I would kind of be breaking the law back there but now we'll be able to get strong enough to end the war from Milliways, so we can make it work.

Breaking the law?

I'm three thousand, she's twenty-one. Maedhros made a rule, recently. Your daughter told me that Odette'd want to know that I wanted to kiss her anyway, and Milliways isn't Maedhros' jurisdiction.

I see.

I can understand why people would be concerned by the age gap, but I trust her judgement. In this category of thing, at least.

Yeah, me too. Also, as both she and Illia keep pointing out to us, to mortal eyes Elves don't really seem to grow up.

...Oh?

If there's anyone who's been accumulating three thousand years of wisdom I haven't met them. Adult Elves and adult Men seem on the same keel.

Humans generally grow up less than we pretend to; I don't know if you'll be at a disadvantage in that area when humans don't die of old age anymore but I wouldn't bet too much on it.

Fair enough.

You feel more different from mutants and genotypical humans than we do from each other, but still not a great deal in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah. I can talk with animals, and they're way more different than any kind of people.

...You can? How does that work?

Magic? Genes in my world also definitely do not work the way genes in your world work, for the record.

What do you mean by that?

Edie made it sound like there was a single gene that was responsible for all mutants? And that children of mutants would almost always be mutants, but children of non-mutants sometimes would too, and the gene was rising in prevalence in the population absent selection pressure?

Ah. That. It's not precisely that a single gene is responsible for the great diversity of mutations; rather, the X-Gene alters the behavior of the rest of a mutant's genome--how, obviously, depends on their individual genetic structure. As for the other--I don't actually have an explanation for it, yet, but it's intensely peculiar to us as well.

Okay. Once my dad's back alive maybe he'll have a look, he likes puzzles and would really like superpowers, and we can technically edit our genes if we want to, it'd just take forever and be super boring...

Assuming we meet again when that's happened, I look forward to it.

Odette's gonna have an interdimensional teleport. I bet we'll find you.

Then it seems a safe assumption.

Nice meeting you, Charles Xavier.

Likewise.

Hey, Odette, alternate universe your dad is pretty cool.

It is possible this has something to do with the fact that my dad is pretty cool.

I think that's how it works!