Yes, exactly. As her stage of life changes, surely she'll be imagining her best characters in that same place. I adore your Forward Momentum story to itty, bitty teeny tiny pieces for that reason and would love to see her take on all the aging issues. Aral is, after all, going to die and Cordelia will live through it in her inimitable way.....as will Miles, Simon, Gregor, Kou, Drou....I mean, how everyone copes with losing Aral is a whole damn book unto itself. Miles' body will not age gracefully and Ekaterin will be there in the midst of that. The up-comming count/tesses and prince/esses are going to go through their own growing pains while their elders are dealing with all of that - give us those books, LMB! I'd read the shit outta those :)