[ That invitation to talk makes her chest twist a little. She must look so weird to him right now, drunk and bursting into tears. She blinks hard, feels tears rolling, and quickly mops them up on her sleeve. Quietly: ]

Sorry. I'm sorry. Just one second...

[ She sniffs, sits up taller, straightens her neck. With her hands in her lap and her voice a little more nasally: ]

It sounds like it might just be different in my world. [ She wipes the edge of her eye. ] So it's not like this anymore, but in ancient times, all of the races on my world used to live until they were around one thousand years old.

[ She holds up two separate fingers ☝️☝️ and brings them together. ]

When you mix the blood of a long-lived race and a short-lived race, it makes the— [ give her a second to drunk person buffer and remember her words ] —the average lifespan of that person revert to how it used to be.