His search continued. Eventually, the connection became stronger and clearer, and, most importantly, stable.
That alone was astonishing.
He had remained still all this time, afraid that even the slightest movement of his thoughts might disrupt the connection.
And there she was.
Not some distant echo.
Her essence was fully there.
He reached toward it. He tried to see her, which was considerably harder.
He could sense her existence, but not her surroundings.
He could not determine whether she was standing, sitting, sleeping, or even conscious.
He could not hear her thoughts.
The connection gave him only the smallest possible piece of information.
She was.
That was all.
Yet it was enough.
He began examining the connection, merely studying it.
Sonder herself was there, but around her was something else.
He could not tell where it came from.
Or whose it was.
Perhaps it was her own.
Perhaps it wasn't.
Then he tried something he had not considered before.
Not just another place, but another moment.
Another when.
Forward, or backward.
But he could not.
Trying to find Sonder at any moment other than the one he had already found her in was impossible.
The connection immediately vanished, and he could feel nothing.
He returned to the exact point where he had found her before, and there she still was.
He moved just a fraction to another moment, and everything disappeared again.
It was as though he had found a single point in time and could not step outside it.
The world beyond his reach might have continued normally, or perhaps only an instant had passed.
He had no way of knowing.
Where he was, time wasn't fixed.
But the moment he could connect back into the world was.
He could only reach this particular moment.
And he did not know why.
He had somehow caught Sonder at one specific instant, and the connection allowed him to remain there.
Nothing before it.
Nothing after.
Only this.
It was the same with determining where she was.
No landmarks, nor sensations of walls, earth, sky, or water came to him.
The connection simply carried none of that information.
Just knowing that Sonder was was comforting.
Everything else was deeply frustrating.
Still, he had a window.
It was an extraordinarily small window that showed him almost nothing, but it was a window nonetheless.
Was it progress?
Yes.
Anything would be counted as progress in Vell's mind.
Any step was progress, no matter which direction.