She nods. One does not simply walk into Valinor.

"And after that the Elves lived in paradise for an Age of the world," she says, "and then the Valar pardoned Melkor."

"How long is an 'Age', and why would the Valar pardon Melkor? Did they have a way of verifying he wouldn't go around torturing people again? Is there a way to make permanently binding oaths in your world?"

"Ages are thousands of years, and they pardoned him because they needed him to fix all the things wrong with the world, and Elves can swear binding oaths. I don't know if Valar can."

"Was he really the only one who could fix the world's problems? Because if there was literally anyone else, I think I would prefer them to the guy who started the mess..."

She shrugged. "Ask the Elves, but don't, they're very secretive."

"Noted."

"So then the Enemy began plotting again, and he drive the Elves to dreadful crimes against their kin and each other, and the Valar exiled them from Valinor, and they warred with Morgoth for five hundred years, and in that time Men encountered them, and learned from them, and served them. And when their war was lost the Enemy killed them but enslaved us."

"Oh dear. How did you escape?"

"The Valar themselves came, and warred with the Enemy, and sank the whole continent, but so impressed were they by the valor of Men that they raised a new continent from the sea and offered it to us as a gift from them and from Eru Himself."

"I see. So, that's where we currently are. And there are no more Elves living outside of Valinor? Did any of the Elves who left manage to return?"

"Yes, there was a general pardon at the end of the Age. Most of the Elves are in Valinor but there's some in hidden Elf cities on the continent."

"OK, so that makes two Ages so far. Is this the third Age? Why did the Elves who'd been exiled get to go back to Valinor, but the Men weren't allowed to go there?"

"No, we only started counting Ages once we came around so it's the second Age to us. I think the Valar count differently. The Elves get to go to Valinor because they're immortal. Men aren't supposed to be, so we aren't allowed to go."

"Why are Men not supposed to be?"

A shrug. "It's Eru's will. No one understands it and no one likes it, but there you go. We try to be as much like Elves as we can, and we have long lives for Men - four hundred years, sometimes."

"If you don't like it, why don't you do anything about it? My people don't like the plans of our creator either - so we mess it up. We take up extra space and produce extra heat and make a good life for ourselves. Just because God made it doesn't mean it's the best plan - it might not even be a good plan."

"How do you fix death? And your god doesn't do much destroying his enemies. The Valar do - or did - a lot"

"I'm not sure how to fix death in this world, but it seems worth working on. Anyway, if the Valar actually had your best interests at heart, why would you have to fear them destroying you if you tried to make yourselves stronger? Good parental figures don't cut you off at the knees. Clearly there is more of an alignment problem here than you thought."

"I should have guessed from the fact Gimlith brought you," she said. "It's not like that. The Valar would be angry if we tried to use their gifts to take something that isn't ours. They might take their gifts back."

"How is your own life not yours? I'm not saying you have to march on Valinor and demand to be given new gifts, but if, by your own ingenuity, you discover a way to prevent ageing, there's no reason you shouldn't use it. To try to prevent that would be evil."

"I don't think they'd prevent that, no. But people try all the time and none of them have succeeded."

"Huh. Then I suppose the problem is harder than I would have guessed. I don't really know anything about ageing, because it doesn't happen to my people."

He eyes widen. "You're like Elves? Oh, then the fact you only see your gods every few centuries is nothing, I was thinking you were like us and only live a few hundred years and might only see them once in your lives! How lucky!"

"Well, it isn't quite like that. We don't age, but we can starve or be murdered or succumb to disease. These have all been very common occurrences for us, so very few people lived for more than two or three centuries in the past. I think that, today, there are a couple hundred people over six hundred years old, out of a total population of about three billion. Admittedly, part of the disparity is because the vast majority of living people were born after the industrial revolution, which happened about three centuries ago. Half our population is under eighty, and I'm forty-two.

For political reasons, war is on the decline, and synthetic blood is making starvation rarer by the year. We are currently optimistic about banishing illness from the world, and I have reason to expect that I will live indefinitely - like the Elves."