"Like how?"

"I'm probably not the person to ask. The Enemy had erased, in bits and pieces, around half my memory so for me it was a much stranger experience than usual, it was like getting an entire life of experiences. But most people laid down for an hour or so getting used to their brains feeling so different. And if you have bad things in your past it becomes possible to continuously replay them in perfect detail."

"I... don't think that would present a problem for me. Is it the sort of thing I'd need to be sure to wear all the time?"

"Doesn't make your memory worse with it off, though you get used to having perfect recall and then it's disconcerting not to. I take it off sometimes when I don't want to be able to relive Angband quite that vividly."

"If you're just handing them out I'd like one, then."

"We are! Well, we're selling them on the galactic market for money to fund world-fixing projects that money helps with, but they only take a few weeks to make and I expect you'll use it for much world-fixing."

"Safe bet."

So he hands her a necklace. "Enjoy."

"Thanks." On it goes.

"Feel any different? You also have fewer years of memories to reintegrate."

"Yeah, it's different, but not - difficult, I guess?"

"Oh, good. Should last forever. If you need indelible memory for anything, we have that too but it's a lot harder. And now that your memory's good enough you can learn Loki's spells, but warning, they're very very boring to learn..."

"Boring?"

"They're the equivalent of forty or fifty books-length of symbols that won't be meaningful to you, and you just have to commit them all to memory and then at the end click you can teleport. When you have the necklace on. Or, if you go for indelible like I did, forever."

"Wow, no wonder it takes her so long to invent spells."

"Well I am guessing you didn't think it was a lack of motivation or conscientiousness. And yes. Her magic is very powerful but absurdly slow."

"I will have to teach her wizardry."

"I can have a more thorough go at finding her? I know a lot of places she might be, and I bet she'd be very excited to meet you and learn wizardry."

"I'm not in all that much of a hurry and it's possible she wanted to be unreachable for some reason."

"Fair enough. Your - ah, my father - will be occupied by the library for a week, at a guess; should I make room for the two of you?"

"They need nicknames or something," Bella says. "And yeah, although if we're staying that long I need to call Rúmil so he won't worry."

"Ours goes sometimes by the Thindarin - Feanor - so that's fine. Guest rooms: acquired! They're lovely, you'll like them. My grandmother's back to making stunningly pretty things."

"Oh good! She gave me one of her tapestries before I was banished, it didn't make it into the packing but I might summon it once I have a more permanent residence in the new world."

"Aren't they pretty? She took a job in our timeline with Vaire, the Vala of fate, weaving its threads. Then she got to unweave them all, it was lovely."

Bella giggles.