Cedar Smith: District 11

Name: Cedar Smith
Age: 15
Gender: Male
District/Area: District 11
Appearance:

People are always commenting on my size. I’m 6’3”, and even though I’m only fifteen, I’m one of the bigger reap able kids in the district. My skin is dark, and I don’t mean tan, I mean dark brown, but that’s not uncommon for District 11. My hair is black and coarse, it’s extremely easy to maintain, especially since I usually just cut it all off. My eyes are dark brown, there’s nothing too special about them, but they are pretty big in comparison to other peoples.

Everything is big about me. My eyes, my nose, my lips. Some of the even darker kids in my district have purplish lips, mine are more pink. I’m very muscular, and since we don’t get to eat much, I don’t have tons of fat on my body. People say that when I smile, it stretches across my entire face…and I like to smile a lot.

I’m not very stylish, but who is in this town? My clothes are pretty much always dirty, except for one white shirt I wear during the reaping. My sandals are very worn out, and my pants often have holes, patches of dirt, and grass stains on them.

I’m a pretty peaceful person, I don’t really enjoy my work in the fields, but I don’t really hate it either. I like to sing, and when I’m out working in the orchards, there’s rarely a moment when I’m not singing. The mocking-jays are a nice compliment to my voice, they match my low-pitched singing with higher tones…I’m not educated in music, but I think it’s called harmony.

We look out for each other in District 11, and I’ve grown to trust nearly everybody that I meet. Bullying is unacceptable around here, but nobody tries to bully my friends or me. I’m not a violent person, and if I got selected in the games, I don’t think I’d do very well. How can anyone kill someone? I would probably just try to hide as long as I can.

I like flowers a lot. I know every type of plant that grows in the district, the poisonous ones, the healing ones…you have to be really careful where you walk, or you might get a rash that takes days to heal.

My history is boring really. I was born to two singers, but you don’t get paid for singing. I’ve been working since I was little, I can’t really remember when I started, but, I remember seeing all the vegetables and fruits go away in carts to the capital...and wondering why I couldn’t have any. I’ve tried to sneak food away…my father got a public whipping for that…since then, I’ve never tried to steal again.

I don’t have any siblings, which is good, I sign up for the tesserae so I would have more entries for the games if I did have siblings. And then, they’d probably have more entries too, when they got old enough. The chances are one of us would go into the games, and most likely die.

For someone my size, I’ve gotten pretty good at climbing trees. I know which branches are large enough to support me, but a lot of the time; I don’t even need to use them to climb. Some people think I have superhuman strength, but I think it’s the length of my arms and legs that lets me scale even the most branchless trees.

I’ve always had a soft spot for animals and children. They’re just so innocent, I feel like I need to defend them a lot of the time. I don’t really like the idea of hunting; I don’t even eat meat, which is good for my parents. Bread, fruits, and vegetables are enough to keep me alive, and even though I’m always starving, I would never eat something with a face.