"Elven childhoods and human childhoods are very similar in this world," says Rosheverel. "A twelve-year-old human and a twelve-year-old elf, or a seventeen-year-old human and a seventeen-year-old elf, would be at more or less the same place in their lives, except that the human goes on to live for a hundred years or less all told, and the elf for a thousand or more."