"Lucky Elves and orcs. When humans die we stay that way."

"Maybe the Valar can figure you out one day too.

In the books it sounded like humans die for no reason."

She raises her eyebrows. "What do you think of as a good reason to die?"

"Falling from a height?"

"That'll do it, yes. What do you think of as not a good reason to die?"

"Time elapsing."

"...oh. Do Elves and orcs and so on not have old age?"

"No, because it is a stupid idea."

"...what would it matter how nice of an idea it was? Do all your animals live forever too?"

"Only on Valinor, not Endorë."

"Well, all the creatures of this world age and die, humans included. Though some humans can get around it. I'm a few hundred years old myself."

"I am also a few hundred years old."

"Well. In case you were wondering," she gestures at her abandoned-eggplant self, "this is what an elderly human looks like."

"I see."

"And it doesn't matter a bit how stupid an idea it is, because humans weren't anyone's idea in the first place, we just happened. As far as I've ever heard, anyway."

"Elves were invented by Eru, who is like Valar but bigger, and orcs and Dwarves were invented by two different Valar."

"Sounds uncomfortable. But maybe some people would like having someone to blame."

"The orcs were uncomfortable for a while. The other Valar fixed it."

"...fixed what?"

"The same thing that lets Elves have blessings also let us, and orcs, who have a similar thing, make promises we could not break. The orcs were all made to promise as small children that they would serve their inventor, who was evil. Now oaths don't work that way any more, and only let us swear to being honest and things like that."

She looks very unsettled. "That's much more uncomfortable than I was thinking."

"Also orcs used to be in constant pain for no reason and the first batch were made by torturing Elf parents for a couple generations."

"..."

"The other fourteen Valar have locked up that one."

"Good for them," she says firmly.