And by the Mingling even Fëanáro looks a little tired, though he stubbornly denies it, and Rúmil scoops him up to carry home with only token resistance.

Bella helps carry non-delivery loot back, and then goes to have a look at her house progress, and then presuming it is not yet suitable to sleep in goes back to Lórien for that. On the squashy bed-ified part of the ground.

The house is coming along marvelously, but it still has far too many piles of stone around to be tempting compared to Lórien.

Where sits a Fëanáro with an elaborate contraption that now lets one write four letters. "Twice as many as yesterday," he says, "but obviously not sufficient."

"I wonder if you could use something like this to write sheet music."

"Sheet music?"

"Written-down notes? So you can practice and play a song without having to memorize it by ear. I don't know all about how it works because I've never been very musical but I could probably reconstruct some of it, I took a few months of harpsichord lessons."

"That's an interesting idea. I don't think people find it hard to memorize songs, but I guess it could always be even easier. Or to modify them."

"I find it kind of hard unless they're really simple and catchy, and even then I only get the melody. Maybe Eldar are just better at it."

"Maybe it's like writing and you have to learn a way of categorizing but then it's much easier than thought."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean?"

"No one here knows how to write. Except me, and I'm still slow enough at it that it's not as useful as thinking out loud or something. But once I am fast at it and have an alphabet designed, it'll be more useful than memory. Likewise, for our people, they have developed music in the way your people have developed writing, so it's an enhancement to their ability to think and reason."

"Oh. I guess that might be it, yeah!"

"Writing is cooler, though."

"I think I agree with you."

He ceases fiddling with the automatic writer. "Tell me everything you know about the laws of magic."

"That's kind of a tall order and you didn't even say please."

"Please tell me everything you know about the laws of magic so I can help you with the work you're doing?"

"Sure." And she starts in about the distinctions between divine and arcane, spell-like abilities some kinds of people and animals have, things she's heard from various kinds of arcane magic majors about the fundamental limitations of illusions and the way you can get more freeform with your applications of magic as you get better than high-school cantrips and basics, and positive and negative energy, their relationship to healing and the undead, and the other kinds of "energy"-based spells (cold fire acid electricity sonic) plus force and what that does, magic auras - she teaches him her detection spell with a warning that he can hold it for about a minute if he concentrates but it'll fall away and still count as an entire cantrip even if he doesn't - and from there into the distinction between concentration, will, and intent (maintained with effort; applied without effort; worked into the initial casting); and she tells him about magic items and what little she knows about those, and permanency, and how she is a little concerned that the gift economy and general unscarcity of Valinor will make inherently valuable material components completely unworkable as a spell booster but she can't test that yet because she doesn't know anything that calls for one -

He's listening raptly. "If necessary we can declare that certain kinds of things can't be given away?"

"I'm not sure if that'll help. One of the laws of magic is that there are things you can't conjure or transmute without having already put more than that into the spell; gold's inherently valuable, gems are, if my parents had wanted to cough up the extra materials fee I could have learned in high school a spell that needs a pearl, and I don't know how the spells will react to artificial scarcity."

"Huh. That's weird. Do you think it cares about whether they're scarce in the specific plane? Surely there must be some planes where gold and pearls are common. Other than this one, I mean."

"I don't actually know. It might turn out that it only matters if they're scarce there, but it might also matter if I could sell it for the right amount or something."

"But artificial scarcity solves that." He's frowning. "Magic is really amazing and I don't fully understand it yet and it's very frustrating."