Thinking people might think I'm stupid or not very good feels awful.

I don't think anyone's going to think you're stupid, and not being very good at things is why people go to teachers in the first place, so they'll be used to that and won't think badly of you because of it. But it might still be scary if you can't tell they're not doing that, yeah - would it help if I met some teachers first and picked one I thought would be good for you, and if you had a chance to get to know them first?

I need to study from whoever's the best, or how would they know if I'm any good?

I dunno, you seem to have an idea of what's good and what's not, and you're not the very best yet. And anyway, you can learn from more than one person - that's how kobolds do it, we learn by ourselves and from our tribemates and then if we want to learn more than that we wait for a meetup and find someone better to learn from. You could do something like that here, it might make it easier for you to learn from someone who's really good without worrying what they'll think of you if you're already pretty good yourself when you start with them.

...maybe. But what if they teach me it wrong so I get worse? Or if the other person only thinks I'm any good because I had help?

There's nothing wrong with having help, Fëanáro. You're still the one doing the learning.

If I were smart enough I wouldn't need it.

Squeeze. Really? 'Cause as far as I know everybody learns from other people, no matter how smart they are. You probably could figure out everything from nothing, if you really wanted to, but why would you take the time to do that when other people can just show you?

It'd be less real if I just got showed things and didn't think of them. Wouldn't mean I'm smart.

Maybe, I guess. But letting people show you things doesn't mean you're not smart, it just means you're doing things a faster way that doesn't show whether you are or not. And doing things the faster way means you'll understand how to do things sooner and can do impressive things sooner, which sounds like it's what you really want here.

Yeah, I do. Okay.

She grins and gives him another squeeze. Do you have an idea of what you'd like to learn first?

Metalworking. You can do so much with it.

Sounds good, I'll see what I can do. And what do you want to do with this for now? She gestures at the prototype.

I suppose we should disassemble it so the materials aren't wasted.

If you want. Or if you want to put it someplace so we have it to look at later, we could do that - it might take you a while to learn enough metalworking to make another one.

Yeah, maybe, but I can't put it in my room, it's too ugly, it'd keep me up.

How about a storage room?

I guess. People will be annoyed if I do that too much.

That's kinda weird. I could teleport it to my old cave, but then you wouldn't be able to get it back without me, a storage room would be better if we can use one.

We can. We just shouldn't clutter it or be wasteful. 

Nod. All right, let's go find a place, and I can teleport it there.

What else would you like to do today?

He shows her a storage room. Keep working on the fountain, of course!

She grins. All right.

Back to the garden, where they can work on the other parts of the fountain. Eventually, they have it set up to the point where the water mostly isn't going anywhere unexpected, and the kobold gets her notes to go over while Fëanáro keeps working.

He takes a while to notice, but eventually - preparing for your talk?