FULL NAME: Flax Piston Lowell. AGE: Thirteen. D.O.B: July 1st. DISTRICT/POSITION: District 6 Tribute. FACE CLAIM: Brighton Sharbino.
OPINION ON THE GAMES – Despite the Game’s prominence in managing the districts of Panem, Flax has managed to remain sheltered from the games, and due to her stature often remains out of sight and unnoticed during the public screenings of them. She doesn’t understand the magnitude of them, or the extent to which the other tributes are real people, so whilst this might make detaching the deaths of other tributes easier, Flax would certainly struggle when confronted with corpses. From her little knowledge of the games and experience watching parts of them, she sees the tributes as characters, and placeholders. She has a spiritual affinity, and so she believes the games are a necessary part of life and death to root the sinful from the celestial, but also doesn’t grasp the full extent to which they affect the lives of those around her. Flax has never had any real connection with the tributes from her district, and so has seen very little of the impact it has on their families, or indeed on the Victors, who always seem to come out far older than when they entered.
STRENGTHS: Incredibly dexterous, especially with her hands, handy with a chisel, tying knots, creating shelter, dexterous and quick-footed, resilient, instinctive and intuitive, enjoys tests of her own willpower and tenacity, knows how to tend minor wounds
WEAKNESSES: Physically weak and smaller in stature, than most of the candidates, easily overpowered by brute strength, emotionally vulnerable, unexperienced in what to expect from the Games, little knowledge of weaponry but can use mechanical tools.
HEADCANONS
– Flax grew up in District Six, where the majority of the Capitol’s transport is built from scratch, tested, and repaired before being taken away to the city’s dreaming spires. As a child, Flax would often watch the trains depart on their journeys to the Capitol with a kind of longing in her eyes – to her, naïve and uneducated – the Capitol was a kind of heavenly realm which she could only dream of entering. Because of this desire, she persuaded her father to let her train as a mechanic, a role usually only allotted to boys in her district, with the hope that she’d one day get to see the Capitol.
– In her first job, Flax worked as a Scavenger; borrowing from Victorian ideas of mechanical production, children were used as spotters to run into the machines, fix any faults, and out again while the machines were still running. Adults were too large for this role, and to turn off the machines would halt production and statistics, threatening the lives of people in her district who had quotas to fill for the Capitol. It was an extremely dangerous role, requiring a sharp eye, a knowledge for heavy machinery, and speed – her first taste of death was at eight years old when Colt – a child from her district – was lost to the machines for being too slow. At her young age, it awoke within her a kind of reverence for the dead, which later manifested itself in a spiritual affiliation for archaic religions.
– Flax once lost a finger to the machines – the pinky finger of her left hand, and now has a wooden replacement. It’s a disability she’s learned to live with and work around, even using it to her advantage in mechanics, though it will certainly affect her chances in the Arena. While agile and quick, the lack of a finger on her left-hand means she’ll be unsuited to some weaponry, particularly bows, and perhaps would do better with throwing knives, or small hand-to-hand combat knives, though her tactic within the arena will primarily be one of stealth and survival rather than combat and defence.
– Flax’s token that she will bring into the arena with her is a small, wooden pentacle symbol on a plaited rope, which she wears around her neck. The symbol – believed to have protective powers – has been in her family for longer than her mother can remember, presumed to be dating back to before the great war.
– Her mother is a herbal healer, often using plants from the surrounding districts to tend to the wounds of those injured by the machines and in the factories. Flax has seen her mother deliver babies, sew up gashes and tend to wounds in the past, and through this she has a basic knowledge of healing herself. Her mother, being a healer, has a very spiritual disposition about her, often invoking ‘potions’ from selections of herbs, and while not enforced into this spiritual way of thinking, Flax has come to follow her mother’s inclinations and sees Karma as the great deliverer of justice, believing that the afterlife will punish the sinners and reward the godly.
– Outside of the knowledge of the Capitol, a small group of spiritualists – similar to an archaic ‘Wiccan’ religion, but with elements taken from Buddhism, astrological components and tarot as well – meet in the healers’ house to pray to the Moon Goddess. The reaping of their youngest follower, Flax, has told them that their god must punish the innocent in order to bring about a balance in their lives and end the Games. It is not with fear that Flax enters the games, but with the knowledge that should she die, her death will bring about peace, both for others and for herself in the afterlife.
PENNED BY NORA.