Cecilia

Cecilia is a small, skinny, thin-furred, grey German Shepherd mix. She is covered in scars from fights, fleas, and mange, and her ears, which are always down, are torn to bits.

Cecilia's life has essentially been a non-stop series of fighting, lying, and sleepless nights. She likes to think of herself as creative and kind, but really, she can always default back to survival mode if things don't go her way.

Cecilia was born as a stray in the dump. Her quality of life there was extremely poor; with very few resources to go around, dogs only ate if they fought for their food. Cecilia, being small and feeble, learned to manipulate emotions to get her way, always playing up her suffering to get what she needed.

During a flood, she caught her lucky break- a family of Gang dogs searching for their long-lost sister: Slate. Cecilia saw an opportunity she simply couldn't pass up, and told them that she was in fact Slate. They took her home without question and nursed her back to health. Although she was just using them for food and shelter in the beginning, she started getting genuinely attached to the family, and felt very comfortable in their home. She finally had the family she needed, and so, she started reaching her full potential.

Not long after Cecilia's recovery, strange things began happening in the territory; dogs were disappearing without a trace every night, no clues. Cecilia ran into Thistle, a young police dog, and hesitantly agreed to help him investigate the kidnappings. They eventually discovered together that a pack of strays called the King's Blood were kidnapping these dogs to retrain them as soldiers in their growing army. Cecilia knew what needed to be done; she told her family, and with lots of persuasion, somehow convinced the Gangs to ally with the police in order to take out the King's Blood.

It was the Blood War that truly led to the end of Cecilia's charade; Cerberus spotted the /real/ Slate out in the battlefield, and realized what was happening. He exiled Cecilia, and although she thought she'd changed, she threatened and fought him before she left, truly burning the bridge. Freezing and alone, she turned to Thistle, and told him everything- he trusted her, and allowed her to stay with him.

It took Cecilia a little while to get back on her feet after having to leave Hellfire, but she eventually started training as a police dog. Despite knowing many inside details about the Gangs, she refused to help the PD find them; unfortunately, a raid was carried out anyway, and she had to participate. The suffering and injustice she saw during that raid was so overwhelming that, after helping a large group of dogs escape, she quit her training and became a therapy dog instead. She did this with the hope that she could fix the systematic issues from the inside and help rehabilitate strays without having to participate in the bloodshed.

Thistle and Cecilia welcomed their sons, Orthus and Bruno into the world a short while later. Their family is now a little dysfunctional, with a lot of tension between Cecilia and Thistle due to their opposing morals. She doesn't have much in common with Orthus, who's all about the police life, and Bruno doesn't seem to want to talk to anybody, so they simply don't interact much.