FULL NAME: Madeline Baby Lynnford
NICKNAME(S): Baby or Maddie
AGE: 19
DATE OF BIRTH: October 31, 1992
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
MEMBER GROUP: Student
ELITE OR SCHOLARSHIP?: Elite
OCCUPATION: Student of Art, BA, second year
FINANCIAL STATUS: Wealthy (all in a trust for her and her older sister)
CANON OR ORIGINAL?: Original




EYES: Light Blue
HAIR: Brown – always kept short and incredibly messy, even when it’s not windy out
HEIGHT: 5’6”
BUILD: Painfully skinny – all sharp angels and protruding bones, rather like a dancer although she's never been one
ANYTHING ELSE?: A lovely little beauty mark on her left cheek and a feather tattoo just below her armpit on her right side
PB: Eliza Cummings




GENERAL PERSONALITY:
Madeline Lynnford had been born a quiet child, a daughter of fear who could be scared by her own shadow if it got too big. Loud noises were something she hated and she rarely spoke above a whisper if she spoke at all in those early years. She was not a wild sprite, though she was child of the sun, who loved to watch the clouds or how the wind blew through the long grasses on their grandparents’ estate. She could have lain out in those fields forever, silent except for the occasional sigh or a rare peel of laughter.

She felt, even as a child, that she was not entirely good enough for anyone, and it was a heaviness that weighed her down at the best of times. She wondered more often than a child should if she had been a mistake, but could never fully believe it because her exile from their parents’ home had not been solitary. Her sister Persephone, a year older than she had been cast out too, mostly unwanted because they had been too much of a burden on the Lynnford’s hectic lifestyle. So Baby found solace in her sister’s company, or in the familiar comfort of words printed on a page. She poured her soul out onto canvases with colors that ran together, into images that people never quite understood, but that was very likely because they never entirely understood Madeline either.

Her silence baffled people into thinking she was a stuck up elitist, instead of the stoic creature that she really was. Baby did not fully understand what was expected of her – relationships were confusing and far too complicated in real life, not simple and concise the way they often were in her books. There was too much anger in too many people and any kind of raised voices, whether from teachers or fellow students had her retreating into a stolid darkness. Contact was typically avoided, though from her sister or those few people she considered close friends it was entirely necessary. She never requested attention, but found herself taking it because those people close to her understood that Baby needed it to survive. She was a naïve creature that found comfort in small touches, in long hugs and in sleeping next to someone when it stormed.

Through her teens she remained quiet, though when she had something to say it was usually worth listening to. Baby was not dumb, simply idealistic and painfully naïve to the real dangers of the world. She was lonely and trusted too quickly and got hurt so often that she avoided friendships entirely unless she was sure that they were worth getting hurt for. It was easy to talk to her because she always listened, though she often day dreamed through lectures because there were so many odd, colorful thoughts swirling around in her head at any given moment. She focused on small things – the way flowers looked when the sun hit them just so, or the way the wind felt when it was precisely three o’clock in the afternoon. It was easier that way, less complicated, and that was the way Baby liked to keep things.

After her parents’ deaths, Baby didn’t change so much. They were not such a big loss in her life, since they had never really been there to begin with. They were a small pocket of sadness that lingered within her, that welled up when Sephy looked at her in a certain way, but they were easily forgotten when something else interesting popped up. She had become slightly less evasive, though was still absent minded at best and taken for someone who just didn’t care about anyone else too often. It was quite the contrary in fact – those few people she let into her world were loved whole heartedly, perhaps too fully sometimes that it hurt. And her art, it had evolved into an impressionistic sort of hazy style that was beautiful and wild at the same time. It was the truest expression of herself that Baby knew, and it described her better than she ever could.

STRENGTHS:
- Painting
- Listening
- Being quiet
- Day dreaming
- Noticing when someone’s not quite themselves

WEAKNESSES:
- Social skills
- Paying attention for long periods of time
- Expressing her feelings

LIKES:
- Painting
- Reading
- Museums
- Quiet places
- The smell of old books
- Old things in general
- Tattoos (on other people)
- Smoking
- Cherries
- Skittles (she’s a bit addicted)
- Feathers
- Soft things
- Cuddling
- Being paid attention to without having to ask for it
- Riot Grrrl

DISLIKES:
- Fire
- Losing people
- Anger
- Feeling completely alone (though she’s rather used to it)
- Being around too many people
- Thunder and lightning (storms in general really)
- The dark
- Being away from her sister
- Physical contact from people she’s not accustomed to
- Being called a child
- Being referred to as weak (even though she knows she is)
- Sadness (which is too familiar to her)

QUIRKS:
- Quite enjoys day dreaming in the middle of conversations
- Wanders off and gets lost quite often, usually because she’s day dreaming or just not paying attention
- Has never been kissed
- Is rather afraid of most people and is quite content to spend her days humming to herself covered in paint
- Enjoys the small of old books a little too much and has stolen more than one book from the library without even noticing it




PARENTS:
Holden Jett Lynnford • Father // Deceased, 47
Saeran Rose Henning – Lynnford • Mother // Deceased, 44

SIBLINGS:
Persephone Vanna Lynnford • Sister // 20

SPOUSE:
None

CHILDREN:
None

OTHER SIGNIFICANT FAMILY:
Emma Rose Henning • Grandmother // Alive, 79

PLACE OF BIRTH:
Hampstead, London, England

GENERAL HISTORY:
No one was entirely sure where the youngest Lynnford child’s name had come from. Maybe it was the result of whatever little bit of whimsy a high class woman was allowed to possess. Or perhaps, (and this was the more likely scenario) it was simply her mother paying homage to her favorite movie. Madeline was rather normal compared to her older sister’s name, Persephone, and the girl could not loath it, as she found it somewhat pretty. Baby, which was a clear and evident nod to her mother’s favorite American movie, Dirty Dancing, was something that everyone would call the girl for many years to come. It was odd, since she would eventually grow into a woman, but Baby had irrevocably stuck. It was mostly because she was exceedingly naive, as her face and eyes forever gave away.

She was the baby of the Lynnford family and as such had been given a certain amount of leeway that her sister Persephone had never been afforded. Madeline had always been a wistful sort of creature, so small and breakable that her mother rarely let her out of her sight those first few years of her life, but those years were forgotten quickly for a kind of painful exile. Neither Lynnford child was particularly important to their parents – never as important as the parties, or fashions or guests. They were shooed off into the oblivion of nannies and housekeepers and eventually boarding schools so that their parents could continue on with the lives they’d led before Persephone or Madeline had ever been born.

She followed Sephy around endlessly, thumb stuck in her mouth, blanket dragging behind her in an attempt to recreate whatever attention had been showered upon her in those early years. It never quite worked, though her older sister did because quite protective of the ever quiet Baby, and was forever sticking up for her, even into their young adult years. When she wasn’t following her sister about, the girl found herself painting, or reading, always enamored with the quiet that loneliness provided. It was something that she became quiet accustomed to over the years, withdrawing further from Sephy as the years went by and deeper into a placid, stoic sort of state that bordered on melancholy. But the two stayed as close as sibling will, and Maddie always attributed their success as sisters to being the only people they ever really had, which was made ever more evident when the two of them were home for the summer holiday directly before she was to attend Stanmer Park. Persephone had already been there for a year and Baby was excited to rejoin her sister after a year of lonely exile.

The sweltering, hazy heat that wavered and distorted the light so that nothing looked the same, that was all she remembered from that night. Sephy had pulled her from the bed, ripping her from sleep with a heavy head and dragged her out into the hallway where the air shimmered from the high heat. Madeline thought she heard their mother’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure. It was the last time she would ever hear her. Baby didn’t remember now, what they had deemed the cause of the fire, but she did recall the molten brilliance of their house as it burned to the ground. She was nearly eighteen, Persephone was a year older and they had stood, huddled together in the oddly chilly July night and watched as their parents and all of their worldly possessions turned to ash. No more pictures, no more memories, everything had been swallowed by the fire but their bodies and the clothes on their backs. They had been the lucky ones, the ones to live while their parents had died. She considered herself lucky – lucky that for a moment she had been spared when perhaps she should have been the one sacrificed. She did not understand why, but that would become part of her internal struggle. Madeline fought with the urge to hate herself because she had been left to pick up the pieces, when she had never been capable of doing that with them, let alone without them. The fire had been death and rebirth all in one and it had changed their lives forever.

Stanmer Park was the only place to go, after they’d spent the rest of the summer with their grandmother, which was a welcomed relief if there ever was one. Persephone watched Baby closely that first year, because she had withdrawn further into herself, even further than she had in childhood, which had always worried the older girl more than she cared to admit. But there were a few people who seemed trustworthy enough to Madeline to be allowed in, and she focused on her painting, which was why she was in school in the first place. Perhaps it was not what her parents would have wanted, but then again, Baby didn’t really have to worry about what her parents thought ever again.




MEMBER TITLE: what a concrete mess we live in
ANYTHING ELSE:
Nope, nothing
SAMPLE POST:
She was in a mood – one of those moods where if someone said the wrong thing to her she very well might kill them with her eyes. Baby had never been obscenely violent, although she had come up with quite a few ways to kill a certain girl who had relentlessly made fun of her, not the least involving copious amounts of rat poison and alcohol, but still she found herself in these moods sometimes. It was like the sadness had turned to this unfamiliar rage; it was not the hot, smoldering kind of anger that could fill a person up and sustain them for years, it was this empty sort of malice that sprung up out of nowhere and left the girl feeling spent. It was utterly miserable outside with the sky a constant, flat grey that didn’t allow any light to shine through, and it only added to her horrible mood.

Someone like Tripp probably would have gotten punched, because Baby wasn’t in the mood for jokes and Queenie, well, the girls had their on again off again problems like girls their age will. They were her friends, and she loved them, but sometimes Baby just needed the quiet and her old friend loneliness. They had become rather unacquainted these past ten months in particular, as she’d gotten closer to the others and had slowly forgotten about the sadness that had once been such an inherent part of her. She had thought in those early childhood years, that it had defined her – certainly it had defined her home life, but this was different. It was easy to forget her family, the way they had forgotten her.

She’d spent the night and most of that day skulking about the library, she’d taken a shinning to immediately upon her arrival here. It had nearly the same layout as the one near her family’s home and the drafty windows didn’t bother her, even in the cold that had wrapped itself around the school. There was this group of boys who frequented the place, and she enjoyed watching them as they played out their childish antics. Watching people in her sullen sort of silence hadn’t gotten old and she was sure now that it wouldn’t, especially with this sudden burst of boredom (she had decided that the anger was now boredom – anything to pacify her ever ticking mind). That was the problem: Baby could never quite tack down exactly how she was feeling, and that led to more confusion than was necessary.

Baby didn’t really think it merited thinking about, but confusion himself came in the form of Jett Morse. Fucking Jett, who acted one way around everyone else and a different way when it was just the two of them. How much more confusing could a boy get? Certainly a girl like Baby didn’t need to worry about it though, because she knew her place and she knew that friendship was a special thing; it was a thing that could change people, however subtly it might have been. So she sat on the wide windowsill in an empty room in the upper story of the library, staring out the window, but not really seeing anything. Baby was just trying to clear her head, to find that familiar place where everything was quiet and nothing hurt. That place where nothing could be confusing, because nothing existed there.