As I travel along my planned route, I feel sad, I feel frustrated. Jorgen gave me a lot in this life. He gave me strength, he gave me a plan for my life, he gave me access to Hannah and in turn, magic. He gave me money, my armor, my sword and shield. He gave me pain. I had wanted to repay all of it. Contrary to normal kids, I was already grown up once. I had taken much from my parents in my previous life without minding it because they were my parents, and I was a kid who did not know anything but what they taught me and brought me up to be.

But Jorgen was different. He wasn't my parent, this life or previous one. He didn't have to do anything, no expectation was placed on him. Sure I toyed with the idea of coming back and kicking his ass once I got stronger as a repayment for the various tortures he subjected me to, but I still spent seven years with him. He felt an indomitable figure that would never topple. Even as he grew weaker day by day in the end, I somehow felt he would always be stronger than me. But he couldn't be. He is gone.

I arrive at the cabin next to the dungeon, and search it for Hannah, but she is nowhere to be found. That is, until I start looking outside in desperation. There Hannah is, standing still, buck naked with her back to me. She doesn't look good, very wrinkly. I thought she decided how to look. I know she looked young, presumably like before, when Yuro saw her, so what happened to make her do this? She is not only wrinkly, she is also looking discolored, partly brown, I can hardly recognize her.

"Hannah!" I call out to her. She doesn't turn her head, but simply answers. The voice is wrong. She normally sounded warm, comforting, cheerful, but this is a raspy, low tone that leaves her. "Hannah what happened to you?"

"Ah, this? This is my choice." She says in the raspy voice. "I told you dryads live until they are killed, right? Well, truth is we dryads usually don't stick around for too long. Sooner or later life just gets to you, you know, and it just ends up being easier to be a tree than a person. I could see you wondered why I lived away from all but Jorgen, well. This is why. I have been walking around for some 500 years already, and it is high time I rest."

Hannah is going too? It feels... unfair. Like she is just bailing on it. Akin to committing suicide.

"Can you at least tell me... What his final moments were?"

"Remember how he basically chased you out of the city? He wanted to rest, but he didn't want to appear weak in front of you. The months since your departure was mostly spent with him in bed, increasingly needing me to nurse him, before he quietly slept in to the eternity."

I am overcome with this feeling of helplessness. He was so bad off? How come I didn't notice? Couldn't I have done anything to ease his pain? Or help him get better? It feels... unfair.

"What happens to people after they die?" I ask. My old world had its fair share of customs to help deal with death. I hope to get a little bit of closure from this. This world has an actual, interfering God and actual magic. I hope I can put some stock into it.

"I do not know the human way. But the dryad way tells us that those who are left us to soon, will eventually return in some shape or another, to give back to those they are indebted to, to live out the regrets they had, and those content with their lives, will simply disappear into nothing. I believe Jorgen was of the latter."

Disappear unto nothing, huh? Seems this world doesn't have a culture around graves, but I feel like I have to do something. And so, I cut a thin tree with my sword and whittle it with my carving knife, finally leaving a message. I don't know the written language here, so in good old plain English it says.

"Here lived a man named Jorgen. Great hunter, beloved husband and father. Rest in peace."

"What are you doing?" Hannah asks. I don't think she can see any more, but she must still detect me. by hearing or magic.

"Making a marker, signifying a great man and beloved man once lived here."

"You know, in a way he is not completely gone. We dryads, when we return to our original form we will use what we have... collected from our beloved ones. In a couple of hundred years, dryads, sons and daughters of Jorgen, will roam this land, and that at least gives me some solace."

I put the expensive liquor I bought for him by the marker. And put my hands together in prayer. I don't know what I am doing by now, but it helps... it helps...

"I wanted to show him how strong I could become." I notice myself crying as I have fully accepted that Jorgen is gone.

"I wanted to show him that I can use two magics at once now. I wanted to become a hunter and show him. I... I..."

Hannah doesn't say anything. I simply lay down. It is already late in the day, night even. I close my eyes and I sleep for the first time in a while...