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This is the wrong building. She could have sworn the RA said "take a left at Emily, first on your right", and Bella did exactly that, and here she is and the rooms in this place don't even seem to be numbered, it's all letters and names. She's not going to find Intro to Subtle Therapy in Room 206 like that. Maybe the RA meant take a left after Emily, not before Emily? Maybe she was supposed to go the other way around the quad and approach Emily from the other direction? She's going to be late.
Bella tries to get out of the letter-named-rooms building to go ask Emily for directions, but that's not a stairwell after all, and there's someone shouting at her not to come in and she flinches back and clonks her elbow on the door and boots or no boots she's down and she -
- is falling -
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subtly_artistic
The Enemy could do things like that. Well, tamper with memories, tamper with senses, tamper with emotions, give you experiences you weren't really having.
subtly_artistic
The most common thing for a subtle artist to not be able to stop doing is reading minds, not actually doing anything to them, but that's bad enough. It'd be a really rare one who could do something complicated like a hallucination and couldn't stop doing it.
What do you do about people who can't stop reading minds?
subtly_artistic
I block them; I have a natural talent for it and don't have to be trying. I can block them out for other people who are around too. But mostly they're just - encouraged to learn to stop that. If they can.
Well. I suppose it'd be unkind to just exile them to a city where no one minded.
subtly_artistic
Most people mind less than I do - well, less than I hypothetically would. What I object to is that they aren't required to, like, wear a hat or anything to display that they're incontinent mindreaders.
He raises an eyebrow. Wouldn't that make it worse? My thoughts if I thought they were being read would be ones I'd be far less comfortable having read than the thoughts I have most of the time.
subtly_artistic
I mean, that way you'd know to leave, if you wanted to leave.
Ah, it has a short range? That's good, at least.
subtly_artistic
Exact distance depends on the person, but it's limited, yes, they don't just constantly hear literally every unshielded person.
He nods. Do you need anything else to make use of your inks?
subtly_artistic
I've got enough stuff for scrolls of all the spells I know, and a few experiments!
Oh, good. And you're staying in the palace until your house is done?
subtly_artistic
That's the idea, apart from teleporting off to Lorien when Miriel gets here.
He laughs. I will warn you of that if I hear of it before you do.
And they return to the palace. Fëanáro is apparently barricaded in his room trying to invent a letter stamper.
subtly_artistic
Then Bella will not interrupt his important work. She will go make a scroll. Ugh, she hasn't had to make a scroll since high school when they had to turn them in to the arcana teacher stamped with an Arcane Mark according to the academic honesty policy. Not that this even stopped a creative cheater. But she remembers the principle! The sound spell first.
Write write write paint paint.
Write write write paint paint.
No one disrupts her. From somewhere in the palace faint singing can be heard.
subtly_artistic
That's pleasant background music!
There. One scroll down, a few more to go. Scroll scroll scroll.
There. One scroll down, a few more to go. Scroll scroll scroll.
The light coming through the ceiling wanes, gets whiter.
subtly_artistic
And eventually she gets sleepy.
She puts down her brushes and caps her inks and crashes for the not-actually-night.
She puts down her brushes and caps her inks and crashes for the not-actually-night.
When she wakes the light is silver and Fëanáro is sitting silently on her floor doing something with clay.