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Bella's house gets done, and she fills it up with things. She experiments with magic, and theorizes when she has more data to work with; when she runs out of her steadily increasing mana supply for a day she studies Quenya. One morning she sits bolt upright in bed, realizes she has not seen a single wheel since she got here, and runs off to Mahtan to explain the concept, which is, it turns out, new.
When Fëanáro is feeling sociable she hangs out with him. He finishes his novel. (In it, the school turns him over to social workers and adopt him out, he escapes his foster family, he encounters a dragon and talks his way past it with stories about Arda, he studies wizardry and is unreasonably effective at it, when the dragon opens a portal to Arda he sneaks through too and the Valar slay the dragon, he fixes his mother with magic, and then he masters planar travel himself and conquers Bella's plane.) He finishes his typewriter, too; Bella's of the opinion that it would have been easier if he made vowels separate instead of consonant-hats, but it works okay like so. She acquires one when there is more than one, and learns to type, because crystal balls are a long time coming.
She has made some progress, though. She finds the common thread in dud combinations that produced an aura, and successfully decomposes all her original spells into pieces and begins to make new combinations. Most of these are trivial like the increased character limit arcane mark. Reverse-engineering her undead-damaging spell, though, gets her (small) arcane healing well in advance of when she was expecting to have that down. So anybody who lives on her block and cuts themselves cooking breakfast can knock on her door - or that of anybody who's getting the spells as she turns them out - and get that seen to without bothering a Maia.
Once a month she sees Miriel. Bella doesn't have any ideas that land any better than "forget you forgot something". But forgetting the contents of that foolish, foolish oath is at least a holding pattern that lets Miriel pretty much live her life, so, therapeutic success? ...Bella makes sure to remind Fëanáro that he is very adorable and lovable and adored and loved.
subtly_artistic
subtly_artistic
Well, she's not sure what else to try on Fëanáro's teaching style. It is hardly the worst teaching style she has ever met.
subtly_artistic
And much as he hopes to mature by brute intellectual force she is not yet convinced that this can be the only ingredient in his entire adulthood.
subtly_artistic
Great! Bella likes to start off class sessions by finding out what everybody wants to learn to do.
Nerdanel would like to learn spell design for a variety of spells with artistic and workshop and craft and mining purposes. Her sister would like to fly.
The Eldar improve at magic much slower than Bella did, or remembers her classmates doing. Perhaps it's partially that they sleep less.
subtly_artistic
It's probably that they sleep less. She mentions the tradeoffs involved and doesn't otherwise interfere; you can get a ways on a few low-powered spells per day for a while.
The sort of people who want to learn magic tend to be the sort who don't like the idea of sleeping more.
subtly_artistic
She can understand that. She is pretty sure if anybody figures out a way to recharge mana without being bored or asleep Fëanáro will declare a festival for them.
subtly_artistic
In the meantime, she can figure out how to siphon mana off people who aren't using it. Nobody who doesn't practice has much, but it's still something.
Fëanáro is convinced that there must be some kind of mana supply somewhere that one can siphon off. It only makes sense. He starts studying it in his spare time.
Fëanáro ends up consulting with Olórin. It's not clear that the Maiar have a mana limit - at least, if so, none of them have reached it - so he thinks maybe that's the key.
subtly_artistic
That could be. Do Maiar sleep or do anything like it, though? Maybe they're large but finite supplies.
Maiar do not sleep or do anything like it. Does that mean one day he will run out? He is amused at the idea.
subtly_artistic
It could happen. Maybe he can siphon off some Maia who likes magic less at that time.
Or spend a century doing nothing but revel in the music! That seems like the sort of thing that might recharge magic.