The more he thought about Endrith and the battle, the less he thought of them.
He expected more memories to come, but instead, something else surfaced.
Someone else.
A girl.
He stopped his drifting once more.
Unlike the memories of Endrith, these did not arrive with any kind of violence or bang.
The recollection came quietly, having waited patiently for him to notice it.
A name settled with ease.
Sonder.
There had been many people throughout his life.
Enemies, allies, followers, victims.
People who admired him for far less than they should have.
People who hated him for reasons that were entirely justified.
Faces blurred and names faded.
Decades left little impression.
But not her.
Not Sonder.
She remained.
Not perfectly, as the details slipped through his grasp whenever he reached too quickly, but still, she remained.
She was small and hadn't been especially imposing.
Certainly not the sort of person anyone would mistake for a great sorceress at first glance.
And yet, fragile was never the correct word.
She had endured much.
He found himself wondering what she would be doing right now, or what she looked like.
If "now" even meant anything.
How much time had passed?
He had no way of knowing.
If enough time had gone by, perhaps she had become an old woman.
The thought lingered only briefly before another memory corrected it.
Undead.
Right.
She would not age as others did.
Or perhaps she would.
Very slowly.
He could not remember the particulars.
He hoped she was well.
He had wished for many outcomes throughout his life.
Rarely had he simply wished for another person's happiness.
He assumed his body was gone, destroyed.
Or perhaps it still existed somewhere, breathing without him.
He found that possibility strangely amusing.
If so, someone else would have found it.
Perhaps buried it, burned it, or studied it.
Maybe he was somewhere out in the wilderness, nature having claimed him at last.
Or perhaps it remained alive, but empty.
Whatever had become of his body lay beyond his reach.
He hoped that Sonder had gone on without him and found people kinder than himself.
People who were capable of teaching her things he never could.
Good people.
He searched his memory for more.
Conversations, travels, places they had visited together.
But little came, mostly impressions.
He remembered walking beside her, explaining things and answering questions.
Occasionally refusing to answer them, simply because he could.
He remembered that she listened.
She didn't just wait for her turn to speak.
She argued a few times, but respectfully.
As respectfully as a young person could.
They had not spent very long together.
Compared to the span of his life, it had scarcely been any time at all.
He had intended there to be more.
Another conversation postponed until tomorrow.
Tomorrow, it seemed, had possessed far less certainty than he had assumed.