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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.
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subtly_artistic
subtly_artistic
"Uh, yeah. How much is not much." She frowns at the spell again.
"They're not omniscient and they don't look here often, but they'll be looking for Fëanáro and if he's been coming down here-"
"I've never been before," he says, "I'm not stupid. Looking for a world like this one but with no gods might be easier than finding science fantasy worlds in general..."
"I've never been before," he says, "I'm not stupid. Looking for a world like this one but with no gods might be easier than finding science fantasy worlds in general..."
subtly_artistic
"Might. It could be hard to define 'gods' for the spell but we have that problem either way." She rummages through her old notes, finds what she's looking for, reads, finds a pen. Writes slowly and then speeds up.
Hard to define gods, hard to define science fantasy, hard to define 'safe' - it's a complicated problem. Fëanáro has unfinished notes.
subtly_artistic
She helps, but she hasn't cast a spell in years and the idea of the Valar finding them isn't helping. Argh. Scribble scribble frown tweak. "...I left the oven on," she remarks inanely between pages of notebook.
"I can go back," Fëanáro says.
"No," Rúmil says instantly.
"No," Rúmil says instantly.
subtly_artistic
"Don't go back the safety will kick on as soon as the biscuits start smoking it's fine," she agrees.
"Okay." He's bouncing, this time probably not with enthusiasm, or not entirely. "I wanted to take us directly somewhere else but it was so hard and I was scared you'd already have been eaten."
subtly_artistic
"I would've been fine but I don't blame you for not waiting, this is really tricky."
"And I was worried the Valar would just make teleportation not work, they debated it but they were very divided."
subtly_artistic
"The real question is if they can figure out a way to prevent summoning from working if it's cast somewhere else, or messaging."
"Summoning they probably will stop if they can, because that's easy to justify as not wanting people summoned away from Valinor to scary places. Messaging would be hard to defend," Rúmil says.
subtly_artistic
"- is there anyone else we should ask if they want to come along, then, if we only get one shot?"
"...I don't know," Rúmil says. "I am tempted to say 'bring everyone, let them go back if they see fit. But."
subtly_artistic
"We don't have the mana for that unless we can get a Maia on board. Or unless some other hack for that has been discovered since I got booted."
"I'm pretty sure we can't get the Maiar on board for anything that counts as direct defiance of the Valar. And we haven't found a solution to mana. How many could you take?"
subtly_artistic
"I haven't cast anything since I got booted, I wanted to be very well within tolerances - maybe four?"
"Let's go, then, and hope they don't think to end summoning fast enough - they're the Valar, they think so slowly, they decide even slower..."
subtly_artistic
"- except when they're not letting me pack," she mutters bitterly, and she reapplies herself to the spell.
"That might be my fault," Fëanáro says, "I ran in and started yelling at them and I think they panicked a little. I was right, though. They are evil."
subtly_artistic
"It's not your fault. They decided to kick me out and if they made a hash of it because somebody objected that's their problem."
"If I hadn't run away to the Outer Lands they probably wouldn't have sent you home. It's me they're afraid of."
subtly_artistic
"Well, they can stop worrying about you when you're not in their jurisdiction any more, how about that," she says, "and then they can stop doing terrible things out of fear when they have this little understanding of how incarnate minds work that they thought anything about banishing me would help."
"Yeah," he says vehemently. "Maybe specifying lots of technology is better than specifying science fantasy? We can ask for a world where they can travel between stars, like in your stories..."