"When you meet a friend from long ago, you might have trouble reconciling the person you used to know with the person standing before you. They've lived a life without you for quite some time, and that's changed them in ways you can only catch glimpses of in that first reunion. Perhaps they stopped growing their hair out or started shaving every day. Whatever small changes you see, you'll feel a million more beneath the surface. But they're still your friend. Or are they?"

The page in front of me sat as blank as it was a year ago. When I felt them wake, wherever the two of them were, I returned to the tower. I wanted to be here when they arrived, no matter how long I had to wait. So I took up a new project. Or, more aptly, I resumed an old task. I started expanding the scope of the guides on the shelves within these walls. I noted down the formulae and functions of thousands more spells. I drew accurate depictions of a hundred more weapon forms. I created accurate texts for more than a lifetime's worth of knowledge day after day.

The shelves always had a spot for a new volume. The rooms always had enough room for another shelf, and the tower itself always had space for another room. I never ran low on resources or room for finished works. But one year ago, after another insanity-inducing length of time, I ran out of knowledge to commit to text.

I was not the one who looked into the soul and found the answers of the universe. He taught me what he learned, and he wrote any text in this place on the subject. I was not the one who found the source of voices I'd long stopped hearing. That was a feat she achieved alone. She taught me to listen to those voices again, and how to find what was speaking. But we'd written the volume teaching one how to do that together. So for the past year, I'd sat in this chair with nothing to write, nothing new to commit to the page. I knew I had nothing more to give, and I was more than aware that I'd exhausted my expertise. But I was still unwilling to stand and accept this reality.

Whispers of condolences and thanks raked through the shadows. They were voices with no sound, words with no form, emotions with no weight. Thanks for so much new knowledge from so many places around the world. Condolences for my stagnation, my failure to find more in the world despite my life. Both felt meaningless to me. That one speaking felt neither emotion. They only said what they thought would be correct.

But those whispers continued. For how long, I do not know. Words etched in stones without creating a speck of dust. Winds blew through windows without touching the flame of a candle. Emotions understood by an entity that knows it could never feel them the same way. All of it fell on deaf ears and empty eyes.

It wasn't disdain that made me ignore those words. It was not apathy that led me to disregard those projected emotions. I felt no ill will for the entity trying to console me for finding the end of what I know. But I could not bring myself to acknowledge these things.

So together, we waited, alone beside each other. We waited, and waited, and eventually, we both felt the familiar sting that was as heartbreaking as it was comforting.

"Yo, been a while." He said with a large, kind grin. His skin was light brown, his eyes and hair black. I could see he'd cut his hair short, but it was untamed and sticking out everywhere. Per usual, fate had blessed my friend with a face fit to be called handsome, though his face was rounder than last time. He wore a sleeveless shirt and short-legged pants. Even up on this mountain, his attire wasn't too much of an oddity in the summer. But I had to imagine he was no longer the type to care about the weather. He carried a simple wooden staff wrapped with a green vine and a single burlap sack of traveling goods. A stark contrast to how prepared he'd been during any travel the last I saw him. He was about twenty years old, with a fine layer of muscle across his entire body. He looked less like a scholar now and more like a farmhand from a far-off island.

Gazing at him now, I managed for only an instant to overlay many of his past faces upon the new one. I saw him as he once was. He had brown hair, then blond, then gold and white. Then the color returned to the current black. I watched his eyes and saw them jump from yellow to grey to blue to brown. Finally, they settled back on the new black ones. Gazing at him now, I could see my old friend; I could see everyone from the man who taught me about the soul to the orphan I'd taught about magic.

Then he opened his mouth again, and the spell was broken.

"I see you haven't changed one bit. Been busy, I hope." He spoke with a tone I could not imagine coming from any of his past selves. It was one of odd jest. No joke was made. No laugh was expected. But when he spoke, he laid on a coating of humor to clear any suspicions he meant harm with his words.

"I have been working to do my share of the work. I see you are well?" I spoke cordially despite my feelings.

"Good, good, can't have you being lazy. Not that I can call you on that. How long was I away?" He asked with the barest hint of genuine curiosity. "From the stuff around here, it wouldn't look that long, but I'd never even heard of the country I was born in." He laughed at the remark while giving me little room to answer his previous question. "Man, even with you being a pain to talk to, it's good to see you." He said with a smile.

I could see it in his eyes. He knew who I was. I could see the twinkle of recollection as his memories of me were filtered by his experience in this life. I had no doubt he remembered who he was before, what he'd agreed to. Looking past the orbs in his head, past that twinkle, and into his mind, I could tell he had come here fully willing to honor a deal he'd made before his birth. He hadn't come here out of curiosity but comradery.

Despite this, I could not call him the same man.

I saw it in his step. His gait more relaxed and assured. I heard it in his words. They lacked that edge of suspicion they once had. I felt it in his actions. Once fixed on the pursuit of knowledge, his eyes now wandered to the sky in longing. Previously too on edge to purposely put his back to me, he willingly turned away from me to look around the scenery. In every facet of his life, I felt the difference. But the worst was his eyes; it was always his eyes. They knew me, they felt for me, but they told me everything I needed to know to answer a question I wish I'd never asked.

This person remembered being my friend. But he was not who I once gave that monicker.

The disciple wrought with suspicion was dead. And in his place stood someone I did not yet know.

As it was every time before, as it would always be, looking at someone stand where my friend had before was heartbreaking. And I still had to deal with it once more in this era. She was closing in, her pace well below what it once was.

When she arrived, I felt that sting of despair and hope. I was elated that she'd chosen to return here. But I was dreading facing her and accepting reality. My emotions warred in my head. Still, I put on the relevant front and had him accompany me to greet her. I'd face her the same as I had him. I would not show them my grief because, to them, there was not yet anything to grieve. I would face her with a calm, brave demeanor. It was the least I could do for everything they'd done for me, to accept them as they are, not berate them for who they weren't.

Watching her walk up the path to the tower was painful. Like him, it was visibly apparent she had changed. Last I saw her, she wore every weapon she could. Each had been a token taken as a reward, or a trophy won in combat. Now, she sported none of these. If she carried a weapon, it was now heavily concealed, not out in the open as it once was. Her stride was no longer as aggressive, her steps no longer as hurried or long. She walked calmly, primly, ladylike. Despite hiking up the mountain, her clothes looked freshly laundered, her skin absent of any sweat.

She'd arrived in a black dress that fit well to her body. It wasn't overly ornamental, but I noted the eastern origin. A cut in the fabric just below her neck showed her ample bosom, and One side of the dress had a slit up to the middle of her thigh. The sleeves ended at her wrists, which she'd adorned with a matching set of gold bangles. Whereas the man had arrived alone, all his belongings on him, she was accompanied by a single ox pulling a cart of her things.

This time, her face wasn't that of a farmer's daughter. Her skin was as pale as the moon, her hair a verdant green. Looking into her eyes was like staring into the ocean deep. Despite her clothing, she wasn't of eastern descent, but she'd chosen to do her hair in a pair of buns fitting her dress. Unlike him, she was not always as favored by fate, so she had encountered a spot of luck with her appearance in this life.

She was stunningly beautiful. But like him, she was not who I once knew.

Dead was the unquestionably loyal student. In her place was a woman who looked at me with the playful look of a cat.

"Hello, dear teacher." She spoke, her voice a sultry mix of mockery and excitement. "I am glad to see you well."