isadora ryanne nielsen was brought into the world on a very cold day in new york city where her family was living. her two older brothers welcomed her into the family, delighted by the little pink girl and what it would mean to their family dynamic. she was a willful and excitable child and it took more than one person looking after her because as soon as a head was turned, she was gone. she loved the outdoors and enjoyed her life and her childhood in new york city.
in the first grade, when someone commented on how they had a grandmother isadora, she demanded that her parents call her ryan, like her father. it was a shortened version of her middle name and she felt it suited her better. she would be a high maintenance child all through her teenage years and beyond. one of the only things she truly loved and could focus on completely, was dance. and dance was where she would meet the best friend she would ever know, anya prince.
she got into a lot of trouble in school because she couldn't seem to focus on anything. she would have rather talked to her classmates than sat through a lesson she had no interest in. it got especially worse as she went into high school. boys became one of her prime directives. the problem was that she was a smart girl, she just didn't apply herself. she was also easily bored, so if it didn't make her think, she wasn't interested. she was on the fast track to barely graduating when it happened.
when she was sixteen, she was in the back of a taxi on her way home from hanging out with her friends. a vehicle going too fast t-boned the taxi on her side. she was taken to the nearest hospital and then airlifted to a children's hospital where they could better care for her. nearly every bone in her body had been broken, and the trauma to her head rendered her blind. she was put into a medically induced coma for a month while her body repaired itself. it took many surgeries and months of rehabilitation before she could walk out of the hospital. but she would always walk with the hint of a limp and not quite have the full range of motion in her left arm.
she was told that the blindness was a temporary condition and that as soon as the swelling in her head went down, it should go away. it took a good six months before she was able to see even shadows. eventually her sight did return, but it was severely impaired and required additional surgeries and corrective lenses before she could see clearly once more.
but home life after her accident often made her wish she'd died at the scene. her mother doted on her, waited on her hand and foot and kept an eagle eye on her. after a year of suffering her mother's coddling, she decided to move out. but having been in the accident in the middle of her junior year in high school, izzy fell behind in her education and didn't return for her senior year. instead, she took classes at an adult education center and earned her diploma that way.
education beyond that, though, and izzy wasn't interested. during her recovery, she'd taken an interest in the occult. being blind for some time left her with the ability to focus on her other senses. touch and hearing most especially. whenever hands were presented to her, she ran her fingers over their palms, trying to get a sense of what the person was like (whether she knew them already or not). when one of her nurses saw this new interest, she bought her books on palm reading and tarot cards, she even bought her first deck, one that was specially designed for the visually impaired.
when she recovered, the interest didn't wane. she read everything she could get her hands on. she took classes and learned everything she could. she even trained under one of the best mediums in the city. she wanted to read palms and tarot cards for a living. it was her passion. her parents didn't understand it, and she couldn't explain it to them, but for whatever reason they tolerated it. she wanted to open her own shop, even, but her parents weren't keen on helping her go that far. it wouldn't be until seven years later, when she was twenty-five, that the opportunity would present itself. her father died of a massive heart attack and when a good deal of his money was divided among she and her brothers, she was able to open her shop, Hokus and Pokus.