“Yes. Life was good there.”

“Life will be good again, I assure you.

“Help yourself to these pastries, I know they’re probably much smaller than the ones you’re used to.”

They shared a companionable silence for a while, before Yazadril spoke again.

“Sometimes it’s good to start over. I had a wife and a daughter when I was only a bit more than two hundred years old, but I lost them in a war some eight hundred years later. I lost my parents and my brother then too. I had a second wife and two sons, over five thousand years ago. None of them lived beyond their third millennium.

“And now, to my great and constant surprise, at the age of eight thousand four hundred and seventy-six, I have a beautiful young wife again, and two lovely twin daughters only slightly older than yourself!”

“Oh! Well, congratulations, I guess!”

“Thank you! Thirty-five years I have been married to Nemia, and it is still very much a subject worthy of congratulation, I think!” Yazadril chuckled.

“Ah.” Markee smiled, his heart touched by the ancient wizard’s obvious joy. “Thirty-five years. If it’s not impolite to ask, how old is your young wife?”

“She is only two hundred fifty-eight, and the very picture of beauty! I don’t mind telling you, I’ve found it wise to increase my exercise since we married, and still there are times when I’ve had to augment my stamina with the power to keep up with her bounteous energy!”

Markee actually chuckled, and the small amount of his face around his eyes and nose that wasn’t hidden by his hair and beard blushed bright red.

“Oh not that, Nemia is a wonderfully relaxing lover.” Yazadril chuckled. “Dancing mostly. That’s when she really tests my old heart! A touch of the power can be very important at times like that!”