moofestgirl

"You'll never be beautiful, Leralia. There's too much of your blood-mother in you." It was Kasea, her father's first-wife who'd said that, when Leralia was still young and untrained enough to indulge in occasional fits of vanity. Faced, for the first time, with man who was to be her husband, Leralia thought again of those words. Too much of her blood-mother to ever be beautiful: hair too curly, face too square, breasts too small. But there was value to blood beyond beauty, value enough that she now sat in a room with a wealthy man who would take her as his first-wife. As her mother had been, until her death had given that position to Kasea.