“Wow is certainly one way to describe it. I’ve had over two hundred years, give or take a time travel incident, to come to grips with it. We changed our lives and from then on our course was unpredictable.”

Helen missed her friends more than she could ever express and it had been a long time since she’d let herself remember the Five, especially in all their glory. They were so arrogant in those days, so full of hubris. Now, she was the only one left - or the only one who had come here, at any rate.

“Longevity has, naturally, many advantages. That stretch of years has given me time to learn a great many things both scientifically and in linguistics. You collect languages when you have so much free time.”