He's tracing them out in the air, wide-eyed. So clever. Who invented it?

"Dragons, probably, this is the same alphabet Draconic uses. I don't know which dragon, or if it actually was one of them personally or just somebody who wanted to write in their language."

Awe. What's a dragon?

A picture of a silver dragon, very scary and enormous. They look like that, but they can change shape if they want. They're extremely dangerous. The ones that look like metal will always keep their promises, but the other colors won't so they're worse - but any dragon is extremely dangerous.

There are no dragons here in the Blessed Realm. Maybe in Endorë, I don't know.

"I don't know either," she says, remembering to speak-and-translate. "There are fewer than there used to be in my plane."

He nods solemnly. What symbol is a dragon?

"Dragon is spelled -" She names the letters, finding examples on the page, point point point.

He nods. This story isn't about dragons, that doesn't appear anywhere.

"This isn't a story, it's a textbook. I was going to take a class about therapy, which is what I was going to do for a job when I got out of school, and this book was the reference for the class."

Oh. Job? School? Class?

"I spent a lot of time studying things, in groups, so that I could acquire skills, which other people would want me to use for them," Bella says. "A class is when somebody who knows a lot about something agrees to teach a group of people that thing, and a school is someplace where there are a lot of classes, and a job is using your skill once you have it so people will give you money."

He nods. Money?

This is a really fucking nice palace for illiterate pre-economic uneducated people. ...Stop thinking like a delving major. "Money is something that's hard to get a lot of, like gold or silver, and everybody will trade you whatever they have that you might want for some of your gold or silver, which makes it useful to get as much money as you can because that's the easiest way to get everything else."

Bella instantly stops hugging the prince and freezes in place.

Fëanáno does too.

She can't even think of a way to formulate an apology so she winds up scrunching her eyes shut and looking terrified, that's a good all-purpose response.

And now the King himself arrives, and storms into the room with a flock of other people looking absolutely furious. He directs a question in his language at Fëanáno, who shakes his head and curls up again.

Well so much for Ata never being angry just sad - Bella thinks but doesn't say when she peeks. She does not say that or anything else, she just shakes.

He pulls the prince out of her lap, hugs him, and makes some kind of demand of her in Quenya, which she obviously does not understand.

I, I still don't speak your, language, I'm, sorry -

What did you do to my son?

I didn't, I, he wanted to learn to read, I, please don't hurt me

There's a shocked and confused silence. No one's going to hurt you, he says after a moment, but we've been looking for my child all day in greater and greater panic. What did you do? What happened?