How had it come to this?
Just yesterday it seemed she was pregnant, ready to foal. She had given birth to three gorgeous girls who had been raised in the Flock with beauty and grace. Vanmoriel. Vaniania. Vanwyn. She was completely loyal to the Flock, dedicated to everything about it. She had plans--hopes, and dreams.
She played with her jewels as they glistened in the moonlight. So much beauty, and suddenly it felt like ash in her mouth. When had she ever thought that could be? When had she ever felt that beauty was not enough? Not ever. Her mother had been the same. Her whole life had been raised in beauty. Ornaments and baubles were necessities. She'd groomed her girls in her likeness.
Vanity. That's what they called it.
Vanity.
Now her family was split, a part of them in exile from the Flock--a whole generation of beautiful descendants she might never see. Grandchilren, great-grandchildren....Vanwyn had been devastated to learn that her daughter had fled and even more devastated when her daughter Vanrui had led her son Mikas'Nell from the Flock. Her lover Honovi had gone then too.
Vanrui had been cast aside by her mother, who was angry and distraught at the loss of so much. For the first time, Vanya knew true loss. She had lost trinkets, she had lost males, she had lost bits and pieces of possessions...but this was different and more terrible. This was tangible, it was lives suddenly gone. Then there had been Vanrui who had had children outside the Flock and only brought one home, in secret and half grown.
A part of her warred against herself. It was disloyalty to her daughter what he was thinking, to her sisters, to her Flock. Yet, it was her own kind of vanity. How could she let a part of her go? Beautiful grandchildren and great-grands she would never see. A whole line of beauty simply gone.
She was angry and bitter. There might be family out there she would never know, would never even know she lost. To seek them out would be wrong--to her daughter, to the children and grandchildren that stayed. But her heart yearned for them, the beauty of them just beyond her reach.
It was vanity perhaps and a strange sense of love. Was it wrong to want to see her family? It was like they were supposed to be dead, but they were just beyond if only she could reach them.
But they weren't dead, she could see them. But should she? Her heart warred with her mind. Her loyalties and her vanity fought against each other until she wasn't sure what to do. They were alive though. That meant something.
