"...You know, there's people who claim humanity was created by a god, but there's no contemporary evidence. Not that I'm doubting you, mind, given what you said about your moon, just...it's a weird coincidence."

"The first Elves appeared as fully-grown adults and are around and can be consulted about that."

"How long ago was this?"

"Four hundred sixty five Valian years ago, or ten times that in Endorë years."

"...How long does your species live?"

"...I'm not sure I understand the question."

"...So underblood is capped with these things that prevent the stuff that does stuff from degrading when cells divide, but in doing so they degrade and eventually they run out; this causes gradual breakdown of the body which can be reversed by magic but there aren't enough mages for everybody to get as much of that as they need so most people die after a hundred or so of our years; less so Genosha which does have enough mages per capita to cover everyone. You said you don't have magic, so I'm assuming telomere decay eventually gets you."

"Uh. No, it does not. Nothing... gets us. If we have an accident of some kind one of the Valar specializes in reembodiments."

"...Do you mind if we at some point drag you to our dad so he can have a look at your underblood, it sounds fascinatingly different from ours."

"I can think of things he could do with it that I would object to but if he just wants to make people stop randomly dying I encourage it!"

"He's not so much a practical bloodworker anymore but, uh, remember what you asked me about languages and someone named Feanaro?"

"Yes? He's not just a linguist, he does other things too, he's working on faster than light travel at the moment."

"No, no, it's just--our dad's like that about underblood, was my point."

"All right. I'll be delighted to meet him."

"Awesome."

"If now is not an opportune time, what shall we do until then?"

"He'll be teaching right now, yeah--uh, we should probably take you to the administration and see if we can find someone willing and able to bring Atennesi Cohen in on this."

"Who's that?"

"He's a Great Mage and runs the city."

"What makes someone a Great Mage?"

"One's magic gets stronger the more one does it, there's a threshold."

"What does clearing the threshold allow?"

"It's a power level thing, not a capability thing, so it depends on how efficient one is."

"...but what is the standard for achieving the threshold? Do you have to be able to fly, or is that a thing that non-Great-Mages can do or that only some Great Mages can do -?"

"Oh, I'm a ways off from being a Great Mage and I can fly. It's--based on a measure of raw magical power that I'm not sure how to describe to someone who's never done magic."