REEF BROWNING | D4 | WIP

NAME: Reef Browning
AGE: Fifteen
GENDER: Male
DISTRICT: Four

odair

autoexploration.

APPEARANCE:

Sometimes life it takes you by the hair

Before I tried to find out who I was I found out what I was.

I found thick fingers and long fingernails, caked with dirt and skin embedded with the heavy scent of the sea. I found thin, ash blonde hair with a scalp of sand, from countless days of beach dreaming. I found eyes the color of a stormy sky, thin and squinty, glazed over from stories of next to nothing, and I found a button nose. All in all, the discovery of myself came quickly.

I've always found that life falls in stages. Life's got sections, like acts to a play, separated into scenes. A fight a District 12 girl has with her mother over tesserae is just a scene in Act 3 of her personal tragedy. The severed arm of Soyala Delaire and the look in her eyes as she sees Seaborgium and Aenor in a new light are only her finale. My life's scenes have been mediocre. They've been shaped by a blind sculptor, I swear of it. I curse the sperm that created me because it had to have been pure luck, and I swear that that luck is the only amount of real luck my life's seen. Life is separated and unlucky.

When I run my hand over my face I regret to feel a sub par jawline. In my hands is a round face on a thick neck, and it's all situated on a lanky body. I feel heavy lips and an indention in the skin under them. But what feels these things are my hands. They're big like the clams we dive for and their fingers are thick like the harpoons we throw.

Admittedly, fourteen years of my life went to the discovery of what I was. Actually, fourteen years went into the realization of what I was. I realized I was tall; I ducked when I entered a room. I realized that my body was not cut out to be a career. Where most of the guys I trained with were massive, I was twiggy, tossing my harpoon with the might of some of the beginners. But that's not what kept me up at night. It was the realization that I paid more attention to the other guys than I did to myself, and this realization swallowed me whole.

PERSONALITY:

You can't be too careful anymore

I've nearly always been collected. I've tried my hardest to be composed -- to keep my thoughts in order, but since I devoured myself it's begun to get a lot worse. What once was a completely clueless, has morphed into me. And I am now shaky. I am fidgety. I'm as curious as I've ever been. But, most importantly, I am completely conscious. I've discovered -- no, realized -- why the guys used to alienate me. They stayed on the side of the gym and joked loudly while I stayed on the other and whistled quietly to myself. It was only when I had to use some of the equipment that they were using did they hush up. It was honestly a hint of obliviousness that I didn't understand why they'd get quiet. Since the realization, though, I tremble when I train and look as little as possible.

A lot of things came with that realization. It happened all at once - collapsed in on me like a net around fish. I realized how much of a drone to my father I was, and how my mother really never got over the death of her sister. I realized the stupidity in personalities and how isolation is the ultimate demeaning demeanor. Realized that life is a realization.

One thing's that stuck with me through both acts of my life, has been a sense of adventure. Often I traverse through the district of the sea and try to discover what I've not before. Through fifteen years I've discovered 34 miniature anchors painted on buildings throughout the District, and I've dove to the depths that I hope no one else has. From these dives I've had seaweed stuck in my shorts, ear infections, and extreme swimmer's ear. But lately it hasn't been such an external adventure, it's been inside of me.

HISTORY:

We run from them, with no conviction

I came out squalling. At least, I'd assume so. It's only human nature for an infant to wail after birth, for whatever reason. I think it might be a precursor to just how difficult leading a life is - as if we infants know the looming struggle. I assume during my first few years that Dad looked forward to the time I could finally get my hands around a spear (He'd talk about training the way a mom would talk about food. "You're gonna be a good lil Career, ain'tcha? Aaain'tcha? Oh yes you are! Yes you are!" I assume I stared back with googly eyes and spat up baby puke.

When time did come for me to wrangle a spear, it was a small one. Heavy events call for heavy memories, and this was definitely a heavy event. Literally. Five year old me struggled to raise the spear above my head and tossed it - no, dropped it - a few inches in front of me. "You'll get better," Dad had encouraged me with a pat on the back. The young me stared up at him, smiled a cheeky smile, and then asked for a glass of milk.

Mother comes into the picture not long after, when her lack of personality is explained one Summer morning. It was full of tears but complete understanding. Mom's always been extremely bad at controlling her emotions, but it's a shame she's only got two. Numb and sad. All of her smiles are covered in a layer of ingenuity. This was confirmed by the immediate tears after she said her sister, Corinne, died in the 50th Quell. She'd explained that it was the last year of eligibility for both of them, and knew that Corinne's caring attitude was no match for the other vicious careers those Reapings produced. This left no mark on me. Neither has she.

On my 12th birthday, my friends and I had a party in a side room in the Training Center, where my cake had a plastic trident. My dad convinced me that being a career was the way to be successful in a hard-edged District, and I believed - and still do believe - every word of it.

Then two years passed and I was swallowed whole. The realization of an attraction to the same sex has pitted me fearful, just as my backwards name suggests. Feer.

But I'm trying.

I'm trying to find a way out of myself.