"Various mental configurations of wanting it to take a hike for a while," she says, shrugging.
"But not, say, prayer or incense or putting yourself in a situation where being invulnerable would be worse than not under really high stakes."
"I am definitely not ever going to do the last one on purpose," she says, "and the first two fall under 'too much effort for too little reward'. I'm not going to exhaust the possibilities of how to accomplish something I don't want to do in the first place."
She considers. "Your jaw muscles got sore when you bit your tongue - I wonder if you could cause them actual damage? Or if you just aren't strong enough to do that?"
"From experience, although granted not experience trying to hurt myself, my muscles just stop getting more sore after a while."
"Huh." Bella had been considering flicking a triangle of sore-jaw-muscles at Bridget to see if it would bounce off, but she doesn't really need that information and it might be noticeable. "What experience is relevant here, if not that?"
"Hm. Are you sure it's all muscle soreness, not tendons or something?"
"Did it hurt when I twisted your wrist at all? That would be mostly tendons."
"Inconclusive but suggestive. I suppose if someone else hits you in a place where any pain would be partially muscular that also fails to hurt though, so perhaps it's only internal exertion. Hmmm."
"My best guess is that it's related to being able to build muscle," she offers.
"Is there an unusual upper limit on the amount of that you can do - or the speed at which you can do it?" Bella inquires.
"Have you done enough weight training or whatever that you'd have been liable to notice?"
"There's something you could try if curious, then. Hmm."
"Hm? Aren't you in three classes that are well below your academic competence, and you do - origami? Was it origami?" Bella tries to fake forgetting nonessential things, when she remembers. "What else is taking up your time?"
"I allocate at least one day a week to enjoying the fact that my busy-ness level is not at the saturation point."
"Fair enough, but what about what remains of the other six?"