The door to Venessa's bedroom opens and her mother, Diane, walks in, smiling brightly.
"Good morning, my treasure," She coos, walking up behind her daughter and draping her arms around her in a hug. Diane did sincerely love her daughter and had never minded about her condition as a "Shunned". That being said, she couldn't deny that keeping her status a secret had been a challenge. The only people who knew were her, Venessa's nurser, and Diane's three handmaidens. Fortunately, those four women were as loyal as could be to Diane and loved Venessa almost as much as her mother did. It had been fairly easy to conceal for the early years of her life. Venessa's nurse or mother were expected to follow her around when she had been a child, so they could always whisk her away from sight anytime she needed a change even after such things were expected. Also, while her father was by no means a cruel man he was also not the type to be too interested in the daily activities of his young daughter. It also helped that their family's estate was fairly far out from the main city of the region and they didn't often have visitors when Venessa was younger. Even when they did it was usually easy for Venessa to either not appear because she was "feeling sick", or just slip away after a token appearance since she was too young for much of the visitors to be too interested in her.
Unfortunately, the challenge had been growing steadily harder as Venessa had grown older. After all, Venessa was Diane's only child and therefore as she became a woman, more and more people were growing interested in her as the heiress of the family. The bright side had been that she didn't seem suffer from all the common symptoms of the Shunned so even now it was hard to tell at sight, but now it seemed that her father was beginning to take more and more of an interest in both her life and having people over to the manor, which brings Diane to something she needs to talk with her daughter about.
"Now the, Venessa," Diane starts as she gingerly removes her daughter's nightgown and leads her into a back room where a padded changing table is waiting. "I'm sure you remember that your father is throwing a rather large party tonight. You will have to make an appearance, well...quite a few appearances really."
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