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Currently On Hiatus: Please Enjoy A New Reader Question Every Weekday!

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There’s another question you overlooked, Michelle. As a Sphinx, your aging pattern.
Do Sphinxes age at a roughly human rate in their early years, then does their aging slow right down, till real old age where it speeds up again to human norm?
Or do Sphinxes age at a steady, though slower than human rate?

Sphinxes are a super magical mythical species, their lifespan is probably a few hundred years to be honest.

In fact the only recorded sphinx death happened due to suicide. RIP Phix.

Not true. In some myths I have read Sphinxs live as long as humans, and in others they live as long as a thousand years, but one said that they live forever. I like to think that Sphinxs only live as long as humans. But that is my personal opinion.

Jocasta was complaining that living as humans would give them “a more human lifespan” [Illumination 3, page 40], so it has to be longer. Though I guess humans then lived shorter lives than they do now. Still, I would expect sphinxes to live much longer than an average human. At least for those where it isn’t “19 and a bit, because dragon”.

I just realised something.
It gets worse, Michelle.
The only being in the LA who might have an idea as to how long Sphinxes can live for, is Ravi.
And you already know, first hand, how difficult it is to get an accurate, straight answer, out of Ravi.
damn.
:(

Yeah, at best you get something like :
“Oh, of course you people die! What a beautiful gift nature has given you! Often I’ve felt envious of the the temporary species, to truly go into the unknown like that is really becoming impossible for someone as old as I am.

How long do sphinxes live, you say? Well, I don’t quite remember, I haven’t really kept in touch with sphinxes, and they are so much more interesting when they’re alive! But I’m quite positive it was at least a century, or perhaps a little less? Unless it was more, but I’m sure it couldn’t have been any more than five or six hundred years…Of course, a yaksha doesn’t really perceive time on such a short span.
And it is quite hard to keep up with those who die, you know you shouldn’t blame them, but they still hurt you when they die, surely you understand, maybe you’ve had a cat or a dog (it is my understanding that these have shorter livespans than humans, correct?). In the end, it’s always seemed a bit irresponsible to me. To just allow oneself to drop everything, and sometimes in the most inconvenient situations! You’d think by now a species with such powerful magic as yours would have found a solution! But NO, of course you all prefer dying and leaving the older ones deal with the mess you leave behind.[Please imagine the next fifteen minutes of rant, as it hurts me too much to write them]”

Her family’s been dying off early, haven’t they? Brain hemorrhage or such? I forget.

Her dad did, but we don’t know about the rest of her ancestors. Doesn’t really matter though. Being in human form permanently gives you a human lifespan, so that says nothing about how old Michelle can become.

We know Michael died in his early 30s, when Michelle was 7 years old, so she would have been born when Michael was in his mid to late 20s.

We know Michael’s parents died before Michelle was born, but no idea how long before.
But with how marriages and births family patterns were in the late 1950s/early 1960s, when Michael would have been born, we can guess at their possible age, when they died, somewhere in their mid 40s in the early 1980s at the latest. Michael would have been in his early 30s in the early to mid 1990s, (the 1991 Ann Arbor photo fridge magnet) so he would have been born in the early 1960s, when his parents were in their early 20s.

Michael and the parent of his who had the Sphinx heritage, were both unturned. Because of how things were in Illumination there was no real info as to what the lifespan of a born fullform Sphinx would be under Medallion Magic.
Michelle was born human and was Turned Sphinx, so the known figures might not even apply to her.
And Ravi would only know how old born fullform Sphinxes can become

Relax, Michelle. If there’s a mythical creature with a natural lifespan SHORTER than that of a human, I have yet to hear about it. Maybe there’s a Mayfly Totem out there somewhere, but I doubt it.

The dark secret of immensely long lifespans is that your chance of dying stupidly, like tripping and falling down a manhole, or having a piano drop on you, approaches unity.

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