COMPLETE || Wyatt Lanson | District 10 || COMPLETE

When it comes to appearance, I’m nothing special. In fact, I think I’m very plain. My face is really normal, with just a boyish look to it that girls and older women seem to love – for different reasons of course. I have high cheekbones that become very prominent when I smile, which makes my cheeks look hollow at times. My entire face is littered with moles/beauty marks, whichever you want to call them. They’re all small; I don’t have any weird witchy mole on my nose or anything. Speaking of my nose, it’s kind of oddly shaped. The bottom protrudes a bit more than normal, and the sides, around my nostrils, go out very awkwardly. It’s kind of weird-looking, but I’m not one to look in mirrors all the time so I don’t mind it very much.

My hair is a regular brown color, and I prefer to keep it very short and close-cropped, especially during the summer. Sometimes, I’ll let it grow out a bit, and then it’s very straight and easily handled. If it does get long enough though, it gets a bit of a wave to it, but usually I’ll just use a little gel and put it into a “comb-over” or whatever it’s called. Simple-looking, as I said. My eyes are very plain, too; a light brown with long eyelashes around them. They’re a bit big, and my mom says that when I was younger I had big bug eyes. I’m glad that went away.

History

If there’s one thing you should know, it’s that I come from a large family. And I mean, large. Six children, my parents, and my poor old grandmother. A younger brother and sister, two older brothers, and an older sister, to be exact about the siblings. As I mentioned before, my family owns a large ranch and ranching business, started by my father’s parents and passed down to him. Cows, goats, chickens, and a bull take the top of the list of animals we own. That means milking and egg-collecting jobs go to a lot of us Lanson kids. I love helping out, and I’ve developed my own little bonds with several of the animals. My father plans to pass the business to me, even though I’m not even the eldest child. My older siblings plan on starting up their own family business, with my dad’s help of course. I believe they can do it, actually. They’re skilled with the whole ranching thing and they’re all really good with people.

Although we’re technically considered to be somewhat wealthy, having a family of nine can completely take away that title. We always have food on the table though, and decent clothes. So, I like to consider us more “middle-class.” We can’t afford to buy a bunch of expensive, manufactured thingamabobs from the markets. Maybe if there were only one of us kids, we’d be filthy rich. I’ve never really thought about it much, considering that there are six kids and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Despite the fact that we take away from our family’s wealth, our parents wouldn’t be able to get as much done on the ranch without us, or they’d have to pay more people to work for them. We already have hired a few workers, but we still get along just fine with the work they help accomplish.

I haven’t told anyone about this before. It happened several years ago – I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. The Capitol – the idiots that they are – decided to send people from the huge city to our humble district. They set up shops and stalls, selling unique stuff for outrageous prices. Trust me, they didn’t sell well, and what they did sell was probably bargained down to a lower price. This chatty lady wasn’t paying attention to her stall, which sold different types of jewels and precious stones. Having never seen anything like it before, I was naturally amazed by it. Since no one was watching the stall, I quickly grabbed a jewel and ran off with it. Upon further inspection, I saw that it was a small, sparkly blue gem, cut into the shape of a perfect, delicate little star. Since then, I often take it out to the river and marvel at it, comparing it to the masses of stars in the night sky. In the mornings, the drops of dew on the grass and trees also remind me of the little star.