"It could be, they say in a land where I come from that all the trees are alive in some way, and that whatever they craft from them, the soul or the spirit of that thing, or at least some small piece of what it was? It dwells within it still." It isn't something she's entirely sure she believes but she never begrudges her friends their beliefs and it's one of the few things about forests that she knows for certain. "Maybe ironbark is something like that, a thing that is more somehow, and we will never know and are all the richer for it."

At least not in this life at any rate.

"Immortal?" Now that is worthy of a few moments of silence to think on such a thing, to even imagine that when forty seems old to her. "Would that not be so dull though? Life is change, but if you are immortal you would be the same person, in the same state until...well until something rather drastic. You wouldn't move on to another place."