Lavender Pilgrim [District 6]

Name: Lavender Pilgrim (Pilgrim for short)
Age: 15
Gender: Male
District/Area: District 6
Appearance:

Pilgrim stands around 5 foot 10 and is quite skinny for his age. The skinny-ness is not just confined to his body, but rather, every feature of his seems defined by this scraggy, underfed look. His cheeks are hollow and gaunt, his eye sockets dark and sunken and his neck gives the impression that it iw twice as long as it actually is and that it will break any second under the weight of his head, which seems far too heavy to be supported by such a thin neck.

His Sandy blonde hair is medium length, unkept, wild, matted and prematurely thinning. He gives the impression of being not far off starvation, as if he were much poorer than the rest of the subjects of district 6. In fact, many people have compared him to a corpse. Even his skin has developed a slightly yellowish tone as of late, like really old paper. On fact, the only part of him that ever truely seems alive is his beautiful, sparkling blue eyes which are constantly darting around, giving him a shifty and yet, somehow disturbingly handsome quality.

Personality:

Pilgrim is a strange one. Although he seems to be a loner type, and indeed does spend most of his time in his own company, he secretly yearns for companionship. More than anything else in the world, he would love a friend. Someone to confide in and share his burdens. Because of this, unlike most of the inhabitants of the districts of Panem, Pilgrim tends to be overly trusting, gladly following someone he has just met to hell and back in the name of friendship. However, in direct juxtaposition, he also has been caught out too many times. As such, another of his more outward qualities tends to be his unforgiving nature. Everyone gets one chance. Screw with him, and he'll carry a grudge until the day one of you dies!

Another one of Pilgrim's main traits is his reluctance to dive into anything without first analysing the situation. This is partly from a combination of growing up in district 6 where smarts rule over bravado, and partly from his own upbringing. His father is abusive, and likely to lash out at the slightest of provocations. Therefore, Pilgrim has developed a habit of constantly walking on the proverbial eggshells, terrified of a sudden backlash from the unknown.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Pilgrim is completely addicted to Morphling. His dependency on it has even led to theft before, but because of his wit and fast thinking, he has been able to avoid detection until now. However, when the withdrawal symptoms kick in, he will do anything it takes to get his next hit!

History:

Pilgrim is the only child of Lavender and Jonah Pilgrim, both doctors. During his birth, there were problems, and Pilgrim's father had to perform an emergency C section at home. Although Jonah Pilgrim managed to birth a healthy baby boy, it was at the cost of his wife's life! Utterly destroyer, this was when Jonah first turned to Morphling. It took a whole day for a neighbour to come to the house to complain of the noise and find Jonah passed out on the floor and young Lavender crying in his crib. Jonah's desperate act of reaching for the syringe had became a lifelong obsession and at Pilgrim's naming ceremony, the only coherent word anyone could get out of Jonah's mouth was "Lavender", and so the name stuck.

Pilgrims childhood was spent between school and home. Although he is exceptionally bright, Pilgrim has never been top of his class. Partly because most children from district 6 are exceptionally bright, but mostly because of an experience with his father that Pilgrim had just aged 7. There had been a school assignment to dissect a frog and afterwards there was a.pop quiz on frog anatomy. Pilgrim got a near perfect score and as such, was second in his class. He raced home to tell his father the news, brimming over with pride. But his fathers reaction was not what he had expected it to be. I'm fact, it has been permenamtly.engrained into his consciousness. His father simply slapped him and said "Second place is just a fancy way of saying loser! If you were really so smart, you would have came in first!"

The moment that most defined Pilgrims life so far, was the incident with petunia next door. Pilgrim and Petunia were best friends, as most young children the same age will be if you place them next door to each other. However, Pilgrim learned from a yound age something that Petunia never learned, how to fend for himself. He had to learn this skill as his father spent his time either at his clinic treating patients or at home, passed out on a morphling rush. It always seemed to Pilgrim that his father hated him, and blamed him for his mother's death. So, Pilgrim learned to supply his own food, through either foraging the few edible plants that could be found inside the district or, more commonly, by stealing. It was on one such theft that disaster struck. Pilgrim was caught stealing a loaf of bread out of a bakery, but as chance would have it, Petunia and her mother would happen to be at the exact same bakers at that time. Seeing her best friend being threatened by the butcher, and with the threat of the peacekeepers coming, Petunia did the only thing she could do to try and help. She confessed to a crime she didn't commit. She claimed that she had stolen the bread and planted it on Pilgrim when she saw the baker coming. She just had time to give Pilgrim his first (and only) kiss before being hauled off by the peacemakers. Pilgrim hasn't heard from her since, and her family refuse to even look him in the eye since the incident. Rumour has it that Petunia is in the capital now as an Avox, but all Pilgrim knows is whatever she has suffered is his fault. It was that night when he got home that grief finally overtook him and he stole some of his fathers Morphling and, reluctantly, took his first hit. He has been hooked ever since...

Codeword: ODAIR
Comments/Other:

If I have made any spelling or grammar mistakes, I apologise but I don't have a PC, and this was all typed on my windows phone, so I blame that =P