Aster Cemlyn, District 4

Name: Aster Cemlyn
Age: 16
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 4
Appearance:

Aster has red hair, pale skin, and enough freckles to fool you into thinking she has a tan. Her ginger mane reaches down to the middle of her back, and has a habit of curling itself together so that by the end, you can't tell where one strand of hair ends and the other begins. Her dark red eyebrows and eyelashes make her sea-green eyes pop, the intensity of her eyes drawing the observer's gaze to them, drawing them away from her slightly lopsided mouth and sloped nose (which sometimes disappears into the mass of freckles and white anyway).

She's taller than her sister, standing at a solid 5' 6", though, thinking on it now, she really doesn't think that's very tall at all. She's a slight creature, only slightly underweight at 113 pounds. Which means that depending on the season, or how much they can afford or catch, you can more often than not count the bumps on her spine, and count her ribs if she stretches even slightly. Though, her size allows her to be quick and subtle, which comes in handy when fishing with her father.

She holds herself in a way that allows you to read much of her personality; a slight slouch, one eyebrow always arched slightly higher than the other as if to be saying something with every glance, and a fluid motion to the way she moves, as if she's apart of the water itself.

Her hands are small, not painfully so, not ridiculously so, but enough to gain the occasional comment of "Your hands! They're so tiny! It's so cute!" which, if we're being completely honest drives her completely on edge. But those hands are swift and careful, you can see her diligence bleed through because when she goes to help her mother repair fishing nets, or make them herself when money is scarce, there is not a wasted movement.

Personality:

Aster Cemlyn is easy to handle. Not always easy to get along with, but she's not likely to fight you on the small things in life. In fact, she very rarely appears to have strong feelings either way on many issues, though, this has more to do with the fact that she doesn't think that there's necessarily a need to go gallivanting around and shouting out your opinion to the world. But if you can get her started on something she does care about, it's likely you won't be able to get her to stop until she felt her point has been sufficiently made. Bonus points if she can incite an existential crisis.

She likes to stir the pot. Not in obvious ways. In subtle ways, dropping a sly comment here and there and watching other people squirm over it. Of course, this often rebounds in her face. Leading her to become quickly annoyed by her friends when they start to ponder how they feel about these small developments for hours on end, as girls often do.

By all means though, that doesn't mean she's unkind. Far from it, however, that is rarely the first thing anyone over the age of thirty seem to think of her (as she puts on her best behavior for her elders). She is quick to defend those who need defending, though, she does it in such an offhanded way one might worry she's actually insulting them as well. Aster also has the tendency to feel maternal about her friends rather than seeing them as only her peers. She tends to mother them just as she does her siblings.

Although she doesn't care one way or another what people might go around saying about her, if you speak ill of her family, you'd be lucky to escape with a long explanation about how you're never going to make it anywhere and life, and you should really just consider becoming close friends with the shrimp seeing as they're probably the only creatures who won't laugh at you in twenty years.

She's a witty one, sarcastic, full of fire. But the fire really only ever blazes to a dull roar, because honestly, who has the energy to try and be clever all of the time. And who ever thought it would be a good idea to be dull most of the time and then suddenly have one moment of hilarity? No, she prefers to douse out an equal amount of sarcasm and witticisms everyday, so that way, she can at least maintain the guise of someone who is vaguely entertaining.

In short, she's snarky, lazy, goodhearted (generally speaking), really just more bored than she is malicious, and really very clever. Oh, and did I mention that she has absolutely no shame? Yeah. That too. Her personal mantra is "the worst sin a person can commit is the sin of false modesty".

History:

Life is life, and it's really just that simple for her. She's had her ups, she's had her downs. But honestly, there's really been nothing out of the ordinary for young Aster Cemlyn. Not in the years she can really remember, anyway. Her father is a fishmonger, her stepmother made simple nets for a small price. She has two older sisters and three younger brothers, and a pet crab she captured on the shore.

Her mother died when she was just a small child. Barely past the age of two. She was told it was extremely tragic, but she can't recall the event nor the woman. She was the youngest of three when illness swept away her mother, but it never affected her the way it affected her older sisters, Afton, who had been nine at the time, and Brenna, who had been five.

Afton had always been fragile, and Brenna a silent type, so it was really Aster who took on the role of maintaining sanity around the home. Which, thinking back on it now, is really something she finds more entertaining than sad. Though, there is something deep inside her that wonders how she would be now if she had been coddled instead of doing the coddling herself.

By the time she was eight, her father remarried, something that never really bothered her, but it seemed to affect her older sisters in a way she is sure she will never really understand. But she's willing to assume it had something to with the simple fact that Marianna wasn't their mother. Aster, on the other hand, was completely overjoyed at the idea of having a mother. Which, if we're being one hundred percent honest, was really something she'd longed for all along.

In the following years she gained three younger brothers, Nalin, who is six, and the twins Brooks and Brighton, who are four. To say she was overjoyed at the new trio would be a lie, but she adores them with everything she has, and she's completely determined to ensure that they don't end up as annoying as some of the people she's met at school.

The only really exceptionally exciting moment in her life had been once at the Reaping when they had read out someone's name that had shared the first four letters as Brenna. In fact, she was quite sure her heart had completely stopped beating until they had completed the name. But as soon as she realised it was someone else, her life went right back to normal.

Her relationship with her father has always been more of a mutual understanding than a loving father-daughter dynamic. She understood that he was doing the best that he could, and he understood that she was helping as best she knew how. He taught her to fish, she dealt with Afton's biweekly mental-breakdowns. He taught her to make a net, she would scrub the house with her stepmother while her sisters sat defiantly in their room. But it would be be safe to say that she was his preferred daughter, and since she only had the one father, he was, by far, her favourite as well.

She's always loved the water. Which is good, you know, since she lives in District Four. She spends most of her time at the beach, either sitting in the sand, wading in the water, or trying to catch something. The latter of which she's still not that great at. Which is really rather sad, I mean, if you could just understand the amount of practice-- Oh well, her problem. Not ours.

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