Name: Ashe Besra - Ashe for the tree type (her father's favorite) and Besra after the variety of hawk.
Nicknames: Her name is simple enough for most. Her father called her Asher, however, and it's always stuck.
Age: Eighteen
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Birthday: September 15th
District: District Eight - Textiles
Weapon of choice: Lance
Talent: General survival
Weaknesses: Ashe is a compassionate and empathetic individual which if she's not careful can make her gullible. While well coordinated, she is also poor at hand to hand combat. She lacks brute strength and while she can throw a decent punch, she can't do much more unless she's armed.
Hobbies:
Given district eight's location, Ashe enjoys the outdoors and is never afraid of a little rain. She's used to being surrounded by forests, climbing trees, and using a lance like spear for fishing in the rivers close to their home. While her district's main good is textiles, she's not the type of girl to sit down and sew. Instead she prefers working with animal textiles which, while the work is hard and tedious, allows her to spend time outside. She likes to cook when they can but food is often scarce. She likes to help her mother with the dyes, collecting the necessary bugs or berries to make the inks the state wants, and even rare colors. She likes to read as well, and tell stories of when life was easier for everyone. She knows little of life before the games as she was born shortly after the dark days.
Likes:
- Forests
- Rainstorms
- Dyes
- Being outside
- Cooking
- Soup
- Tea
- Hunting
- Stories
- Birds
Dislikes:
- Sewing
- Dresses
- Dry hot days
- The Games
- The Capitol
- Crowds
- Oatmeal
- Cats
- Mice
- Trackerjackers
Fears:
As a child, Ashe fell from a treehouse several feet. The feeling of having nothing beneath her feet terrifies her - a fear of falling in general. She fears any repercussions to her actions should someone not like them, especially the Capitol. She also hates bees, wasps or specifically trackerjackers as her brother was swarmed by a fallen nest in the woods. The memory of what his body looked like and the hum they make is nearly debilitating.
Token:
A silver necklace, designed as two wings joined together - her mother's formerly and very significant to Ashe.
Personality:
Ashe is not the girly-girl some people expect her to be given her appearance. She keeps herself well put together but mostly because her family raised her to always make the best of any situation, including near poverty. That said she's not vain, she's only looking to keep herself clean. Ashe is naturally independent as from the day she was born her family had to put in long hours in the textiles factories. When they weren't on shift, her parents were spinning cloth and dying goods to sell at the local market. From a very young age, Ashe learned to be self-sufficient. While she's the middle child in her family she puts 100% into all that she does. She's intuitive and perceptive, quick to read her mother's bad moods or her father's need for something. She is solitary and has little faith in other people's ability to come through on promises. That said, she's empathetic and loves to hear a good story. If she's not careful, she can fall for a lie which only leads to further disappointment. Her inability to trust others, and at times even her own family, has led her to becoming even more of an outdoorsy solitary indidivual, fishing in the streams beyond their house with an old spear, and vending the goods her family makes for them to sell. She takes little for granted, especially when she has a full stomach. With five individuals in their house and an old bloodhound, food was scarce. While her brother and father were first to go hungry, she too would rather her mother and sister be fed than her be full. She's giving and compassionate, making her emotional and prone to private outbursts. She prefers to bottle up her emotions and appear stone-faced than to publicly lash out. That said, she can can lash out if provoked enough and hell hath no fury like an angry Ashe. She can be violent and she can become a viper with her words. Once wronged, a person is hard pressed to regain her trust.
History:
District 8 was the region her parents hailed from, and a place that given it's location was often flooded with rain and surrounded by trees. Ashe's Father, Firenze fell in love with her mother Maple when they were young. They met in school in their small town and later began to pick up shifts at the peacekeeper uniform factory together. When they married it came as no surprise to their friends and family.
Despite the near poverty they lived in, Firenze and Maple welcomed three children into their lives. Their eldest, Jasper, was born first. Four years later second came Ashe, the apple of her father's eye. Third and three years after her sister came little Heather, the spitting image of her mother. Immediately after the birth of each child, Maple would return to work, at times pulling shifts with a baby strapped to her back. Money was hard to earn despite Maple's gift with fabric and dyes. The Capitol and government wanted noting but white uniforms however. That said, Maple did the best she could to provide color for her children, especially given the industrial drab feel to their immediate surroundings.
As Ashe grew up she at first only knew of buildings, factories and soot. The hum of spinning wheels and weavers was a sound she knew well. It wasn't until she was older that her parents were able to move into a bigger house closer to the edge of the city. While the walks into the city were longer and more tedious, they encountered nature on their backdoor. Her father taught her to fish with an old spear when she was eight, taking her beyond the city walls - punishable, true - and teaching her about more than industrial machines and sewing. Firenze recognized his daughter's boredom with textiles and desire to do more than stain her hands with dyes. He taught her about the berries and bugs she needed to collect for her mother. Maple elaborated on that knowledge as she grew older. He also taught her about the trees and animals to the best of his knowledge.
At first, it was always Ashe, her father and Jasper venturing out into the backwoods. Heather was fearful of leaving and their mother was always working. Without fail they went at dawn into the back. Jasper was a talented hunter, able to snare rabbits and birds with ease. But Jasper could be clumsy and it was the death of him when he was eighteen. He'd gone out on his own that morning. Their father found him. It appeared as if he'd fallen from a tree, taking with him a tracker-jacker nest only to be swarmed and killed by their poisonous venom. His swollen and decaying body was brought in by the peacekeepers, displayed for a time in the city square. Ashe was horrified and scared to return to the backwoods. Her father grew sullen, feeling responsible for his son's death. Her mother it seemed, never forgave him.
With time, Ashe returned to the woods. A bad fall at thirteen had her nearly break her wrist but the fear stayed with her. She didn't want to end up like Jasper and as a result she was all the more cautious about how often she left the city or who she sold their goods to. As the family adjusted to Jasper's death, Ashe picked up the slack and continued on, bottling much of what she felt inside her as she dealt with their poor living conditions. If she wasn't working or fishing or collecting plants or berries, Ashe was helping their father repair their dilapidated house. Given how often it rained they were always up on the roof, patching holes and saving money for a decent tarp. Times were hard. So very hard. And as Ashe grew older, she became more bitter. Ashe knew her family's life was hard but she was not blind to the plight of her neighbours. She was sixteen when a close friend of hers died of starvation, her mother suddenly taken away for stealing cloth from one of the factories.
Worse, every year as the reaping came and went, Ashe recognized a handful of the tributes. Not one of them came back. The games came to represent oppression. Ashe's frustration only came to grow. At eighteen she felt she had escaped it, and only had to worry about Heather and making ends meet. Then her name was called and from behind her one of the richer girls snickered, shoving her in the shoulder so that she was forced to step forward. Frozen, she could only turn to look at her sister and beyond Heather, her parents. Fear welled in her stomach. No one from district eight even won. She was going to die.
Anything else?: While District 8 is relatively industrial, Ashe has little skill with complicated machines. The only thing she can manage is to unjam a sewing machine.
Your reaction to being chosen for the Hunger Games: Expression - Bitter and worried. While she has nine months to live, she knows her only hope to align with one of the stronger boys and to hone her skills with anything remotely close to her fishing spear in size and shape. She hopes to use the footage as a time to broadcast her love for her family and to her district.
