Emet-Selch sighs. "It never ceases to amaze me how short-sighted those like you truly are." Oh, how he has suffered through this conversation before so many times in so many different ways.

"How many turns of the sun do you suppose your kind can live? Fifty? A hundred? More?" A slight pause. "Your flames are extinguished so shortly after you begin to walk the world. Either by sickness, injury, war, or your own foolishness do you all meet your end. Yet Ascians are undying." They could live an age. More. So long that they chose to return to the star when they were ready.

His voice turns bitter. "Now you ask me to covet those who can't even regard their own as if I have never tried. Over and over and over I would watch them fall. Lifetimes I have spent witnessing them perpetuating their own downfalls." It has never failed.

"Regardless of your assumptions, I am not beyond having my heart broken. I have trusted those like you, I have befriended them, loved them, and you've all done naught but disappoint me. All you've done is die. And you would wish the agony of loss upon me."

He motions to Cid sharply with an open palm. "Yet here you stand and ask me 'why'."