ninth fusion - video

[beholdmydemons]

So.

As I understand it, we don't die here. People...appear in a town with their wounds healed, or illness cured, or the like. Or so I've been told.

...What happens to someone who dies of old age, then? Would they die over and over again, or...become young, or... [He waves his hand around. Mysterious mysteries.] How it all happens aside, I can't imagine what would take place. [...] Has it, ever?

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[beholdmydemons]

...Oh. [WELL THAT'S DISAPPOIwait that was a "maybe"] I wouldn't be able to tell...someone younger might.

[freshprints]

You mean someone like a teenager, for whom physical changes would be more dramatic and noticeable.

[beholdmydemons]

[...That's a word for people between twelve and twenty, r...ight?]

Yeah. Perhaps the youngest of that, I'm in my own eighteenth year.

[freshprints]

I can't be of any service to you in that respect, then. I'm older than you.

[beholdmydemons]

[He waves his hand vaguely.] Know anyone, perhaps? Fellow of a fellow...

[freshprints]

There's at least one young boy here. I think he said he's about twelve years of age. Certainly young enough that a natural growth spurt would show.

[beholdmydemons]

...There it is, then. [Can't exactly take anything away from that until he actually grows or doesn't.] Hah, but can you imagine being that age forever? I'll be thanking my own stars if we truly don't grow older here, and pitying him.

[freshprints]

Isn't that a perspective that comes with age already, though? A twelve-year-old might be perfectly content to stay that way forever; it's not as though he's ever known anything different to compare it to.

[beholdmydemons]

...Or he might want to grow by a few years. I and my fellows always did.

[freshprints]

Why?

[beholdmydemons]

Well, ah...why not? By twelve, you're old enough to do the heavy work, and to no longer be coddled as a child...but you're not yet old enough to speak your mind, or go courting, or drink with the men. [...] I...suppose that doesn't matter here, though...

...Huh. [He shrugs and leans back.] You may have the right of it after all. Still, it's better to be full-grown, in height and strength and such things.

[freshprints]

Unless something different matters to you. Like being small enough to fit through tight spaces, or hide well, or have people underestimate you because they mistake you for less capable than you are.

Maturity comes through experience; normally, that's something that by definition goes in tandem with age. Here, the possibility exists to sever the two, though, doesn't it?

[beholdmydemons]

[. . .

Well-

-actually-]

...yeah! [Walter blinks deliberately, raising his eyebrows and kind of laughing like "well, you got me".] It may be so, here. That's...huh.

[freshprints]

So it's possible that we could mature without aging.

That's something I'd be interested in seeing demonstrated.

[beholdmydemons]

Why's that?

[freshprints]

You don't think a person with the body of a small child and the maturity and life experience of a forty-year-old would be interesting to see?

[beholdmydemons]

...Ah, perhaps. I've seen things like it before, though, it's not...not so interesting, just odd.