Precogs manage everything scaled up. The million-person wipe is the worst I've ever run into, other than that it's fires and traffic accidents and stuff, bad but little.

Their threshold for acceptable risk is - well, a handful of people have died in all Valinor's history and each time it's a major event and the time he wanted to stay dead it was an international disaster.

...hm?

Someone died and wanted to stay dead and the Valar had no idea how to react to that and the whole thing resulted in a centuries-long feud.

I'm a little hung up on the concept of 'wanting to stay dead'. Not motivationally - well, that too, but the part that's confusing me is someone simultaneously managing being dead and having preferences about it.

What happens to humans when they die?

Depends on who you ask, but in terms of observable consequences, we leave a corpse and that's that.

Our - spirit survives the destruction of our body, and just - wanders around unable to affect the world. The Valar can talk to them and give them new bodies.

Ah. So you're really really immortal with occasional resleeving needs.

Yep. If you're not like that I don't know if the Valar'll be able to do the same for you. But - spirits don't affect the world, it's possible you are like that and wouldn't have noticed -

It's possible but it seems - unnecessary as an explanation for anything observed on Earth. Also, I'm sure some psion has tried to contact the dead. Occasionally frauds claim to be able to do it but they can't produce verifiable information.

That's pretty scary.

We're used to it. But yeah.

I'm impressed you have so many more people than us if they all die.

We didn't use to have that many but the population grows exponentially and we don't take that long to grow up.

How long?

People tend to have kids in their twenties and thirties. Our years.

Huh. We aren't of age until fifty of ours.

Well, we are different species, it'd be weird if we aged the same. Humans are considered legally adults in my society at eighteen. In most respects. For weird reasons we aren't allowed to buy alcohol until 21.

We don't reach full physical maturity untl a hundred of our years but you're of age at fifty - which doesn't mean anything legally except that people'll raise fewer eyebrows if you get married -

Human physical maturity is depending who you ask somewhere between the ages of like sixteen and twenty-five.

She sends images of her younger siblings. Fifty - a human sixteen year old would be a good approximation - a hundred - the same apparent age as Maitimë and every other Elf she will have seen around.

So I guess humans look Elf-fifty around age sixteen.

Of your short years, though.

Yes.