"Yeah. You doing okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I haven't even had any nightmares since I found out you guys were all alive."

"I'm glad."

"What about you? How are you doing?"

Amras shrugs. Transparently. "Still here."

"I keep dwelling on the irony that the same event killed both of us in exact opposite ways, is that weird?"

"Most people don't talk about it, so that's a little weird."

"What, about dying?"

"About how I died specifically. It was a secret for a while."

"Ah."

"No point in secrets now."

"As far as I can tell there isn't really anyone left to keep secrets from. ...Unless Tyelcormo was right about Daphne, I guess."

"Hmmm?"

"He thinks she's part Elf, which would mean she had to get it somewhere." She osanwes them Daphne's face--and relevant-in-retrospect things Tyelcormo hadn't even seen, like how easily she hauled Idaia out of the room when things were suddenly freezing, and her singing voice, and the whole gosh-the-ocean-is-keen thing which probably isn't relevant but is weird enough that she's not sure.

"...huh.

There are supposed to be Avari, but - well, we'd have tried to stay away -"

"Well, she's pretty sure if she's part Elf she gets it from her dad's side, and her dad was a one-night-stand her mom had in Europe, so Daphne's existence is not evidence that you have failed at that. If there are still Elves on Earth why would I never have heard of them if I wasn't me?"

"Might be faded, might be living like we were, far away from humans, might be passing as humans..."

"Why would humanity have forgotten, though, to make passing necessary."

"No idea. Perhaps things got even uglier after we left; perhaps it's just exhausting to be around humans too much and we tend to take a millennium off here and there."

"Well, I certainly hope it's not the latter."

"It's very plausible to me. Imagine if everyone you met got old and died after a month. It won't be a problem now that we can fix that, but it would have been one for the last few Ages."

"Okay, true," she admits. "And my reasons for caring if it's that evaporate if it's irrelevant going forward."

"You are not going to die on us like fruitflies! We are very determined on that point!"

"If I didn't believe that I'd be much less--calm. Happy. Okay. Stuff like that."

"Dad's good at this stuff. And was working on immortality anyway."