Mae Louise Munsen||District 12

you can use those looks, y'know

use them to look tough

use them to look innocent

use them to fight and survive

all I ask is that you don't give in. for nobody. y'hear?

Mae is not the prettiest girl, as she is usually covered in dirt or hasn’t bathed in quite a while, but she does not care about her appearance in the slightest. She is what is known as a ‘basic beauty.’

She possesses thin and stringy hair. It seems almost impossible to comb through it because of the tangled mess that her thin hair is. It is quite unfortunate about Mae’s hair, because it would have been quite beautiful if she had the products necessary to make it nice, but since she is dirt poor, that seems close to impossible. Capitol citizens would describe her hair as a milk chocolate type of color, but others would describe the color as a mix of light dirt and dark mud on a rainy day. In the summer, she seems to grab hints of blonde in her hair, but that doesn’t make it any more nice. The highlights just seem to blend in with the rest of her mess-of-a-rat’s-nest. The thin locks go to the middle of her chest, and they seem to curl ever so slightly at the ends. She hates to have her hair down, so she usually puts it up in a bun and tuck it under her brown cap that she seems to always be wearing. When Mae has her hair down, you know it is a special occasion. If she had the time to do so and wasn’t worrying about other things around her so much, she would cut her hair off. All of it. It is just a drag in her life, and something that isn’t worth the keep. She keeps it anyways though. Why? Nobody knows.

Mae has a beautiful facial structure, but it is hard to tell since she always has bruises, scars, dirt, and sometimes, a bit of blood on her face. She has nicely shaped eyebrows which are the same color as her hair, maybe even a bit darker. She has a nordic nose, and though it has been broken once or twice, it seems to stay in the same shape it has always been. When she is tan in the summer, sometimes you can spot pale, tiny freckles that bridge upon the middle of her nose and under her eyes. Her cheeks are slightly pink, but not so pink that it is clearly recognizable. Mae also has a philtrum, which is the crease in between the upper lip and the nose. Her lips are pale as well, in which they are usually chapped. She has high cheekbones that lift up her pink cheeks when she smiles. She smiles on rare occasions though, as she always seems to have a reason not to smile. The girl does not like to smile because she has yellow teeth. They are stained because of the poor hygiene she possesses. She also does not like to smile because she just is not a very happy girl in general. You will see why.

One of the most intimidating features she has is her almond-shaped eyes. Her eyes always seem to have dark bags under them from her lack of sleep and her obsession of stressing. Her eyes also seem dark, like her skin color seems to have faded into something dark. She will put dirt under her eyes in the summer to keep it from being sunburnt. The whites in her eyes are pure and the color of the paper that they give in school. Her irises are dark though, as they are darker than her hair. Her eyes aren’t a moppy color like her hair is either, as it seems to be more of a brown gemstone color. Her eyes aren’t the beauty of a gemstone though, as one look in them will reveal her mindset--hatred, anger, and nothingness. Very rarely will you see the gleam in her eye of sadness, as she tries to mask it with her anger. She has dark lashes as well, and they are quite long. She does not see this as a sign of beauty though, but more of a sign of intimidation.

The girl’s skin is, especially if you look at it closely, one that you will never forget. She is not tan, nor is she a pale girl either. Her skin seems to be the color of If Mae took care of her skin and washed on occasion, her skin would actually be quite beautiful. Sadly, that is not the case. Her skin, though it is not filled with acne, is occupied with dirt and numerous numbers of scars. On occasion, she has some bad bruises as well. On her face, she usually has a thin layer of dirt racked upon it. She only washes when the Community Home workers tell her to, and she hates it. It is once a week, though it seems like her face is only cleaned up for a day or two. If you look at Mae’s arms, you will see several tiny, and large, scars ranging from her palm to her shoulder blade. The could range from the size of a piece of rice to the scar on her right forearm that is the size of a plank of wood. Most of them are healed of course, though it leaves her arms blotched with different colors. Some of the healed scars are red, others are the color of her normal skin tone.

Mae is, in no doubt, a very skinny girl. She has always been underweight, along with most other District 12 children and adults. She weighs exactly 103 pounds and stands at an average height of 5’6”. Though she is underweight because of her undernourishment, she does have some, but very little, muscular build upon her arms from being in small fights, Along with her strong arms, her thighs are quite toned as well, as she has learned that if you steal from someone, you need to outrun them and, better yet, out climb them. She has small hands, as they fingers are short and stubby as well as the palm itself. Her fingernails are dry and cracked, and to add to that, they have dirt underneath them too that seems to be permanent. No matter how hard or how much she scrubs her hands, it seems as if the dirt will never come off. On the other hand, she has big feet. The toes on her feet are cracked and gross as well, though her feet are in a lot tougher condition. There were winters when she didn’t have shoes, and those were the toughest winters to get through. Her feet are often hard and numb during the winter, but she still manages to stay alive.

Mae wears only two kinds of outfits; she can’t ever afford to buy outfits. One is the raggedy outfit that was a hand-me-down given to her by the Community Home. It was a tight, green shirt that didn’t have sleeves--she tore them off a couple summers ago because they were getting in the way of her fighting. It was quite torn, with a piece of her sleeve that dangles close to her body. With that, she wears a brown belt (in which was her mother’s and not the community home’s) that she ties around her waist. She wears a worn out skirt with that; it is a faded purple with lavender polka-dots. She will wear whatever shoes she possesses at the time with it. She normally wears that in the summer to cool herself off, but she doesn’t like this outfit much. Mae likes her other outfit much more.

Her other outfit is one that she will wear to the death. It is a thin shirt, in which she will wear just that in the summer. It was once a white shirt, but it has turned into a shirt that is mixed with all the dirt and mud that she has encountered over the years, so now it is more of a tan color. It was vertical stripes as well, and they are a light red color. With that outfit, she wears pants, in which they are a tan-yellow color. They fit her perfectly, which is a bit strange considering they were someone else’s hand-me-downs. She tucks her shirt into the pants because it makes her move faster. She has another dark belt that she wears around her waist, and it is to hold her pants up for her. Just like her first outfit, she will wear whatever shoes she possesses at the time with it. Her favorite item in her wardrobe is her trench coat. It was her father’s, and it is the one thing she will never sell. It is dark, and it keeps her quite warm, especially in winter months. The fabric has a rough texture to it, and it once seemed to be made of a very cheap form of leather, but over the years, most of that fabric is gone and replaced with whatever was on the inside of leather--and it is very warm to feel. The trench coat goes down to her mid-leg, as it used to drag behind her but she has trimmed it since.

Mae is a fast runner and climber from all the times she has had to escape from bad situations, though because of her undernourishment, she cannot lift anything over twenty pounds over her head. She is just weak when it comes to picking up things physically with force, though that situation doesn’t come near her. She is also good at fist fighting, as she does it at least once a week, maybe even more. She normally wins too, because she is smart with her tactics. Unfortunately, she does not know how to swim. She has never been around a pool or a body of water to try it, so therefore, she cannot swim for her life.

you are not to beg.

you are not to use weapons

you are not to cheat

you are not to trust

you are to survive

Mae is a very complicated girl to say the least. She is quite a brutal girl, and one time, someone described her as the girl who doesn’t believe in anything. Strangely. enough, that seems to suit her quite well. She does not believe in anything that she has not experienced, and it is as simple as that.

For example, the girl does not believe in love. She has never loved anyone in a seven year period, and therefore, love has become an alien emotion to her. The only people that had loved her were her mother and father, and now, she does not seem to care anymore. She does not wish that she could love, or dream about getting married like most girls would think, as she feels that is a waste of precious time--along with a lot of other “dreamy” thoughts other girls seem to have on a regular basis. She also thinks she will never fall in love, so she has simply given up on it. Love is just a brick in the road for a girl like Mae, as she has to deal with starvation and surviving, not kissing and producing children. She can barely feed herself--so why should she feel the need to have children? She doesn’t, and that is what keeps her surviving. She doesn’t have to worry about anyone else but herself.

She does not believe in keeping the peace either. Though she does not believe in rebellion either, her philosophy is to do whatever it takes to keep on living. She feels that dying is only an option for the weak ones, the peaceful ones. Mae will not sit around and watch herself starve to death, as she has to find food--no matter how she does it. Some methods that she has done to get food are very questionable, even for her, but she does not linger her mind on past events unless they’re important for her survival. She has seen people just lay down and die, literally, and she does not take that bullshit. She will not give up until her last dying breath--whether that is when she is an old lady or when she is stabbed to death for stealing.

Though Mae seems to be failing every single class in school, she is actually a pretty smart girl. She is not smart book wise, but her parents had taught her how to act and speak in the midst of District 12, making her street smart. She follows every single word that they had said to her, as it made her life a whole lot easier and taught her how to not starve in the district. She has never begged a day in her life, as the people who do that stoop lower than the fallen women. They told her to speak clearly and crisply when she talks, and with that, to speak in an intimidating tone. A tone where you are not a threat currently, but you can become a threat if things do not go as planned. She has always done that and made a reputation of herself in the districts. If someone owes her money and they do not pay up, she will most likely steal it or fight them for it. Like it was described before, she is a very smart fighter, and unless the person she is fighting against is tall, muscular, and strong, she can win fairly easily. Her father used to be a medic and worked with medicine, so she knows certain “weak points” (as her father called them), and if she hits them hard enough and in the right place, the fighter will tumble down. She does not use them unless she knows she has a chance of losing, but she is fortunate that her father taught her that very vital piece of information.

Mae is a hard-headed girl, and she usually works horribly with other people. She does not have friends, only acquaintances that will give her advice--and those acquaintances are her father’s friends. Along with her ‘no begging’ rule, she does not accept charity either unless she absolutely needs it. Only once has she accepted charity, and that was for the clothes she has on her back. She has never taken food from someone who offered it nor has she taken money from someone who just handed her the money without Mae working for it. She usually ignores people that try to get to know her. She has only countered people who are forced to try to get to know her. Those are the community home workers, and she just shrugs them off or simply ignored their questions and comments. When she is at the Community Home (which is usually from the beginning of curfew to the end of curfew considering she hates the home with a passion), she is shut off. She doesn’t talk to anyone nor does she interact with them. Mae always feels eyes on her when she is there, watching her every move, and she hates it. She tries to stay out of there as much as possible.

The girl has a temper like no other. If she is mad, she is not one to make a scene, as she is smarter than to throw a tantrum in the middle of the Seam. She will wait, and if someone made her mad, she will plan their revenge. She is quite obsessed with revenge, and she will not let it go unless they get their revenge. She will wait a few days, or even a few months, and she will give them their revenge. She has done this on several occasions, and all of them are different. She will not kill them, but yet make their life a living hell. If you do make her mad though, be ready to face her wrath. One time, a boy stole her bread that she bought. A few days later, he was found having parasites in his food and now is paralyzed to the point where he cannot get out of bed.

we weren’t meant to survive

but you? You were.

you’re strong. Not like me or your mother.

now wipe that frown off your face

you have a duty to do

you need to survive

Mae was a small baby, and by some miracle, she survived. She survive when her mother did not, because when the going got tough, her mother couldn’t take it. She hadn’t had food for days, and she died the moment that Mae was out of the womb. Her father had always described her mother as a gentle creature. One that was kind to everyone she knew and didn’t know. Her father had always said that it was miracle that she loved him, since he was quite the opposite. He was a brutal coal miner who had the same personality as Mae. He was hard-headed and street smart, as her mother was more open-minded and book smart. And strangely enough, they overcame their differences and loved each other like no other couple did. Mae never got to see that though, their indescribable love, and maybe that is one of the reasons she doesn’t believe in love. She never really got to see someone else love each other, so she never had an example to lead by.

She had grown up in a one-room house that possessed two straw beds, a table that seated two, a television that everyone was required to have, and about twelve books that her mother had owned. She lived her father, who coal mined every day for twelve hours. She was watched over by a woman who collected stones and sold them in the Seam. The woman was quite crazy, but she did look after Mae. One random summer day, when Mae was four, the woman died unexpectedly. She learned in her later years that the woman died of starvation. Ever since then, she has learned to raise herself. When her father was home, he would help her. He taught her how to cook and sew; he also taught her how to fight and be street smart. He wanted her to be rich in knowledge on how to survive in the poorest district in Panem. She grew up strong, though she only got a meal every couple of days if she were lucky. She realised that her father’s money is not going to make her survive, and that is when she started stealing and fighting. She was only seven years old when she started, and that was probably the toughest years of her life.

She was a troubled child. She would get beat up over and over again, and since her father was a medic, he tried to clean her up as best as possible. Mae had learned to get tougher, and around when she was nine, she actually started winning a few fights with children older than her. Her father taught her several moves in the art of fighting, and it did help her in the long run. She did love her father very much for what he had done to help her, and her dreams were crushed one fall afternoon when she heard the sirens go off while she was in the Seam. She knew her father was in the mines, and she started sprinting towards there. Some men had crawled out, and they were covered in soot. She saw her father coughing up black soot, and he gave a small smile when he saw Mae. ”You need to survive,” were his last words. Her father died the next day because he couldn’t breathe, and his lungs were poisoned with that dreaded soot.

After that, she was taken to the Community Home. She was escorted by two Peacekeepers, who didn’t say a word to her on the way there. She was glad it went that way too, because she couldn’t bare it if they talked. It was strange though, because Mae didn’t cry once. She wasn’t angry or sad or nervous that her father had died. She really didn’t feel anything. She remembered the words he had told her, but she could never pinpoint how he meant to her. She felt as if she never loved him and he never loved her, just a far off memory that seemed not to have belonged to her. In the Community home, she shared a room with eight other kids. Some smaller than her and others older. They seemed like they had bonded for quite some time, and Mae felt like a complete outsider. She didn’t mind though, because she rather not trust a bunch of other orphans and neglects.

From then on, she spent most of her time looking after herself. She listens to the workers in the home and does everything she is suppose to--go to school, be back by curfew, and not to go past the fence. She never did any of those actions, but rather did other ones to stay alive. She had earned money from several occasions. She would steal from homes when the people were at work, go into the black market and take an apple or create a distraction in which she would steal a basket or a pair of shoes. She horded these items behind her old house, which was stripped from everything but nobody lived there. She kept it in a hole behind there. She would place sticks or leaves over it so she would not forget where the items are placed.

There was one winter though that she could never forget. She does not regret it, but she had hated it. When she was fifteen years old, only two years ago, she had absolutely no food, no shoes, no money, and she felt as if she was going to die. She knew she couldn’t give up that easily though. She tried stealing and finding food, but she was running out of luck. Every house she raided she couldn’t raid anymore because they didn’t have food or they had stored it where she couldn’t find it. Mae had then gone to her second to last resort. She was the youngest girl to join the fallen women. Oh, how she hated it, but it was her only way to get money. Men in the upper part of town would pay for her services and she would accept their money. She tried to convince herself that she did work for the money and she was not begging, but only a few months after, when spring started to come again, she had left the fallen women and never looked back.

Now, Mae is at the same place she was before that mess. She is fighting for money, stealing, hoarding, and trying to survive. Her one weakness is alcohol though. If she had spent her money on the food for the day and still has a little bit left, she will go to the tavern or bar and spend whatever is left on alcohol. It numbs her senses, and she likes it that way. She will go back to the community home slightly drunk, but she has learned to avoid the workers when she is in that altered state of consciousness. She just needs something to help her, and that is what helps. She will do the same pattern every day; she wakes up, goes to school, heads to the seam to steal or pay for food, go to the tavern once or twice a week, and sleep again. Mae wishes she could escape from all of it, but she cannot afford to think like that. She only focuses on surviving, and that is what helps her fight through it all.