This paper will offer a follow up on the article published in the Special Issue on Thanatic Ethics in Interventions. “Narrative as Forensics in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost” focused on mass killings during the civil war in Sri Lanka, and on the search for the identification of the bones of the murdered. It suggested that the literary text was crafted in such a way as potentially enabling justice to be delivered in an open court of law (forensis). If literary drifting is sometimes perceived as a stumbling block in the reading of the novel, the article aimed to demonstrate it created a public space to be shared (forum), in deliberate opposition to the tearing apart described in the story. Remaining in the context of the civil war in Sri Lanka, this paper will focus on Anuk Arudpragasam’s two short novels, The Story of a Brief Marriage (2016) and A Passage North (2021). In the latter, notably, Arudpragasam structures his narrative on another kind of drifting: Krishan, who moved back to Sri Lanka from India, hears that the woman who had looked after his grandmother after losing both her sons to the war, has just died. His need to identify and understand the causes of Rani’s death takes him on a train journey from South to North, across Sri Lanka, to attend the funeral. I will argue that the geographical, mental, emotional and sensory drifting he allows himself to be immersed in on the journey takes him and the reader away from desolation (from the Latin de-, thoroughly + solus, alone), to a new form of comprehension (from the Latin cum-, with + prehendere, seize, comprise), and closer to consolation (from the Latin consolari, con- + sōlārī, to solace, to soothe), suggesting repair can only be relational.