"Dancing Lights"- Fara, Vala
Most days, Vala rules with little Fara on one hip- while she is still small enough to carry. It isn’t overprotectiveness, per se- though Fara has a vexing knack for slipping her caregivers and getting into all sorts of mischief. It’s just that there is so much to teach her only daughter, and she can already feel it slipping faster and faster- little tangle-haired Fara, already walking and running and chattering when it seems like yesterday she was still a babe. It feels like Vala will blink and she’ll be grown and left to lead their clan alone.
“Ah-ah, look but don’t touch,” she chides, disentangling those chubby little fingers from the rope net holding the jars of firebugs. It’s useless- Fara can’t help but touch everything- but the last thing they need is to pull the whole thing down on their heads. She lifts out a single jar and sets it in Fara’s hands, wrapping her own around them to support it.
“Are they happy in there?” Fara asks with a frown staring intently at the creature floating placidly in the glass orb, occasionally bumping the side. It takes Vala a moment to answer.
“I like to think so.” She supposes she doesn’t really know- doesn’t really even know if they can feel happiness. They are part of Thra, and the gelfling care for them well, but it has never occurred to her to wonder if they have any sort of unfulfilled higher calling. “We feed them nectar from the flowers, and in return they provide us with light. We help each other.”
Fara looks unconvinced, her frown deepening in the firebug’s flickering glow. “I guess. I wouldn’t want to live in a jar.”
There is another lesson here- the lesson that sometimes you have a duty and purpose to fulfil whether it makes you happy or not- but that one she saves for another day, or perhaps another trine. There is also something to be said for the compassion to care for something others see as a mere tool, and perhaps that is more important. That is what will someday make her great.
Chuckling, she plants a kiss on Fara’s messy head. “No, I don’t suppose you would. Now come on, how would you like to stretch your wings a bit before supper?” Fara’s excited cry is all the answer she needs, and she heads for the door, leaving the throne room and its twinkling glow behind.