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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
"That's not necessarily true, people can be insecure even with the most picture-perfect childhoods."
"His assumptions are all pretty grounded, though. He's worried for real reasons, his guesses aren't far off the mark -"
subtly_artistic
"He has a lot of insecurities on the same theme which don't all revolve around you, but yeah, that makes it more complicated to address."
"Well. Those ones are probably indirectly my fault; I think the tendency to obsess over making the most beautiful things in the world must be partially hereditary. You haven't seen any of the projects I've done since I came back, since you avoid me; would you like to see them?"
It's a tapestry of Fëanáro at his typewriter, sleeping. It's so vivid and detailed and precise she could easily be looking at him. His chest rises and falls; the light gradually changes from silver to golden. His face is smudged with ink.
She smiles. A little bit. "It's magic. It takes a lot of time and care, but it's so worth it when you get it right."
"He is. And so gifted."
subtly_artistic
"He's smart enough that even if you let me share only bits and pieces to reassure him he might make a few leaps and guess."
"Yeah, I worry about that."
subtly_artistic
"We can start trying more complicated exotic things like you not remembering that you forgot anything until your appointment if you think this isn't sustainable. It would take a while and it'd be riskier but I could do it."
"What - exactly - am I risking? What happens if it goes wrong?"
subtly_artistic
"It's not exactly predictable - if I list side effects that could happen and one sounds like it wouldn't bother you I can sort of lean that way, but only the way you can lean one way or the other if you're walking on something high and narrow, leaning either way makes it more likely you'll fall at all. Um, side effects for making you forget that you forgot things, if I did it wrong, might affect your memory more generally - you might just forget stuff, or remember it backwards or weird in some way, or remember random things so vividly that they crowd out other stuff. You might have weird, possibly unpleasantly weird, dreams. Youuuu might get paranoid and think that people are plotting against you as an alternative explanation for why they seem to know things you don't."
"I think I'll try to hold out for a few more years, see if you get anywhere on using your magic to help."
subtly_artistic
"Okay. Continuing not to tell Fëanáro anything covered by confidentiality at all?"
"You can tell him that I love him. I don't know if it'll help."
She swallows. "Yeah."
She starts crying. This happens sometimes, usually stops shortly after Bella leaves.
Fëanáro is making pottery and listening to Rúmil sing him an old Elven epic. He has a rule not to do anything for longer than an hour unless he's making progress.
subtly_artistic
Bella looks at her watch, goes and sits with them. Hey, she says, so as not to interrupt the epic.