Cadence Amare, Capitol Resident

Naturally, Cadence is a delicately-boned brunette, with dark eyes and full lips. Her face is one that, if it weren’t for said lips, be rather nondescript, if slightly on the angular side. Her hair, as previously stated, is a dark brown that falls in rather unkempt waves if left to its own devices, and it usually is unless she’s out in public. She stands at 5’9” Her frame is on the slim side, and she’s mostly limbs.

However, the aim of her sponsor is to make her beautiful. To make you want her more than anything else you see. The height and awkward angles become statuesque and stately limbs. The scraggly hair is dyed so it has a slight teal undertone to it and smoothed into curls or straightened into fine wisps lighter than air. The lips are coloured, the cheekbones defined, the small breasts and jutting hipbones concealed by the finest Capitol clothing money can buy. The small trailing Ivy tattoos that run from her fingers up to wrap around her shoulders and back just add to the whimsical and nearly garish beauty the Capitol so loves. And Cadence emulates it.

However, she does it for others. If she was left to her own devices, she’d be a different person. A different type of beauty. But when so much rides on others finding you beautiful, she has no choice be to be the person she’s told to be.

Cadence Has never been, nor ever will be one of those exceptional people whose personality shines like a lovely little candle, warming those around them. She’s just not that girl. If anything, she’s patient. When the children she grew up with harassed her for her crippling fear of the Hunger Games, she waited patiently, hoping they would be chosen. Win or lose, they’d leave her life. She waited for many a thing, but where her life has taken her was not something she anticipated. That’s another good thing about her. She rolls with the punches, something that she learned to do as they kept coming.

On a lighter note, Cadence does possess a funny bone, even if it is a rather dry and sarcastic one. She feels compassion for the weak and the less fortunate, though her love is never wasted on those more fortunate than her. She expects nothing in return, so she gives none.

The one exception to this...utterly charming picture appears when she wants it to. When she desires, she can switch on a charm that is unrivalled in all of Panem. She hides her true feelings so well that one could start to believe her false feelings were your true ones. A life of avoiding careers and drunken stepfathers honed this skill to razor sharpness.

Her weakness, however, is her concealed fear. Fear of the future, of what it holds for her. Fear that her skills will abandon her and leave her a helpless child. Fear that someone will discover her biggest secret and she lose what little freedom she has, her tongue, or her life.

Cadence was born to Freya and Hanschen Amare, a gem cutter and his wife resident to District 1. She had a childhood similar to most others until her father’s death in a fire that destroyed his workshop, and almost everything the family had. This ensured that not only would the widowed Amare have difficulty feeding her child, but it ensured training her in the ways of the Hunger Games would be impossible. Survival, after all, cost money. Cadence found she didn’t mind much, especially after understanding the Games for the first time at the age of four. The reality of it terrified her, and what little appeal being like everyone else held for her disappeared. As she grew older, she was singled out as the coward in her school. She was treated unkindly by the others, and took to keeping to herself, choosing books over playing.

This isolation only grew when her mother married Jairud Huren, a man infamous in the district for both his wealth and his raging alcoholism. Cadence became a master at avoiding her home after that, lying smoothly about after school activities and outings with friends that didn’t exist. She took to walking the District, watching people, how they interacted. It was this that led her to trouble.

The night her life changed started out like any other night. Seventeen year old Cadence was walking the streets as the sun set, watching the shopkeepers close when she was confronted by a Career named Kira in a more deserted area of town behind a local restaurant. The girls confrontation soon became violent, and in a brief moment if panic, Cadence shoved the other girl, sending her head into the corner of the steps into the kitchen of the restaurant. The blow killed her instantly.

Perhaps she wouldn’t have been found guilty of intentional murder. Perhaps her life could have continued on very much like it had before. However, one Harold Junger saw the entire scenario unfold, and being the businessman that he was, saw an opportunity. After cleaning the blood off his green patent shoes, he walked the rest of the way out of the kitchen doorway, looked her in the eyes, and made her an offer. Work for him as one of his high-class courtesans, or he’d turn her in to the Peacekeepers. A terrified Cadence, seeing nothing but Peacekeepers dragging her away to a horrible life or even death, agreed to his demands, and that was the end of her life in District 1. The following day he approached her mother and stepfather, speaking of his gracious and charitable nature, how he’d always wanted a daughter, how ‘Cadence is a perfect gem, and will thrive under my care in the Capitol!’ After they agreed to let her go, they never saw her again.

Cadence was then placed in the care of another one of Junger’s women, a 24 year old named Feliciana, who taught her all she needed to know about how to win a Capitol man, and how to make them believe she was one of them. Her arms were tattooed, her hair dyed, and her new life began. It was clear after time she was a natural. Her first foray into Capitol society was a success, with people clamouring to be the first lover of the new girl. Junger made a tidy sum off her, and has been consistently doing so, thanks to her skills of persuasion and her ability to close off herself and become someone else.

Whether or not she will stay in her current position, she cannot say. After her years in the Capitol, she has grown to consider it her home. She feels no desire to run off only to be caught and condemned for murder, though her current life is not one that is entirely fulfilling either. At the moment, Cadence is simply waiting to see what tomorrow holds. She’s being patient, weighing all options and doing what keeps her the safest in that moment.