Mmhmm. We're adults at twelve or so and full grown in our early twenties; if I'd wanted to raise my own kids my eldest would be turning twelve this spring.

Wow. I suppose it makes sense that you'd want to make the most of time if you aren't going to have forever.

We don't have that kind of choice about it, she chuckles, but, yeah. We only live a hundred fifty, hundred sixty years at most, it wouldn't work very well if we spent a third of that as children.

What happens when you die, do you know?

What do you mean?

When we die our spirits go to Mandos and from there he can bring us back to life.

Ah. We don't have anything like that - not that anyone comes back from, anyway, so if we do go somewhere, we don't know about it ahead of time.

I'm sorry. That's - not knowing would be the worst, I think.

She shrugs. It doesn't really bother me? There are plenty of things about the world that I don't know, and I don't have any reason to think that's a particularly bad one.

I would like to stop existing but I can't. But at least I know what does happen, there's a bound on how bad death can be...

She nods. Maybe it's because I'm used to a world without gods. Things can get pretty bad, here, but there's already a bound on how bad they can get; mages and hexes and monsters are scary, but there's always something we can do about them - maybe not anything good, but always something, even if we aren't very powerful. And whatever might happen to me after I die doesn't feel like it should be any different than that, or at least not worse.

That makes sense. Probably it's - just wandering houseless, like we did before Mandos. That makes the most sense.

Nod. Maybe. I've always kind of assumed that we just stop existing.

I wish we did that.

Sigh. Yeah.

Quendi and Valar and Maiar can't do that but I don't know anything about people from your world.

Maybe there's a way to find out. Or - swap, somehow.

Oooh, that'd be lovely.

She chuckles, briefly. Well, you've got a long time to look for worlds that can do that. And I doubt you'll have trouble finding someone to swap with, if you need to - I'll do it, if I'm still around.

I hope we find a solution for you, that'd be nice.

Yeah. It's going to be rough on everybody if we don't, I'm sure - watching someone get old can be pretty upsetting even if you're expecting it.

And we've never heard of it. What's upsetting, is it unpleasant for you?

Yeah. It's not the same for everybody, but we get worse at healing from things, it gets harder to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer, it gets easier to get sick and harder to get well again, a lot of people end up with weird medical problems - we get fragile, and it's hard to watch someone you care about get more and more fragile and know it's not going to get better.

I'm sorry. That does sound hard. There's - there's probably something, I should ask Curufinwë...

Nod. Probably a good idea. I've got a good seventy years before that starts getting noticeable at all, but I'm sure that doesn't sound nearly as comforting to you as it does to me.