"Do you think I'm going to keep ageing?"

"Hm?" Elias glanced up from his paper.

"Ageing. Do you think I'm going to keep getting older? Or am I just going to—to stop here, like Angelica and Rahab?"

Elias tilted his head slightly, peering closer at her as he folded the paper, laying it tidily to the side. "What brought this on?"

Chise had spent longer than usual in the bathroom that morning, staring at her reflection in the mirror, searching for signs of ageing. Not of growing up, of becoming an adult; that had happened a long time ago. Her large green eyes, while still kind, no longer held the innocence—or the naïveté—they once had, nor the despair. Her face, reflected back at her, regarded her with a steady, calm gaze, the look one of someone who had seen much, suffered much, lost much, and gained much, and had come to accept the world, and herself, as it was.

Her hair, ruddy-gold highlights burnished into it over the years by the brief English summer sun, swung behind her, almost to her waist. She had let it grow longer once, past her hips; but found the length inconvenient. At this length a braid tamed it completely. No signs of grey yet; no crow's feet around her eyes. Her jowls were still firm. But she was only just past thirty; would she stay like this? Or was this just a final pause before an inevitable decline into old age and frailty?

She sighed, sliding into her seat beside Ruth, and accepted her morning cup of tea from Silky with a grateful smile. "I guess I've just been wondering recently... Am I a mage? I mean, will I have a mage's lifespan? Or just—just a normal human one?"

"Well, you're definitely a mage," Elias said in a considering tone, after a small pause. "You have been for a while now. But—you're asking if the learning, or the magic use, that makes you a mage is what increases your lifespan? Or if it's something genetic tied to the ability to use magic in the first place? Either way, I would assume that, so long as your curses stay balanced, there would be no reason for you to grow old. With your lifespan no longer artificially shortened from Sleigh Beggy burn-out, you ought to continue as long as Rahab, or Lindel, or anyone else."

"I don't feel any creeping weakness or degeneration in you," Ruth added.

Chise glanced sideways at him. He was dressed casually, as he usually had in the decade and a half since he had joined them; but as Chise had grown up, he had permitted himself to age as well, and now looked very much as he had when she had first encountered him, had bonded irrevocably with him, in the old church's graveyard.

He returned her glance, a slight smile playing about his lips. He knew what was on her mind, of course; how could he not?

"Even with only a human lifespan, though," Elias continued, "you would still have many decades ahead of you. Why this concern about it now?"

He was definitely more perceptive of emotions than he had been when they first met, she thought, giving her husband a fond look as he eyed her shrewdly.

"Well, you know..." she said with forced casualness, idly buttering her toast. "Our lives have been stable for a while, now. I'm done with my studies, both at the College and here with you. Our new arrangement with the Church seems to be working out, and they've held up their end without complaint—that we've heard."

"Simon is probably responsible for that."

"I agree, and that might change when he retires, eventually. But he says he's perfectly happy where he is, so that seems unlikely for another twenty years, at least. Right now, and, unless things change unexpectedly, for at least another decade or two, our lives are fairly quiet, and predictable, and safe."

"So far as that goes," Elias muttered dryly, topping up his tea.

"So far as that goes," she agreed amiably. "And you've certainly seen enough over the years to know that isn't necessarily the status quo. And while of course I hope that I will have a mage's full lifespan, it would be foolish for us to rely on that when we plan our future."

"Is that what this is about? Planning our future?"

"It is, rather, yes. Because it certainly seems a good time in our lives for it, the more so if I only have less than a century to live. If I wait too much longer, in that case, expanding our family begins to carry escalating risks, to both of us."

Elias frowned, his immobile face as readable to her now as if it had been clothed in flesh. "I don't understand. What risks? What do you mean, 'expanding our family'? Are you thinking of taking another familiar?"

"No; I was thinking more along the lines of us having a child."

Elias sputtered, fighting to keep his mouthful of tea from spraying across the table, a difficult feat without lips. "You timed that on purpose," he complained, brushing at the drops that spattered his impeccable shirt-front, as Silky gave a quiet giggle behind her.

"Maybe a little," she grinned. "But what do you think?" She leaned forward across the small table, taking his gloved hands in hers. "Do you want to have a child?" she pressed, a flash of anxiety briefly darkening her eyes.

Elias looked up, jaw dropping slightly open, his eyes distant as he considered. "I haven't thought about it much," he finally confessed, meeting her worried gaze. "It wasn't anything that I ever particularly thought of for myself. I will have to take some time to sort out my thoughts about it. But," he added, squeezing her hands reassuringly, "I am not opposed to the idea."