Bird McConnell [D8] (Finished)

Name: Bird McConnell
Age: Twelve
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 8
Appearance:

Bird is a small girl no taller than about four foot nine inches and is less than 90 pounds. It is not normal for a girl of her age to be as small as she is, but years of not having enough to eat will make you a small person. She looks like she is seven or eight instead of eleven or twelve. Her hair is a dark brown almost black, falling to her lower back in waves it is hard to leave it down. She normally has it pulled back thanks to her older sister Kit who will sit there and comb and braid her hair every night before bed and every morning when they wake up. She sometimes doesn't like it, but other times she doesn't mind because she knows it is just her sister watching out for her about how she should look, so if they do end up going out no one would be able to guess their situation. She has dark brown eyes that are so deep it seems as if you are looking into deep pools, her eyes are so dark brown they look black and all one color. She likes here eyes because they are the only thing she feels like looks nice all of the time, her hair will get greasy and gross and her clothes will get stained and worn and patched, but her eyes, her eyes always look nice, her eyes are the only thing that will never ever be changed. Bird has pale skin and unlike her older sister Hornet she has no freckles on her face. She feels as though she is nothing compared to either of her sister's looks wise, she still can't decide if that is a good or bad thing though. All her features fit her face and body well, despite how thin she is, her ears aren't too big or her skin too pale.

She lives with her five older siblings in a small house where there is not much money; being the youngest she ends up wearing mostly clothes that her older siblings had outgrown. She never got knew clothes that were just for her, that no one had ever worn before. She didn’t mind it for the most part, she understood that they didn’t have any money so all of them needed to make sacrifices to keep them alive, she didn’t mind, but she did wish she could have her own things that weren’t someone’s before her. She, being the youngest was almost always watched out the most for by her older siblings, and that did sometimes bother her to no end because they were ignoring themselves for her and she felt as if that was wrong. Overall she is a very small person that could normally be picked out of a crowd if you knew her. She doesn’t look like any of her siblings really, because none of them are her real siblings.

Bird is a very graceful person and has been since a very young age. Anyone can tell that she is graceful just by looking at the way she walks, if she had been born into a high class family with money in her district there is almost no doubt she would have been sent to dance school. She walks like a dance for sure, and having seen the way some of the dancers move she tries to do so herself sometimes. She loves to dance. Everyone says dancers carry themselves differently from normal people. Bird doesn't think this is the case, however, her family can probably see it the most that she does, indeed, look and walk like a dancer.

[/size][/blockquote]Personality:

Bird is a sweet girl for the most part and is very open around people she trusts—like her family. She doesn’t have many friends outside of her family circle and she doesn’t mind not talking to anyone. One thing she learned well while being a McConnell is that they should never trust anyone, because they could hurt you. She learned that lesson well a while ago, but no one knows that it happened and she plans on keeping it that way. Around strangers, Bird is very, very skittish and weary. She’s this way because of two main things growing up knowing that at any time she could be taken away from her family by a stranger, and what happened to her when she was eight.

She loves her family with all of her heart and always tries to stick close to one member of the family or another. Kit is her older sister that watches out for her for the most part, when Bird doesn’t sneak out to go for a walk anyway. She likes to go for walks in the daytime alone so she can think, she isn’t supposed to go out without one of her older siblings—mostly so she isn’t picked up by someone because she is so little—but she does go out anyway. She loves Batty but sometimes she wonders how long they can keep living like they are living.

She has never had a formal education, just like all of her siblings, but she is very smart. She knows how to watch out for people who are out to get her, and she thinks about everything, she analyzes it in a sense. That is something that everyone doesn’t expect her to have, being able to analyze. She loves to sit there and pick apart people’s minds even before they realize what is happening, she can back a person into a corner with questions if she needs to, but for the most part, she avoids this part of herself because she is too scared of getting hurt if she does use her braver, trickier side. She is a stubborn person for the most part around her family. It is almost like she has two completely different personalities, one around her family and one around strangers.

[/size][/blockquote]History:

Bird McConnell is not actually her name at all, rather the name Batty gave her years ago to keep her safe from being taken by the peacekeepers—her real name has always been unknown to the entireness of the McConnell’s even Batty herself. It surprised her that none of the people in her small broken family knew her name before it was bird. She had always heard that all their names had been changed after they were taken from the orphanage by Batty, but none of them had even known her real name before that. Everyone called her Bunny when she got there because besides the clothes she had been wearing all she had was a stuffed bunny, so Bird was not a hard name for her to get use to after it all happened and they lived in a little apartment. Since we don’t know much about Bird McConnell, or her life before she was a McConnell, we are going to take a quick detour back to a little bit before she was born.

Bird’s real name is not Bunny or Bird, the name given to her by her birth mother is Indigo Marie Rowel. Her mother was only eighteen when she got pregnant with her daughter. That year only a few months after she found she was pregnant, Bird’s father was reaped for the Hunger Games and made it all the way to the end to come back to his family, it was down to him and a district one, after a long battle that was aired in live time—that her mother was watching the whole time—her father fell and was no more. This devastated her young mother; at the time she thought about giving up her soon to be born baby because she wouldn’t be able to take care of it. Not long after that her mother and sister moved in with her after her father died of a disease that devastated the district. With her mother and younger sister living with her Bird’s mother was able to have the baby and take care of her. She was able to keep things running somewhat smoothly for almost two years, and then when her mother died, she was no longer able to take care of her daughter Indigo and her younger sister. She had to choose one or another, and she ended up choosing her younger sister to take care of instead of the one and half year old whose life was changed forever because of that choice.

Bird’s mother sent her sister to take the young child somewhere because she wouldn’t be able to just leave her baby somewhere. Her sister took her to the orphanage and dropped her outside the doorstep and left her there, she had no other choice, she wouldn’t be able to kill the child and she wouldn’t be able to give her to the peacekeepers. After she dropped her off, she ran back home and told her older sister not to worry about it anymore. The small child that was dropped off was left with no note telling her age or birthday or even her name, all she had with her was a small stuffed Bunny, which is what they called her for the month that she was at the orphanage. When Bunny had only been there a month or two the peacekeepers came to take it. Batty grabbed the six youngest children and the small child didn’t know what was going on, only that she needed to follow the few older children and Batty, who was as close to a mother as she would ever have again. She doesn’t remember any of this of course. She doesn’t remember the while they lived in the warehouse or her older siblings starting to call her Bird instead of Bunny. She doesn’t remember anything besides the apartment and living day to day hoping they have enough to eat.

When she was six she was out walking with Kit and stumbled upon a dance school for girls, where you could look in the window and see them practicing Ballet. Bird wanted to sit there and watch for hours upon hours to see how they moved and how they were able to dance like they were. She was in love with the art from the first time she saw it, Kit was only eight at the time and let her watch for a little bit before pulling her on, to go and get back to their shabby apartment. Bird didn't want to go back there though, she wanted to go to that school and be able to dance. When she asked Batty about it later that day Batty told her that she could dance as much as she wanted, but they didn't have the money to pay for her to go to that studio and dance.

Everyday after that for weeks she would go off on her own and go back to the dance school window and watch the girls practice their twirls and spins. She would sit there from open until close because she had nothing better to do and learn the moves of what they did. Then when she went home she would find a good place and practice on her own. Being flexible and having good balance helped her along with her gracefulness. After she was about to where the girls in the studio were, she wouldn't go everyday but instead would only go a few times a week and would practice more on her own, see what she could come up with.

When she was eight she was out walking alone on her way back from going and watching the dancers at the dance studio, she couldn't wait to tell Kit what she had seen the dancers do that day and she also couldn't wait to practice it herself.While she was walking she was humming and practicing some steps along the sidewalk and while she wasn't paying attention she was taken by a man and held for two days. She was in that apartment for what seemed like an eternity to her, and she honestly believed the man thought he was helping her, not hurting her, not torturing her and scarring her for life. She had to live through what she can only image as hell for two whole days before Peacekeepers broke into the apartment and put the man down. At that time she had been locked in a room and only heard the gunshot through the door. It scared poor eight year old Bird so she hid. It took the peacekeepers about an hour to find her and they questioned her for another hour or two in the same apartment. After questioning her about her family and where she lived, she was taken home by a peacekeeper, who didn’t check out their apartment, which she was thankful for. She was always taught never to tell her real name to anyone especially peacekeepers, but she was so scared and didn’t want to walk home alone she told the truth just because she felt like there was nothing else to do. She knew even then that it was a bad and risky thing to do that could endanger her whole family and that she shouldn't have done it, but her being so young and what she had just gone through she couldn't think about walking home alone and another man like that picking her up and taking her home never to be found again. She knew that by telling someone, especially a peacekeeper she risked everything they worked so hard to get. She still hasn't gotten up the nerve to tell her family that she had told a peacekeeper her name and where she lived.

The kidnapping stayed quiet and the townspeople never found out. The only thing her family knows about it is that after she came back from her disappearance, she doesn’t like going to sleep and when she does it is filled with nightmares. She never wants to relive those days in the apartment or the peacekeepers breaking in and killing the man for a crime that wasn’t even kidnapping her. She stopped dancing for a while then too, she didn't like to do it anymore, afterall she was taken when she was walking home from watching the dancers. She still has nightmares about it occasionally and it is hard for her to get over her fears of being taken again. Never will she tell her siblings what happened to her in that apartment or even where she was on her two day trip. The only time she even came close to telling one of her siblings about it was not too long ago when she had worked up the nerve to tell Skid that a peacekeeper knew where they lived because of where she was that two days years before. She was so scared of telling anyone, but she figured that if she could tell anyone it would be Skid because he would know what to do to keep them safe and for that she was thankful. The only problem with this plan though is when she was about to tell him, she had started her sentence with 'Skid, you remember when I disappeared for those days a while back..' and then Hornet walked in interrupting her conversation with Skid and making it impossible to continue. She thought she might even tell Skid the whole of what happened those days she was away, tell him what the man did and then how the peacekeepers saved her and let her go home. In a few seconds with one person walking through a door that whole plan was ruined and she ran out as quickly as she could, loosing all hope of ever being able to tell anyone and maybe have some closure with it. Not too long after that, maybe a few months, she started dancing again, needing something to keep her mind off everything that was developing in her family.

Birdie loves her older sister Hornet, of course she does. She loves to watch her draw the pretty pictures that are hung up all over the walls of their little apartment and she will spend hour after hour of looking at them. Hornet doesn't draw much anymore though, she has to worry about getting money for the family just like Skid does. The only problem with her siblings is that they don't really have a good way of making money and Bird knows that. She knows that Skid goes to bars and hustles guys for money to feed and cloth them. And she has a feeling about what Hornet is going out and doing to make as much money as she brings home. She has seen what some girls will do if they need money and she wouldn't put it past Hornet to do what was needed in the event that they needed the money. She knows that both her brother and her sister only do it because without the money they were bringing in they all would have died a long long time ago, long before it got to where it is today.

Bird sometimes wishes that her older siblings would let her help get money for the family, but she also knows that they let no one else in the family help them, they get all the money on their own. She sometimes wondered if they needed the help or needed her to do something but she knew that they wouldn't allow her to. She wonders if when she is Hornet's age they will all still be living in that crowed little apartment or if she will have to be taking care of herself at that time. She wouldn't mind that if it wasn't for the fact that she would die of being alone all the time once her siblings left. She would die of the memories of pieces of her life that would eat her alive until she is no more. She feels like she is dying from what happened to her in the apartment and knowing what her oldest siblings do and the peacekeepers knowing where they live, having this all bottled up inside at twelve years old, she doesn't know how much more she can take.

[/size][/blockquote]Codeword: odair
Comments/Other:

Wanted Character for Lulu

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