She was his only childhood friend. He was an orphan that was ostracized bc he was left on the side of the road as a baby.
They didn't even let him attend the annual festivals: they were a poor village that didn't even have honey comb, just honey flavored cookies. Those were yearly delicacies that Isle shared with Jonack without any hesitation because she saw him as her friend first, then her romantic partner.
After a year and a half of him at sea, she was still cleaning his house bc she believed in him and knew he wasn't dead.
You actually brought up a really good point, especially about Isle being Jonak’s only childhood friend and one of the few people who genuinely cared about him when everyone else treated him like an outcast. I can definitely understand why he held onto her memory for so long because she was probably the first person who made him feel loved and accepted. But that’s also why I question when his feelings for Adain actually became romantic rather than just a sense of obligation to fulfill his promise. I don’t doubt that Jonak eventually developed genuine feelings for Adain, but I feel like there’s a difference between loving someone for who they are and loving them because they represent a promise you made to someone you lost. Especially with how often Isle was brought up, it made me wonder whether Jonak had truly moved on emotionally or was still holding onto the life he could’ve had with her. I just wish we got a clearer understanding of when Adain became someone Jonak wanted to be with for himself, rather than someone he felt he needed to protect because of his past.
So after those decades gone by could we say it was unrequited love cause for awhile it seemed to that jonak only saw aidain as someone he had to be with to keep his promise because of love so I’m not sure when jonak actually saw adain someone he can see himself being with because he still brought up Isle like he was still in love with her