"Yes!"

She smiles. "I want to see what else we'll end up inventing; the march of progress doesn't seem like it's slowing down anytime soon."

"Maybe you'll stick around long enough to find out. I've heard rumours that it's possible to achieve immortality with living magic, though the rumours didn't have any guesses about how you'd do it."

"Maybe I will. We'll see. What sorts of rumors were they?"

"The 'I ate someone who can't have gotten that powerful in a single human lifespan' kind. So not ultimate immortality."

"Ah, well. All right then. I do have more freedom to experiment, anyway, which is definitely not nothing."

He smiles.

"Reassurance that I won't be eaten by a vampire is pretty handy! To your shock and surprise, I know."

Giggle.

"It's such a - a pity that magic can't just be taught to everyone," she sighs. "It'd put Doctor Relgam out of a job, but it's such an - an atrocious waste of human life."

"Hard to do anything about it, though. Even I can't save everyone from being eaten by vampires."

"No, I know you can't. Not without becoming an extremely ironic vampire hunter, anyway, which seems like more than a time commitment than you'd ever want. And even that wouldn't work entirely, what with people being able to make themselves vampires. But it seems like at some point the whole thing will eventually just - topple over, and everyone will know about vampires and magic."

"Everyone used to know about vampires and magic. Oh, a lot of the things they knew were wrong, but they knew. It's only recently that people have started trying to understand the world from the ground up, so to speak, and not been able to get a good look at any of the magic bits because anyone with magic who's foolish enough to prove it doesn't live long enough to be scientifically verified. Anyway, I'm not convinced it would be a good thing if everyone knew how magic worked. It could usher in a new age of peace and prosperity, or, on the other hand, half the living people in the world could decide to pursue immortality by eating the other half. And then everyone left still moving when the dust settled would either starve immediately or resort to eating animals until they no longer had faces to eat them with."

She winces.

"That's - that's certainly a visual, thank you. And what an end for humanity that would be."

"A messy one. I'd rather avoid it."

"Mm. Yeah. I'm inclined to think that wouldn't happen, but I'm not the kind of person to accept an immortality that comes at the cost of human life, so I'm probably not the best judge. It'd certainly be averted if there was another immortality solution, though."

"I'm not sure I'd say certainly. Depends what the other solution is."

"Well. Okay, yes. I don't get to use the word certainly unless I have something better than 'gosh it sure would be nice if I could figure out immortality that didn't rely on eating people.'"

"It sure would be nice if you could do that!"

Snort. "It sure would be, yeah."

"Rumors about someone having more lifeforce than their lifetime could account for are heartening, though."

"Yes."

She hums, thoughtfully, smiling a little. "I suppose we'll see what I can manage. My mother's already more naturally youthful than her age would suggest, so. Maybe it's just a matter of having the time and freedom to get good at it. But maybe that's just wistful thinking."

"Good luck."