Lights, Cameras, aaaand the Immortal Soul

"What're ya thinking?"

"Magic."

"Oh. Big topic. What about magic?"

"Enchanting. In school they taught us that souls are conserved. They all get recycled into the dreamsleeve and reused by other people."

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, what about soul gems? I used a dog's soul to enchant this bracelet here, so does that mean there's one less soul in circulation?"

"Well, it comes down to the AE and the animus, right? Its like a souls made out of two things, and they're different. The animus gets used in enchanting and the AE goes wherever it wants."

"Yeah, maybe, I guess. But how does an AE exist independent of the animus? Without the animus the AE's just an inanimate mind that can't do anything. Without something animating it, does the AE really exist?"

"Maybe souls aren't really conserved. Magic and souls are the same thing, pretty much, right? Magic, souls and light? Well, magic comes from the sun and the stars and all that. Maybe all that magic beams down to Nirn and it turns into new souls are nourishes the ones already here."

"Then why do souls act like their conserved?"

"Because its easier to teach?"

"What if magic and souls and light aren't the same thing? What if they're just related. I mean, what's matter supposed to be?"

"Solid souls. The land and water and all that is earth bones, people and plants and animals are what the souls look like from the outside."

"But people and animals can't get magic from light directly. They have to eat something with stored magic in it and the gut gets the good bits out."

"Yeah."

"So doesn't that mean a soul isn't just pure magicka?"

"Of course it isn't. Its applied magicka. A tree and a table are both made of wood, but they both aren't the same thing."

"And table and a person are both made of magic. But if souls weren't conserved then couldn't enchanters just make their own?"

"Well, maybe souls can be made of something and be conserved. They don't have to be fundemental forces. Like, maybe way of when Anu and Padhome or whoever first their horizontal dance..."

"Oh, shut up."

"No, listen. When they first intersected or whatever the force created the conditions needed to make a soul, and those conditions haven't repeated so no new souls've been made."

"But then what happens to the dog in the bracelet? Or people that meet the daedra when they die? Or the other afterlives?"

"They'll probably get recycled eventually. You can't stay in the hunting grounds forever. And we all know what happens to people in Sovngarde."

They both did. Their history class just got done with that unit.

"So the only way this dog'll be a dog or cat or anything else again is if I smash the bracelet?"

"Probably."

"Hmm. But it is a really pretty bracelet."

"Yup."

"Think we'll ever run out?"

"What? Of souls? I think the world's supposed to end before that."

..................

"I do really like your bracelet, though"

"Thanks. It was just a class project, but I think it turned out really nice."

"Well, it looks good."