"Violence, despair, and boredom."

"Despair and boredom, what?"

"Somebody's husband dies, or she finishes her epic poem and doesn't have an idea for another one, or something, and she puts her affairs in order and turns up dead."

"Just... like that?"

"Yup, very peaceful. Yambe Akka's also the goddess of mercy."

"I suppose if they... are okay with dying like that... maybe the despairing ones aren't..."

"My understanding is that at least at the time they prefer it."

"The goddesses would know...?—wait, do you have an afterlife?"

"My guess is no."

"Why?"

"I think if we had one then probably dying wouldn't be particularly merciful at most of the times we do it - like, either it does freaky mind control, or you're still despairing or bored, right - and it would not be generally considered desirable to live indefinitely, which it is."

"I... suppose..."

Luca hops over closer to Pathalan: "We generally feel that most problems are temporary and boredom and despair don't escape that list, while death is quite not temporary."

"Oh, we plan to live forever," Pathalan assures Luca.

"Ideally everyone should be able to," he says gravely, "even if not everyone would want to."

"Witches can, mostly," she says. "Just requires a little more self-management."

"Still better than the whole 'growing sick and ill and frail and slowly losing your mental faculties one by one and then dying no matter how well you self-manage' schtick we got going on. Maybe you could figure a way to spell people into becoming witches. Or—guy-witches. Wizards?"

"Or at least immortal. Lots of people I don't wanna hand magical powers who don't deserve to die over it."

"I guess but currently the only selection method is 'happened to be a girl born of a witch', right, so it's not like that in itself would change much. And it seems like magic is a lot less exploitable if everyone can do it."

"We do have, like, education and social technology about it."

"Slow rollout? Only be given magic if you pass this course about it? Have to be adopted by a particularly prosocial witch, it's fine if no currently-existing witch does it because you're immortal anyway and you can wait?"

"I mean, maybe, but that seems a lot more complicated than just inventing the immortality part."

"Yeah, fair, the only part that's like sort of morally mandatory is that part, I just think having magic would be neat."

"I'll think about it."

"I and everyone else who wants magic thank you for it," he says, grinning and half-bowing (to the extent he can while sitting down).