that phase, and bloomed into something else entirely. In the words of his mother, an old, learned woman, he is a ‘paragon of virtue’. He helps the starving, giving his own food to them. He allows many into the crowded home, and assists them in reconstructing their own. He organizes his friends and family to discuss matters like love and faith, when he can. He sees a light in every corner, a salvation in every nook and cranny. His whippings did not break them, and little can.

However, he is no prophet, no messiah or god. His hope only extends oh so far, and there is a place where hope is replaced by zealotry. It is the hunger games. It is not a simple matter of not liking them; he abhors them. They suck whatever vitality he sees in his people, as they come home either relieved or misty eyed. District 11 is forced to fight against the poor children of other districts, and they come together for the entertainment of the onlookers of the Capitol. It has spurred him to his decision: Next year will be the years he will fight at the hunger games, if not only to spare his people agony, but to find himself. When he has attempted to explain this to people, his words droop and become gibberish, and he must halt conversation. It is not a topic he can easily discuss, for though he sees himself as a helper of his distraught people, he is still a child.

And every child feels fear.

History:

Born in a place that hundreds of years ago fed a nation long gone, now buried under ruins and many years of sediment, Einkorn was a child of shy nature. He went to school, and never talked much there. He stayed with his mother and practiced the weaving of straw and wicker, and learned well. His father had annual trips to harvest, and he did not see him often. An only child, his mother loved him so, and he returned the favor.

It happened in the 4th grade. He was in school, and the teacher was discussing the Hunger games, perhaps for the 40th time. He questioned her about why the children must be sent to die for some capitol in the mountains, and the people cannot control their own destiny. At this the Teacher’s face went pale, and color drained from her. Still a child, the Peacekeepers had ‘moderation’. Twenty lashes turned his back into a horrid scar, and he went home in a stretcher that day. When he healed, he was distraught. Why should the capitol whip him for such a silly offense? He questioned things day and night, watching the moon in the night, atop a single rock in his field. Then, one night, it came to him.

Had a more scientific man been around, they would have told the misguided child that he had seen a comet, a simple celestial body flying through space. But those around him could not explain such a phenomenon, and they attributed it to a divine being. This was ground-breaking to Einkorn. The whispers of a divine being had been a carryover from times past, when men in robes preached of godly beings that directed the humans, but it had been carried over to the present, though in smaller and smaller forms.

This changed Einkorn deeply. The world was no longer a terrible place, but somewhere where God had shined his light. Of course, he had no concept of God in the sense of the long dead religions, but he had the most important thing: Faith. Faith propelled him to do thing he was not accustomed to doing before. He no longer stayed with his mother and weaved wicker baskets; he worked in the fields with his Father, and assisted his friends and family in many things. When he became older and stronger, he expanded this. His family lived in a group of field with a few others, and he helped them build a new granary to store the grain, as the square was so far away. The Mayor approved of the idea, but became more and wearier of this new prodigy, helping his people make decisions no one thought possible beforehand.

The first reaping he witnessed was perhaps the one that made the most impression on him. A good friend of his was chosen as the Boy reaping. Einkorn had witnessed death before, but not this kind of death. Often someone would slip on their sickle, or cut themselves, or get shot by the peacekeepers. This, however, was something else. It was institutionalized murder, something on an entirely different scale. He figured quickly that it was to scare the people, to watch them squirm and sob as their friends, their children, died. His friend was the third to die, his head smashed by a mace.

Einkorn had never been angry before, but that day he was. When it was over he fled to his rock, and in a quiet way, he thought furiously. It was a siphon on hope and faith, and it was a wicked punishment by the Capitol. Yet what could he do about it? His family needed taking care of, and his commune needed him. So he decided to stay with them, if only for the fact that he could not bear to leave them. Yet he would have his time, to show his message. If he died, so be it. The preparations were hasty ones, always being redrawn. Four times he did not dare volunteer for the games, for the fear that grips every child once they understand it: The fear of death.

The subject would make him weep in his bed, tear up in his sleep. He could not imagine what those who lost brothers or sisters, sons or daughters, could feel. Yet he could hope for them, in a curious, simple way, he thought of them and prayed for them. Not praying in the traditional sense, as the old prayers were lost among the destruction of Humanity’s old pinnacle, but just thinking of them and wishing them well. In many ways, he felt this was enough, and it consoled him. However, the next hunger games will come eventually, and with them will come misery and agony. He is prepared for them, now. His age has caught up to his Faith, and now he feels that he can fight there. He has no illusions of winning; they are foolish. Yet he trains in his free time. He makes shields out of fur over whicker and tests its durability. He has watched enough of the games to know that the Cornucopia is a deathtrap, and he must make his own weapons, find his own food. Most of all, he must learn how to keep faith. He will kill, he will maim, and he will hunt, but it is all, in his eyes, god’s will.