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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
It stopped working and I tried to figure out another one but I couldn't figure it out and couldn't figure it out and couldn't figure it out and I kept thinking of other things I wanted to be doing but I wasn't sure if that was the time slide so I made a calendar with everything I wanted to do every day and compared it to everything I was doing every day while it worked and if I do all of that then it's okay but every day I don't get it all done I feel like I'm going to die and people talking to me is so distracting so I came up here and I have to finish a translation of these chapters today and then a letter to someone interested in establishing a guild of linguistics and then invent a spell and then that'll be enough for today please go away.
subtly_artistic
It's the Valar, they broke them. They left mine. I can loan it to you.
He looks up at her with watery eyes. But then you won't have one.
subtly_artistic
I sleep more than you anyway. I might be able to very secretly work out a subtle arts version I can do on myself.
If we'd done a bracelet we could slip it around both our wrists. Why did the Valar break them? That was mean!
subtly_artistic
They're worried a bunch of people will want them, and then people who wouldn't want them will have to have them to keep up, and they left mine because I was the one who noticed and objected in the first place and I asked them to leave yours and they wouldn't but they said they wouldn't break mine if I loaned it to you.
But - no one having them isn't better than some people having them when they don't want them, especially if they chose them. Would you? I'd feel so much better.
He collapses sobbing into her shirt.
They should have asked.
Why can you have one but not me?
subtly_artistic
They said it was because I was the one who was distressed. I told them you were distressed too, and then they said some things about what you're apparently fated to do and... it wasn't good... and they don't want you sped up to do not-good things faster... but they said my necklace is mine to loan out. And I have free will so if you just hang out with me a lot maybe you will not be fated to do anything horrible.
But I'm fated to do something horrible?
subtly_artistic
Yeah. And I didn't quite have the nerve to ask them why if they didn't like the look of fate they were interrupting literally anything I do.
I don't want to do anything horrible.
subtly_artistic
Good. Squeeze. I don't know how fate's supposed to work but I'm supposed to be able to mess with it, Mairon mentioned.
But the rest of us - can't? It just has to happen that way? I just have to end up being horrible?
subtly_artistic
I don't know, it doesn't make any sense, but you do not have to be horrible because here I am and I'm not in the plan. Squeeze.
But if you hadn't tripped and landed here, I'd be horrible.
subtly_artistic
That's what they said, but I'm sure they didn't show me all the circumstances or if anything else was going on...
What do I do?
subtly_artistic
Um, don't swear a really dramatic long-winded oath in front of a crowd about something called Silmarils? And don't carry around a sword. And don't set any boats on fire.
Well. Those sound pretty easy to avoid.