"I'm good! It's nice to see you, Vashal's been trying really hard but..."

Slightly smug smile. "Sorry. I should maybe have had more tolerance for annoying people when it means getting to learn with aliens! This is my son Kefin -"

"Hello."

"Hi. ...Your son? You said you were eighteen."

" - yes. And he's coming up on four."

"Four what?"

"Four years old."

"You must - grow differently - or something -"

"We are fully grown at five, we can have children until twenty..."

"We're fully grown at like sixteen and I don't think there's a specific age after which no kids, it just gets gradually less likely... live to be sixty, longer for people who've always had access to mage healing..."

"We usually die around forty, maybe late thirties if you had a hard life - people who grew up during the last war died younger... you are likely to have a significantly shorter year."

"...if years can be different lengths, I guess that would do it. The days seem right."

"The length of a year is based on the seasons? The days get longer and shorter gradually, there's accompanying rain or cold?"

"I think formally it's to do with the stars and when things grow, it doesn't get very rainy or cold where I live."

He does something to his pocket everything and now there is a globe floating on the screen. "You may know this already - planets are round, they circle their suns?"

"...we know that but it's, uh, new."

Nod. "Planets are tilted like so? And the tilt creates seasons - you could have been not-tilted and have none of them -"

"Some places it snows sometimes."

"And the year is how long it takes to circle, so if your star were weaker and you were closer to it, you would have a shorter year."

"Huh."

"That sounds right," volunteers Penumbra.

" - that our star is stronger and farther? Can you sense that kind of thing?"

"Sort of - that's not what I meant -"

Maurabel says, "We know that the world is round because elementals can travel a lot better than humans can and we recently started talking to them more."

He nods. "I think some people guessed early from shadows but it wasn't common knowledge until we'd travelled a lot more. Do you have boats that can sail your whole world -"

"No."

"I will add that to the list! With birth control and vaccines - vaccines give you a dead version of a disease and then you don't get sick, magic can maybe do that anyway -"