When I think about fantasy relationships between immortal or long-lived beings and people with more human-length lifespans, there are two real-world analogues that come to mind:
* Humans and pets that live for 10+ years: people who love cats/dogs/horses/etc tend to get new ones throughout their lives, as long as they're able to care for them, as their first/second/third pets die before them.
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* Humans and pets that live for a 2-3 years or less: all the people I've known who kept rats stopped keeping rats after several years, out of grief for the ones they've lost.
Makes me wonder if humans reach a kind of heartsickness threshold, where you can love and lose pets only so many times before the certainty of another loss overwhelms the desire to experience that love again.
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@rowyn the comparison to animal companions brought to mind an aspect of immortal-mortal relationships that I haven't really seen explored in fiction: The prospect of elder care for the shorter-lived companion, which is a major part of the final years in human-nonhuman companionships. It's actually pretty moving to think of an Elf or Dwarf (or Vulcan with serial numbers filed off or what have you) caring for an aged and later dying mortal companion, still young and strong themself while watching their partner or friend die--and I can imagine they can only take so much and would reach a threshold.
@ljwrites In https://www.novaecomic.com/ , there's a hint at that in a recent flashback, where the unaging character is with his lover who's dying of old age and urging him to go on living and loving for her.
There's a tumblr post that kind of touches on the same point, about "to dogs, humans are the equivalent of elves".
@ljwrites @rowyn yeah it was in a convo about character death that feels truly meaningful so i don’t think they shy away from the tragic aspects! it seems like a really interesting premise though—so often these kinds of relationships get explored primarily through the human (aka shorter lived) perspective, or its all just handwaved for the sake of romance
@Satsuma @ljwrites oh gosh 😭