She returned to the room with a sense of growing dread. It was an emotion that built up inside of her at the thought of her daughter, often bleeding swiftly into guilt. Elvira was her child, and she was just a little girl. There was nothing wrong with her - Surely, Alaine simply imagined the glints of wickedness in her shallow raptor eyes. It was these small needles of guilt that drove her to doubt herself. Today, the apothecary had gone out and found a gift for her surly daughter - slightly the worse for wear, a small toy rabbit with one yellow eye and one red. The toy disturbed her slightly. It was perfect.

The chamber was strewn with what she assumed at first to be little white snowflakes. Then, her footpaw came into contact with a hard black bead, the back of which was a small upward-thrusting plastic hook which had kept it within the bear's head. With a yelp, the woman dropped the item she had been carrying. It squeaked slightly when it hit the dull wooden floorboards. Emerald eyes sought the form of her daughter, and such a perfect creature she was - so healthy, so dominant, so painfully beautiful - in a battle on the floor with the final scrap of teddy's face.

"Elvira! What have you done," The Winters woman chided crossly, stopping to wipe away the small bead of blood on the underside of her footpaw.

The girl didn't seem to comprehend the intent of disciplinary words. It was as though there were aspects of her development stage that were missing - holes in the tapestry of Elvira. Through these little snags and tears, Alaine saw only her own failure as a mother, and strived to hold her dismay at the girl's reaction in check.

There was something about the reptilian ferocity of her eyes, so unlike those of her brother, that sent those familiar chills down the healer's spine. But again, that familiar guilt - She was a child. Just a child. "Elvira," The Apothecary's voice was calm but firm, hiding the small insecurities that bubbles as weakness within her, "When mama brings you a treat, you must show manners. With anybody, you must be polite. It is impolite to snatch," Emerald eyes, shadowed by deep bruise-like bags, gazed intently at the small, fat form of her daughter as one would a baby snake. Not venomous yet, but the instinct to be wary was still there, embedded within her flesh.

She considered taking the toy, but wearily decided against it. Placing her paw gingerly back on the ground, the cream collie rose and padded over to the separate bundle where Elijah slept, in his own little cardboard box. She had to separate the pups while she was away, or Elvira would chew relentlessly on her innocent yet mentally incomplete sibling.

Unlike Elijah, who's silence disturbed her in its wrongness, Elvira's wordless glare served only to irritate the tired mother. Oh, her daughter was well capable of verbal communication - 'No' and 'Mine' being veritable favourites - and her arrogant tilt of sharp little maw proved that she had been capable of understanding everything the collie had said.

A scowl darkened Alaine's exotic face, a face her daughter had stolen and wore to absolute, disastrous perfection. There was no doubt in the Apothecary's mind that Elvira would be a heart-stopper; It was simply those predatory de le poer eyes that spoke of the predator embedded within the pretty little girl. Leaving Elijah's box, she padded back over to the child, who sat with Sphinx-like precision over the tattered body of the toy rabbit. Its one ruby eye glinted from around a little ivory paw at the troubled mother.

"You will behave. I am your mother, and you will acknowledge me when I speak to you." Her accented voice had lost its tentative tone. The colliewoman's ivory hand dipped down to take one floppy ear and pull the doll away from her daughter.

Rather than neatly execute a retrieval of the dropped toy, it seemed Alaine had underestimated her daughter's possessive grit. Little puppy teeth had fastened onto the rabbit's plush head and dragged the girl's form along with it, slumped across the piles of rags and then up to dangle comically above the air.

Even as she held the pup at an arm's length, Alaine's insides contracted with a mixture of anger and guilt. Her emerald eyes remained morbidly fascinated, watching the little limbs writhing for purchase on the soft flesh of her own hand. It wouldn't have done Elvira much good, even if they had - Her teeth may have been getting increasingly sharp, but her claws were still tiny little things, insubstantial to the Apothecary woman.

Watching the body of her daughter wriggling so fanatically had a strange effect on the colliewoman. As she gazed on, slow to retaliate, a small bubble of what was undeniably pure dislike, so vile within the mind of a maternal creature, popped to release its toxic gas. Perhaps she would have diagnosed herself with some sort of post-birth depressive condition, but as it was, her mind seemed to gather some sort of desperate pleasure at seeing her frustrating daughter so helpless.

Disgusted by herself, Alaine dropped the toy, and with it, her daughter. Thankfully, the mattress below was extremely well-padded - It would have taken a fall much larger than that to do any serious damage. Regardless, the mother gasped, aghast at her own actions and more cross than ever at the angelic-appearing little girl. A growl rumbled from her silky throat.

She'd never had to physically reprimand a child before. Caillen had always been a willing, if not absentminded child, and he had done as he was told. Odette was obsessed with obeying her mother, and Elijah... Provided the poor fool knew what was required of him, he was eager enough to please her.

Elvira was different. She showed no moral compass, and for many days now Alaine had justified it with her age. But there would come a time when such excuses could no longer be made, and the harried mother would have to face facts. Nana, the docile broodmare, adored her simple son, but seemed to despise Elvira as much as the little girl in turn despised the horse. If she were to believe that the prey-animal had keen skills in observing the goodness behind Elijah's thickness, then so too would she eventually have to accepted that the mare's mistrust for her daughter was based on instinctual grounds.

Her anger changed her body into its Lupus form; Long limbs melting to shorter ones, arms into forelegs. It was a transformation that her children instinctively recognised but had yet to understand, or do, themselves. In her lupus form, the collie was much closer to her daughter. Perhaps a connection could be made in this way. "You have displeased me," She said in a strict voice, fluffy tail raised high, "And if you do not cease your growlings, you'll wake your brother." The urge to reprimand her daughter in a more natural, primitive way crossed her mind - A hard nip of displeasure had quelled her stubborn nature before. It would get progressively more difficult as the girl aged, though, and this was a tact she wanted to save till it was duly necessary.

It was disturbing, how swiftly her daughter's emotions could twist themselves into a situation such as this one. All children needed discipline as they grew - This was how they became well-rounded individuals, capable of recognising the fallacy of their own existence and the value of opinions that differed to theirs.

For a time, Alaine had been able to curb her daughter's rebellious wickedness with no more than a gentle nudge of her paw, a separation of gums from cloth. But she was older now, and such simple demonstrations would not solve the stand-off at hand. The time called for a more severe punishment, something physical and catalytic, something that would send her daughter back onto the path of straight and narrow.

But the girl's raptor-yellow eyes were staring at her, slitted with wariness and a self-indulgent righteousness. A slight pressure at her leg alerted the woman to the presence of her son - Sweet, strange Elijah. She thought that maybe she loved the boy, but there was a hollowness in her chest where love for his sister should have sat. They were both so... So Wrong. Had Dea given her a curse in this disguise as a blessing? She had prayed for children, bled for children, and now they had come.

Her paw itched, wanting to smack the girl right across her chubby face. But there was a strange terror inside of her. Elvira was Wrong, and this wrongness stemmed from the womb itself, from the spirit-magic of Morrigan and from the tainted blood of her father. It was all Alaine's fault.

The paw that should have reprimanded remained grounded. A sense of desolation stole over her. "You are Wrong, girl. Lugh has stolen your heart, and if you do not change, He will come for the rest of you." Her accented voice was a mumble, the anger fast-fading into a sort of relief that she could pin the blame on something other than herself. Emerald eyes lowered to Elijah, no longer wanting to look on her daughter. He had yet to speak words, although Elvira now could, and this worried her too. "Are you hungry, mo croi?" She asked of him softly.

In her peripherals, the mother could see Elvira adjusting to the new situation, in which she was not central to everyone's attentions. Although it had been a latent form of punishment, it was one that Alaine was beginning to employ often in favour over physical discipline.

Elijah was no stranger to the tactic himself, although the mother subconsciously knew that his central line of focus had nothing to do with purposeful ignorance. It seemed the boy simply couldn't focus on more than one thing at a time. She had not been around to witness his bizarre and somewhat enthralling ability to sense and predict the violent actions of those around him, an ability that no doubt frustrated Vira to the core.

The black-faced boy gave her a wide, plastic smile. She forced a smile in return. "Well then, little one, I shall get you some food." A growl echoed her words, but purposefully, the woman ignored her violent spawn. Retrieving a strip of dried deer-meat stored in her satchel, which had slouched on the floor now that she was in a quadruped form, the collie delicately held it out in her maw to the merle boychild. It was time they started chewing and digesting more solids.