glenne morgensen | district four | fin

You've heard this story thousands of times before, no doubt. She's the girl with the fairytale face whose mouth screams like a pack of wolves. She was made out of galaxies with nebulae coursing through her blood, meteors in her eyes. Stars danced around her and comets called her home. She was a child of darkness.

Glenne Aleksandra Morgensen - born into the family business, the Morgensens were smugglers. You name the product and they could get it across district lines without even the whiff of suspicion from the Peacekeepers. She was taught the tools of the trade at a young age - never arouse suspicion, blend in with the crowd, always be able to tell a mark from the rest, always be one step ahead. Always, always, run faster and fight harder. Never forget to carry a knife along your calf, under your pant legs. Always wear black. 

The darkness suited her. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Dark heart. And yet a softness that others could not see. Something she tried to push down  Kindness was the strongest kind of soft that she knew. She was not all bones and teeth; muscles and sinews. There were parts of her that still gave when touched. Parts of her she only revealed to her closest friends. But she knew - she knew that her anger served her well. Her thirst for life. It avalanched through her, choking down that light, burying it down, far, to a place called hope. A place called freedom.

Her older brothers - Gareth and Grant - they're the Careers of the family, but she had learned the hard way how to keep up with them. She could hold a knife from the time she could walk, training in the morning and at night, splitting her time with them and learning the ropes from her father.

Bloodied lips and black eyes were badges of honor from her older brothers. Gareth may have only had one year on her in age, while Grant was slowly approaching his eighteenth birthday, but they never took it easy on her and she never asked them to. 

"Get up, Glenne. Fight! What if its another Career? What if its a Peacekeeper coming for you?! You run. You fight! You fight like hell to be free! Come on!" 

The lessons from her dad - Graham - always came under the cover of darkness at any rate. He would point out the stars - their constellations and the stories that went along with them. If the stars were too bright, it was a no go. They lived and died by the darkness and the bright specks of light orbitting so far away.

"Everything has a price, Glenney. Everything. We move it all and people pay us handsomely. Everything has a price."


Her dark hair and dark eyes made it easier to walk in the shadows. She was tall, almost as tall as Gareth. Her hair cascaded down her back but she loved to pull it up to get it out of her eyes when she was reading or making a pass. Freckles littered her face. She had hated them as a young girl, but had come to tolerate the small marks.  Her eyes were large and inquisitive - she didn't give a damn about questioning a superior. She wanted to know more. She needed to know more.

Glenne knew from a very early age that she faced a harsh reality - she never doubted that one day she would either die in the Arena or die in front of a firing squad.  That sense of your own mortality - that was what made her live. It's what made her a tragedy. A walking contradiction - a girl who flirts with death every time she takes up a sword against her brothers or their trainers, but who thirsts for the adventure, for life. For the thrill of it all.  

A swig of whiskey and a cigarette, she would wander the streets of the District, always skulking in the shadows. Her friends meeting her on the outskirts, never too close to the border that they would get caught. Never too close to the houses that they would be heard. 

Her parents - they worked with the bigger products - alcohol, tobacco, morphling, weapons. But Glenne - she moved the books.

She moved the words from one place to the next. Unauthorized literature that was birthed in the darkness of District Thirteen, slowly moving throughout the outer districts and in towards the Capitol. Prose, poems, epics, love stories - you name it and she had read it. Her mind conjured up images of bootleggers when they would run alcohol from one place to the next in the trunks of cars, hidden beneath tire irons and boxes.  They were the bootleggers of the future - new product, new routes, same subversion.

Glenne took the literature and would stay up late some nights, devouring the books before she had to pass them along. She dreamed in darkness and banned literature. Because words - words had power and meaning. To propel man to kill. To propel man to kneel. To propel man to surrender. 

Gareth and Grant had learned to let her toe the line with their parents, even if her extracurriculars with the products could get them in trouble, but the books were always in pristine condition the moment they left the District.  No harm, no foul.

She knew she was hovering on the precipice of something - something big. Like when you get that strange feeling in the pit of your stomach when you think you are going to trip, when your heart stops for a moment.  She just wished she knew what was coming.


“and her lips?
oh, her lips tasted like rain.
no wonder there was a storm,
crashing in her chest.”