"I am speechless with this girl. But, sob stories and pretty looks are nothing if she can't kill. I'm intrigued." -Vaelyn Xiavia, Host

Name: Melody Shades

Gender: Female

Age: 15

District: 12

Physical Appearance: At a staggering, five foot two inches, Melody has a slimming figure (perhaps from all of her years on the brink of starvation), and fine layers of coal dust settling under her fingernails. The flowing ringlets of brown wavy/curly hair can often be found in tangles, as Melody does not peer in the mirror often. Her overly large eyes are a startling shade of midnight blue, like a puff of air on a cold winter's night, with just a few specks of imperfection, spotting the surface of her cheeks and nose. Her long, pale fingers are delicate, and the round shape of her face is like the moon, when it has not yet reached its full potential.

Personality: Melody does not carry the full mouth of words that the rest of her family shares, while instead, she is rather quiet, spending her days shuffling around for scraps in trash bins, ducking to avoid peacekeepers. Melody would like to perceive herself as being very much "ignored" and while she can be flippant towards her parents and siblings, she finds herself praying for their lives to be put back together, such as those of the people in the Capital. Melody does not take well with strangers, often finding them as untrustworthy. She can be hard to hold a conversation with from her lack of eye contact, but when the time comes, Melody could never stand to watch from the sidelines as someone else is being provoked or put to danger. This is, in Melody's mind, one of her worst qualities.

Past: At age four, Melody lay with her dying brother (two years older) as he died of the measles on a warm, fateful evening in the spring. After the death of her brother, Michael, Melody always plucked a lily petal from the pond water near the meadow for her brother on his birthday, every year, and instilled upon him the greatness he had achieved in his very short life. No one, to that day, had known that Melody had been the one to watch her brother die. That is often why her other family members (seven of them) had always wondered of her sudden acts of depression. However, Melody was strong, and while the rest of her family might not have realized it, she worked hard to find anything she could work with around The Seam, determined not to let anyone else meet Michael's terrible fate.

Weapon of Choice: Small hand-held dagger

Strength: The ability to last several days with minimal food and water (as she often had growing up with a large family).

Weakness: The desire to put herself in the way, if another is being provoked or harmed.

Token: The yarn bracelet her late brother, Michael, had made for her.