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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
"It's never, 'that would be better to leave for when it's raining and it's not going to rain until the Valar tweak the weather back to normal'? It's never, 'that's best done in a group and you're the first person to express interest'? It's never, 'you didn't say please'? It's never, 'I don't have the spare time to help with that until I finish this project'? It's never, 'I'm not good enough to produce whatever you're asking of me'?"
subtly_artistic
"How do you know when it's those? You just said it was always about how good you were."
subtly_artistic
"Some people aren't good with children," she says. "How would you tell if it was that? That's not Mahtan's problem, obviously, but it could be somebody's."
He grins mischievously. "Why are they not good at children? What behaviors of children are they not good at? That's what you'd ask, if you wanted them to actually change."
subtly_artistic
"No; it could if you asked the right questions instead of going 'as always, this is about me not being good enough'. Somebody who didn't want to teach you something because they aren't good with kids might not know you in particular to speak of."
"Everyone knows me. Everyone talks about me. If I go out and just listen to people, it's never long before they're talking about something I did or something someone said..."
subtly_artistic
"So if people are drawing conclusions about you based on rumors that doesn't reflect directly on you."
"I care what people think of me. So I care what they think of the stories. And the stories are always true."
subtly_artistic
"...Okay, if the rumors are all true that's a little different than if we were talking about ridiculous tabloid style things claiming you were the secret identity of the long lost presumed dead golem rockstar Lars Potts, I will admit."
subtly_artistic
"A golem is a kind of person and a rockstar is someone who's famous for producing music."
"No, they just say 'Prince Curufinwë ran away again' or 'Prince Curufinwë had a screaming fight with his father' or 'is Prince Curufinwë Marred by Melkor?"