The elf sat in the tower and listened to the song that had no beginning and no end, and understood for the ten-thousandth time that this was what Corellon offered; not immortality, which was a trivial thing, but the opportunity to become so fluent in beauty that you could hear it in the silence between notes. Her apprentice sat across from her with bow and quill, and the young one's fingers trembled with the effort of translating what the master could no longer fully translate. The music they were making together was not of this moment. It was of all moments, every version of the melody that had ever existed or ever would exist. 'Don't think,' the master said quietly. 'Only listen and let your hands follow. The song already knows where it wants to go.' The apprentice released something she had been holding and let the bow move, and for a moment, the discord that had plagued her for months resolved into pure consonance, and she felt Corellon's attention like sunlight through colored glass. 'There,' the master said simply. 'That is the work. That is why we live so long. That is why we have time to truly learn.' The apprentice played on, and the master closed her eyes and let the music reshape her understanding of existence, as it always did, as it would for all the centuries ahead...