To be fair to the momentarily blank look she gives him as she parses that question, there are a couple of elves really fucking with her average here. To be fair to the many things that are and have been independently wrong with her before any particularly long-lived, pointy-eared individuals came into the picture, she still might have done, anyway. The idea of it being an issue is not totally intuitive to her, though she catches on — visibly — after that moment of incomprehension.

“Well,” she says, bracingly, “it has been a while since there was anyone under the age of a hundred, but I don't think you're that young—”

Okay.

So she holds that for about a millionth of a second before she laughs, sliding her hand familiarly and fondly over his knee, “Stephen, you're a very handsome man and I like the streaks of white very much but I hadn't taken them for belonging to a man under forty.”