"Sounds like it'd take a while."

"I can do other things while I'm traveling, so it's not like I'll get behind."

"Well, as long as your activities don't require anything you can't bring with you."

"The fast-writer's too heavy to carry. I can try to make a smaller one."

"Paper's pretty heavy if you need a lot of it, too."

"I can come up with a different way of writing," he says, scowling.

"Crystal balls are heavy but you'd only need one and it wouldn't need paper. Then you'd have to wait for a crystal ball though."

"How long do you think it'll take to have a crystal ball?"

"I'm not sure. Once I have all the data from the combinatorics of the spells I know I can start making guesses about how to compose completely novel spells, but I don't know yet what my hit rate for guesses will be."

"Okay. I have other things to do in the meantime. We have to convince people to start using the alphabet and writing books."

"People were pretty excited about it when I wrote down transliterations of the names of their food, but I think it'll only really catch on as more than a novelty when they don't have to learn Pax too in order to learn to write."

"We should finish that right now," Fëanáro says. Rúmil, let's work on the alphabet some more, I want to have it done by the Mingling.

Bella giggles.

And they go and take some parchment from someone - they say 'please' - and Fëanáro settles into Rúmil's lap to write.

Bella tries out symbols in development, commenting on how quick and easy they can be written.

By the Mingling they have an alphabet, though Fëanáro is dissatisfied with its ability to capture other dialects of Quenya.

"There are dialects?" Bella asks, writing a chart of the symbols and the associated sounds and a reminder to herself of how to perch vowels on top of consonants.

"The three tribes talk different ways," he says. "The Teleri most of all since they were late getting here."

"Different how? If they just pronounce their vowels different or something that's not traditionally represented in the alphabet."

"No, they keep some sounds we've changed and they have more vowels and they don't use some sounds we've invented."

"Well, maybe we can invent more letters for those sounds, but this will do for your own dialect."

"No, it has to be perfect, we can't add things on later."

"...Why?"

"People won't learn it if they feel like it's a project in progress, and there might be competing versions, and then things would get confusing, and also I will have done something wrong."

"Do the dialects have names? You can just say this is the Noldor alphabet."