She had fallen into silence, and it seemed the world had fallen with her.
Safoo waited beyond a length of patience before becoming aware of their surroundings again. The shivering music of the insects, the far calls of nocturnal creatures. Its as if her silence had pulled him in and he had completely forgotten anything else but it.
Yet still he didn't move, afraid to break the emptiness and afraid of it continuing. Perhaps she was a ghost, to be able to pull him along like a leaf in a spring river. Or perhaps she was just plumb nuts.
Suddenly she roused slightly, the movement graceful, entrancing as her lips parted and she took in a measured breath.
"I'm sorry, you must think me mad." "N-no," Safoo mumbled, shying his gaze away momentarily in guilt. She didn't seem to notice the gesture.
"Quite often I wondered why so many heroes went quietly to their deaths. Men that could've been legend, could've left legacies as great as Malfurion, or tragic as Illidan. I think now, that they had wrapped their stories so deeply in their hearts they believed no one else would comprehend. It is a strange and exposing thing, a insurmountable task like unto trying to explain to someone who's been blind their whole life what color is."
Her gaze lifted from the nothingness it had been pinned on, the black pupils a stark contrast against the red surrounding them. Firelight played in their depths, even though their fire had burned down to smoldering embers.
"It is the most beautiful flower in the meadow that no one will see. That is what our life is."

I've had many names.
Guttershyte, Abomination, Trash, Imbecile, Murderer, Assassin, but the one that has lasted the longest has been Whore. There was a finite moment I had given myself the name Sei, but that had been taken from me at the cost of nearly my life.
A child left on the doorstep of a orphanage, a smattering of foster families, each as dark as the next until the streets became a sanctuary and the other children spokes on the wheel of my isolated world, though always I was even lower than they. Fiercely proud of their human blood. Could you blame them? There was nothing else for them to be proud of.
It is all a blur, the early years. Even the man who managed to catch me as the other children fled the trash bins like a flock of pigeons is cloaked in faded memory. I remember well though, the sharp smell of alcohol on his breath as he dragged me by the hair to the back door of a brothel.
I was his daughter, he needed to pay off debts. Two silver for my baby girl.
How old was I?
Eight.
Eight?
Hard to keep track with ten mouths to feed. Maybe five then.
The woman eyed me coldly as if I was a rotten filet at the fishmonger stall. She motioned to the drunk who transferred ownership of my scalp into her talons, the other hand plunging under the burlap sack someone had dressed me in. Her fingers were ice as they stabbed mercilessly between my legs with efficient professionalism.
I was a street rat, and my maidenhead was already gone. I was about as useful as a dried up well. One copper.
I was one of his four daughters, how dare her. Ten.
Did he sire all his spawn off a troll? Regardless of my obvious breed, I was used goods. Two.
Brothels needed servants, I knew how to wash clothes and be unob.. unobtru-..I knew how to stay out of the way. Five.
The woman curled her upper lip in contempt, sucking in a breath of air through the gap of a missing front tooth as she turned her disdain on me.
In the end, I was worth three copper. The harpy of a woman figured out quickly I did not actually know how to do laundry. Or wash dishes, or even how to use the chamber pot for my needs. After my first beating for having not only been a waste of three copper but had also squatted in the pantry I was put in charge of emptying and cleaning every chamber pot in the brothel, and learned how to do it without being seen or heard at the expense of my first broken bone.
And so I lived invisible for four winters until he arrived.

In that time I learned many things that cemented in my mind why it was so very important to remain unknown to all. A whore's life was brutal. Beatings by clients to the point of death was not uncommon. So was the agony of abortions in the cell the women were locked up in until they either passed the child by help of herbs, or clubs. The ones who contracted diseases that left them smelling foul would vanish to be replaced by fresh recruits. It was not a life I would ever want.
In the mid mornings when the house was still I would creep and clean and steal my meal from the leftovers on the plates I would take to the kitchen.
It was the best time of the day. The whores were in fitful or blissfully dead sleep, the clients gone, the silence almost peaceful. It was my time to be able to sneak into the rooms to retrieve the pots without making a sound. A skill I had perfected.
Imagine my surprise then, when he heard me.
"Little white mouse, sneaking around."
His voice made me jump. The pot slipped in my hands in my fright but I managed to recover it, not caring I had sloshed brown colored urine down the front of my tatty shirt. That crisis averted my focus traveled back to the guest.
The shuttered window behind him let in pin pricks of light, their rays beams in the dust that floated in the air. Only his silhouette was visible, his features masked in shadow.
"Come closer, little mouse. Let me look at you."
I took a timid step forward, blinking when the sunbeams blinded me as I passed through them. Stopping a safe distance away I kept the pot crushed to my chest, my heart a crazed off-beat tune in my ears.
"Are you an acolyte?"
Not knowing that word, I shook my head.
"Closer, little mouse. Closer."
My mouth went dry. Obediently another shuffled step, my gaze moving from the outlined man to the very still woman lying in a puddle of black liquid at his feet. Without knowing it I moved forward of my own volition until the sun was out of my eyes and I could see clearly her throat had been slit with the clean precision of a master.
"Why is she dead, little mouse?" he queried in a graveled voice.
I looked away from the corpse at the man who was now visible. His face was deeply weathered and heavily scarred, making the mint green of his eyes all the more startling. His legs were spread and elbows resting on his knees, comfortable yet in a position to move quickly. We studied each other for a long time, me surmising the man was well past forty and though he could be violent had no desire for it. It was just his job.
I licked my lips, ignoring the stench of piss that was burning my nose.
"She found out you are an Assassin."
His unattractive thick lips creased in the barest hints of a smile, though his eyes remained empty.
"Clever little mouse. I bet you see all sorts of things you shouldn't, don't you?"
The hairs on the back of my neck were raised, but I fought the urge to tremble before him.
"Teach me."
This time, the smile reached his eyes. "Get out."
I let the pot drop, and fled like a demon was after me.