Aelphaba had been deteriorating for a long while, even before Liir was born things had started to crumble. It started small, just locking away in her study for increasingly extended periods of time, she would go for walks when she though everybody asleep, though the odd night Little Elphie and her sister Gabbie would hear their mother leave and watch out their bedroom window together to see where the older verdant woman would go to so late at night. Then she would start to get lost in her thoughts, paying less and less attention to what was around her.
Eventually, she would start muttering to herself, at voices nobody else was hearing, or reply to what seemed a one sided conversation. Slowly this developed into screams, and when she did sleep the night terrors and hallucinations from a past most foul at these terrors she did wake. After some time she stopped sleeping, instead passing out when her body refused to function any more. The insomnia reached dangerous levels, willing sleep to come only to have learned should she close her eyes the horrors that plagued her would return steadfast. She lashed out during her episodes, striking the forms around her as the voices started to grow louder and louder, more malicious in their words when they were not screaming. The agony she heard was not short of that from her own screams as a young adolescent, or even those torn from Aelphaba's throat during the rape which had lead to her pregnancy with the youngest Thropp.
The nightmare of her past had been surfacing for a long while now.