[The return of touch is soothing as he watches Cy's face while he speaks. Concepts he's never heard of and has no preexisting framework to put them into—it's difficult. But more than that, he wonders at the glimpse of a history described.]

Did you learn all of this alone?

[He has more questions than only this: What did Cy mean, when he was "new"? Why had he been so angry? What exactly went wrong with the Ascension? Yet these are withheld, for now, as Cy is clearly focusing on Sasuke's issues. The rest can wait for another moment.]

If you're still working on it thousands of years later, then I don't seem to have a lot of time. [lmao] Those in my world—shinobi, we're called—don't have long lifespans even by comparison to the average civilian. Perhaps thirty. More powerful individuals might reach forty, or if they're very lucky, fifty and sixty.

[Yet he can count the number of shinobi he's ever known who are that old on one hand.]