"Okay, so where do diseases come from, is there someone making them?"

"– I don't suppose you know about evolution?"

"Nope, what's evolution?"

"… It's – long story short, it's how we think people and animals and these diseases came about? But that's a very long story, it happened over millions of years. The diseases are still around because they use our bodies to replicate themselves – I think I already said that, it's not extraneous information?"

Calassúrë looks at him. Confusedly.

"... Also perhaps keep in mind that literal gods made everything on purpose, where I came from, so, I'm. Still really confused. I think you maybe overcorrected and stopped giving me information about things instead."

"Okay. … Life started a long while ago, and we're not totally sure how, and it started with very small organisms – the things that cause disease, they're small organisms but the first organisms were even simpler – and the ones that managed to survive in their environment for longer were the ones that reproduced, and this eventually created humans and animals that could resist disease and do things in the environment, and also diseases that could use our bodies to reproduce."

Blink.

"I think you skipped some steps there, how did that eventually create humans and animals and diseases?"

"… I think you may be better served reading an introductory book to this sort of thing." Because he thinks he is utterly failing to cover the salient details. He didn't even take Biology at A-level. "It will probably cover concepts in a better order and in better detail than I could."

"Okay. Thank you for trying, anyway."

And she requests books and begins reading.

He is available if she would like to ask him some sort of question about what she's reading. But she might be better served just reading more.

Meanwhile, he gets back to the old book he was reading when she came in.

She's Noldor, if she needed to ask questions about what she's reading she'd have to go live with the Vanyar or something. She reads.

"- Okay," she says, without preamble. "I think I could maybe make a song to boost immune systems, but this doesn't seem like a good time investment, what with how you're slowly dying. Which I'm not sure how to fix - am I correct in thinking that even your bread dies of old age?"

"… Yes, but I wouldn't have thought to phrase it that way. Uh. I think it depends quite a lot on what you could do, other than that, whether that's a good thing to aim for."

"As far as I can tell, the old age problem has too many factors at play to solve with songwriting, I can't possibly layer a song that'll do that much at once. It'd need to be an artifact or something, and about the best thing I can say about my ability to make artifacts is that I can make something glow."

"Could maybe try the door again, in case the landlords were just being particular about timing?"

"I can give it a try, yes -"

Nope.

She sighs.

"The immune system boost could help quite a lot – I'm not sure what long-term effects it'd have, being exposed to less disease, but it could at least add quite a good percentage to our lives. … I feel like I should have mentioned my world might have magic but I've never found anyone else who thinks it does and I keep having problems getting confirmation on it."

"What makes you think it has magic, and if you're sure, how can I pin it down where I can see it and study it into submission to save everyone from old age?"

"I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eyes that are very obviously magical, except insofar as 'very obviously magical' is not a natural trait and the fact that when I turn to look at them they are not there. This book," he indicates the one he's been reading, "has some mythology that seems to agree with what I've seen but as that's 'not much' I'm really not sure if this is just… confirmation bias or something."

"Show me what you've seen, if you're, ah, comfortable doing so?"

He nods and tries to think back on one of the times.

It was a few weeks ago. He'd just left his school grounds and was on his way back home when he had a nagging sensation that he should look to his right. Human eyesight is really bad – especially around the edges – very blurry and lacking much detail, but the green spark he saw against the hedge definitely did not seem to fit in with the background.

It didn't gradually fade when he looked at it straight on, it just disappeared outright – and he was expecting this, it having happened several times before. There wasn't anything off about the hedge, looking at it straight-on – there was no weird haze, no blurry patch where the spark should have been, nothing obvious that his eyes would slide over, and the green spark returned when he carefully repositioned the hedge to his peripheral vision.

Also as usual, nothing in particular happened when he walked over to it – it didn't leave any obvious change in the environment, it didn't do anything to the nearby plants. Nothing seemed different about that particular part of the hedge. The spark had, however, apparently moved – he couldn't find it again after that.

As with all the other times, however, the spark definitely felt magical.

He then focuses on a few other times – there've been quite a few other occurrences, mostly sparks, in a variety of different colours and sometimes even with an associated… feeling. This one in a lake just outside the city, swimming through the water and clearly enjoying itself, blue to match its surroundings and leaving no ripples or any clear sign it was there except to be visible out the corner of his eye; another one on a neighbour's roof, a yellow spark, giving off a feeling of awe and joyfulness, dancing in the spring air. This other one, a few blocks from school near a residential estate, red and giving off a dangerous feeling – he shouldn't touch it, he shouldn't go looking for it, he shouldn't go near it, and … trying to figure everything out could be hazardous for his health.

None of it really makes any sense, all quite detached from the rest of reality, and he doesn't have much more than cursory details, the information he's gathered by chance encounters with them; he has not had much of a chance to gather information on these things.

"That's strange, but - that doesn't look like confirmation bias to me, it's too... It seems to follow too many rules? Does this happen often?"

"Uh – varies, sometimes the same one is around the same area for a week, sometimes I go a month without seeing one. Probably something like ten a year?"

"Hm. And no one else has seen them that you know of?"

"I'd expect someone to have, just because I don't think I'd literally be one of a kind, but not that I know of. … I don't suppose you know what cameras are, do you, because I – sort of feel the need to explain that it could just be in my head."

"No, I don't. It could be just in your head, I suppose, and I don't pretend to know very much about human psychology, but I don't think it is. It doesn't look like it's imagined."