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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
"So it might be worth trying to solve the problem in the intervening time."
"I love them and I want them to love me. But being around them is so scary and hard."
"Lots of little reasons."
"I feel like they're trying to do what'll appease me instead of reacting to me with real emotions. I always make them sad and it makes me feel so worthless and lost. I feel like I have to be someone else around them. I feel smaller. I don't think I make them happy. I think I'm an obligation. I bet they wish they didn't have children. I bet they wish they had a different one."
subtly_artistic
"I don't understand your father all that well and what I understand about your mother is confidential, I wish I - what have you pieced together about your mother's condition on your own already...?"
"She got sick giving birth to me and she got sicker because of me and she was sad all the time and wanted to die and was slowly dying. Now she's better but doesn't remember anything, and is sad because of that, and doesn't remember me so she tries too hard around me and it's really hard."
subtly_artistic
"What do you think it's like to be missing such a huge chunk of memory?"
"It makes her super sad."
"She asks you to put them back. She won't leave you alone. It's stupid."
"I don't know. She's stupid and mean."
subtly_artistic
"I cannot give you the answers, here, I'm cutting it really close as it is."
"If you took my memories I'd be horrified and angry and I'd never forgive you and I'd probably demand them back. But if I knew that when I had them I'd agreed, I'd either trust myself or I'd try it once and then know how I'd react and not keep doing it."
"Because she doesn't understand basic reasoning."
"Two months would be enough information to decide what's worth it. Then she could stop second-guessing it and making your life hard."
"If she does figure it out, sometimes, but for some reason figuring it out is itself a thing she has to forget? Why would she forget things anyway? What problems are better if you forget them? They do that sometimes for slaves of Melkor but if one turned out to not like forgetting they'd just remember..."
subtly_artistic
"That's not really what I was getting at in the first place."
"if it's not that she's stupid it has to be something related to the memory. I"m thinking, don't interrupt me. When it's gone, she wants it back, and knowing that having it back won't make her happy and that she'll choose to do this again doesn't make her stop trying to get it back. And not just an idle curiosity, she can't let it go."
subtly_artistic
"This is not at all what I was getting at and I advise you to stop."