Kinneret Felice duMonde Phillippe

Kinneret Felice duMonde Phillippe
Information

Before Myrken Wood: Whitewick Manor

Youth

Born to Severin Auguste Phillippe and Donatienne Felice duMonde Phillippe, Kinneret was afforded every luxury as the only child of wealthy parents. No amount of money, however, can purchase a happy childhood. When Severin Phillippe disappeared one winter's eve, assumed the unfortunate victim of brigands, the matriarch of the Phillippe family, his aunt, moved in to Whitewick Manor to console the young wife he'd left behind and help her with the three-year-old daughter she was now meant to raise alone. But Helene Phillippe was not the only family member at Donatienne's disposal.

A cousin, with whom Donatienne had remained close over the years, became more of a presence in the household, much to the dismay of Kinneret's great aunt Helene. She disapproved of the time the two spent together, despite the fact that Varian duMonde was a calming influence upon an overwrought widow, and the older woman's remonstration was anything but silent.Rumours in the maison-forte were in no short supply with regard to the relationship that the kinsmen shared. Was it friendship alone which kept the two behind closed doors of an evening? Or accompanied them on long walks about the estate?

The household staff assumed the two were having an affair in the months following Severin's death, their suspicions likely fueled by the aging Helene, who had come to manage the affairs of the manor in the wake of Donatienne's initial inability to attend to such matters and her eventual disinterest in the undertaking of the responsibility. A disinterest that soon turned to depression with news of Varian's intent to take his leave of Whitewick. Within the year that followed her cousin's departure, having succumbed to despondency, Donatienne Felice duMonde Phillippe was found in her bathing tub, her wrists slit by the calculating application of scissors from a sewing box. At the very young age of five, Kinneret duMonde Phillippe had lost both of her parents. How fortunate for the child that her great aunt Helene was willing and able to assume the role of guardian and eager to become trustee of all that the child was to inherit. How fortunate that the little girl would not remember bitter words had between the warring sides of her family: a cousin had returned to make good on a promise, but was refused. Adolescence Memory failed a child soon turned woman, but could be refreshed with a glance at any number of portraits which decorated the cold stone walls of Whitewick. There were dozens of a woman to whom Kinneret bore a striking resemblance, a few more that painted parents together, and but one that afforded her a glimpse of a man whose name her great aunt refused to mention. That he was a duMonde, she could be assured--the sharp features and striking eyes marked him as family. Helene Phillippe was a strict taskmaster--and not a woman to indulge a girl's curiosity. Lessons were had in the confines of Whitewick by a number of teachers over the years: arithmetic, grammar, penmanship, etiquette, embroidery, foreign languages, music. All things that one needed to know before being introduced into proper society. An introduction which followed on the heels of Kinneret's thirteenth birthday. The maison-forte boasted a party the likes of which few in Trae Kelsa ever see--Whitewick's guest list for the evening contained well over a hundred names of well-to-do families. Sheltered by Helene's design, the majority of them were strangers, with a select few of them able to claim the status of acquaintance. One face amongst the crowd, however, was eerily familiar. Was there, then gone again, but not soon forgotten. A face she'd not see again for another year. Family Ties: Leaving Whitewick Another Headstone in the Family Plot Helene Phillippe died just shy of having reached her sixtieth year. The graveside ceremony marking the bitter woman's passing from this world into the next was had on a bleak day in early December. The officiant appeared to be orating for Kinneret alone, the sole interested party where the eulogy was concerned--the cemetery housed only the two of them and a myriad of ghosts. The hours spent amongst the three graves which marked the plight of those closest to her passed swiftly, though time meant little on such a day. Afternoon soon turned to evening, and in her wake, each boasted a wreath of flowers from the spring before, dried and arranged by uncertain hands, placed upon mounded earth with care. A Return It wasn't the sound of footsteps, or the clearing of a throat which alerted her to another presence in the cemetery once day had drifted nearer to night, when evening was yet tainted by reminders of sunbeams filtering up from beyond the horizon to stain the darkening sky with desperate shades of crimson and umber. No sound had made Kinneret aware that she wasn't alone in that bleak hour--she had simply -known- that her estranged cousin had come. Had known that he was there watching her, where she sat upon Donatienne's gravestone in lieu of some sculpted seraphim. Had expected it, in light of her guardian's passing and the fact that Varian duMonde was all that was left of her family. When grey eyes turned and found the same face which had fascinated her as a child in an unexplained portrait, no surprise marked an otherwise serious-cast countenance. None appeared when he announced that she was to return with him to his home in New Dauntless. Coming to Myrken Wood: The Gilded Lily "Kinneret: I've built you a playhouse," the note read simply. The twenty-year-old laughed aloud at the news that flowing script revealed, remembering the good intentions behind a puppet theater gifted upon a fifteenth birthday. To this day the present remained in a corner of her rooms, painstakingly kept yet never played with--she was too grown up for such a gift, she remembered announcing proudly to a well-meaning cousin-come-guardian. But this...