"No." She agreed with a breathe almost a laugh as the edges of her lips tilted up ever so slightly. It was a truth their kind knew well enough. They faded from their old lives, blended into the shadows of the world around them. A shadow couldn't go back, a faded memory remained just that - a memory.

Unlike Ishmael she knew the harm in looking back, the daggers and edges of the world she had lived in. The tangled webs hidden among the flowers. That life had toughened her, despite the soft hands, the gentle glances, there had been horror there too. Her soften hands was weak as the memory she was now. But those were the wounds that could ache like a once broken bone in a coming storm. They were only the memory of the hurt not the pain itself. "No." The word was a whisper between them, but it the truth, however, ever much she disliked it.

She straightened ever so slightly and returned her eyes to his own. "Would you like to know?" She had never even told Mari, she had hidden this part of herself as far inside herself as she could, but Ishmael.... he wasn't a shadow in this story and he deserved to know.