Since her reawakening, that’s what she was calling, and her changed Shadow name, memories of all kinds had begun flooding her mind.

Some wonderful, some painful. And it was those painful ones that struck her the hardest, the ones that kept her awake at night. Sitting on the floor, pictures scattered around her, a drink in her hand.

Music played softly beside her,

‘Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly
I turned on the lights, the TV and the radio
Still, I can't escape the ghost of you
What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is the life that I recognize?
Gone away.’

Tears, at this point, had long sense dried up, there were no more to shed. Was that a good thing? Or a sign of her heart hardening? She didn’t know, and actually, didn’t care anymore.

A hand absently picks up a picture, gray eyes looking at the two smiling girls, fourteen at the time, young and filled with dreams. Each in a costume, makeup applied and ready to begin the nights show. One a contortionist, the other a high-flying acrobat. But best friends, a true sisterly bond.

It had been taken the night the accident happened. The night her best friend fell. The sound still replayed in her head over and over. The image of her friend laying broken on the ground, eyes lifeless and cold, staring at nothing.

‘Where is my friend when I need you most?
Gone away
But, I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.’

There were some wounds, some damage, that time couldn’t heal and couldn’t erase. God knows she had tried. Various drugs, drinks and magic had done nothing to take those memories away. How do you heal the pain of losing the one person in the world who knew you and you trusted?

But this new path, the path of Ecstasy, was opening her eyes to new things. That death was as much a fact life as anything else. Being an Acanthus had taught her everyone had a preset destiny, one that couldn’t and shouldn’t be changed. Being a Shaman was interconnecting with that, weaving things learned long ago to things learned now.

Was this the part of growing and learning who you were? Could past memories be forgotten? If not forgotten, made less painful?

Still so many questions left to answer.

‘Every one
Is my world, I will learn to survive
Any one
Is my world, I will learn to survive.’