"I don't like the idea of people thinking I'm stupid even if they're wrong and what if they're not, how would I know? I should probably trust them, I can't think how else I'd tell..."

"You could trust me instead," she points out. "If you have to get your opinion from someone else in the first place anyway."

"You like me so you might be biased and your opinion isn't very trustworthy. I rescued you so you'd probably be nice to me even if I was stupid."

"I knew you before that," she points out.

"You landed on top of me, so you might have liked me for that reason. I don't really believe the things I am saying it's just - you thinking I'm smart doesn't make me feel sure of it, or feel safe, or feel good enough. It's nice but it's not the thing I want when I want to know everything."

"Okay; so you want to seem smart to strangers. How are they supposed to tell?"

"I know everything and have invented lots of things they've heard of."

"They can't tell if you know everything. They can tell if you've invented things they've heard of, admittedly, but you don't need to know everything to do that necessarily - I don't think the inventor of the crystal ball knows anything about, oh, crochet."

"I guess I don't need to know everything about crochet."

"So that's one thing you can skip or at least put off. What things do you need to know about?"

"Languages. All the languages and all the alphabets in all the universes. Magic. All different kinds, so I can be epic and save everyone.  Engineering and metalworking because apparently I'm really good at that and can make some amazing things that change worlds, things that other kinds of magics might not be able to do... making pretty things in every conceivable medium."

She refrains from pointing out that crochet is a medium. "There might be too many languages and magics."

"That's why I'm upset!"

"Yeah. I don't feel the way you do about languages but I do want to learn as many kinds of magic as I can. Thinking about how many there might be doesn't feel bad, though, it feels exciting for me."

"It usually feels exciting but then sometimes I just feel so small and inadequate because I haven't learned it all yet."

"Hm, if I ask myself why I don't feel that way it seems to be because I think I'm going at a respectable pace even if I'm not very close to the destination."

"I don't feel like I'm going fast enough yet. Like the timeslide is still sticking to me."

"Well, I have no objection to you picking up whatever your counterpart uses to do things three times as fast, but how fast would be fast enough?"

"I don't know. I am not sure any fast would be fast enough."

"Then that sounds like a problem."

"Yeah."

Hug. "I am planning to tease my counterpart about apparently taking hundreds of years to grow up and do anything interesting but it'll only be teasing. I'm pretty sure she's going as fast as she reasonably can. And if she teases me about not touching wizardry for years while I was in Materia that will also be only teasing. She knows the same thing about me. Do you know it about yourself, that you'll go as fast as you reasonably can?"

"Of course."

"Hm, well, no joy in that direction then... hm."

"That does help a little. I don't think the other me is stupid because he grew up the slow way. I feel sad for him because he was so miserable his whole childhood. And he did lots of things I can't do yet. Like the Silmarils, have you seen them?"