How can one's mortality be so drastically impacted by humes unless there was a source for immortality I wonder? [she doesn't expect to receive an answer, it is more rhetorical than anything else.]

Not I, far from it. I went against the Green Word and left the Wood of my people to become a sky pirate - I am viera only by the identification of my race now. My elder sister Jote is the leader of our clan, however. Viera are few and spaced out into clans, there are clans for the male of our species and clans for the female of our species and we remain separate.