Opalin had come to the conclusion that she would never understand children.

She stepped carefully over the scattered playthings, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Such wanton carelessness would never have been tolerated in her own colony, and the roughly wolven body had the scars to prove it.

After a moment the demon found her young charge sprawled in a corner buried in a pile of stuffed animals. Better to pluck them full-grown from the wild than deal with this mess. She gently lifted the child up with a spell, then maneuvered the sleeping form back towards its bedroom.

Remnant personalities could hardly be more trouble than twenty years of servitude to something with the brain of a rat. Carefully retracting her claws, the pair moved into the uncarpeted corridor.