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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
"They said they let me keep mine because I was the only distressed one but I think he's more distressed than me. I don't know if anyone else will miss them that much. I guess everybody else who had one is an adult and can move to Tol Eressëa if they want."
"He wasn't distressed before he learned of it, though. Or, not about that."
subtly_artistic
"...He was in a hurry to cram things into as little time as possible before. He didn't know what was stopping him. Then he found out."
He shakes his head. "I'm really afraid for him."
"I know you are. I appreciate it tremendously and want you to know that whatever resources I can provide are yours."
subtly_artistic
" - Thank you." If she can figure out how to tell Finwë what he is doing wrong as well as she can with Fëanáro that will be a major help.
He smiles at her and is called away by someone.
subtly_artistic
She goes back to Fëanáro and works. She can't think of a reason Valar wouldn't want crystal balls in Valinor. She can bring up Improved Coping Mechanisms and the loom when Fëanáro's not mid-work-fugue.
He finishes that evening. "I did all my things for the day! And without the necklace!"
"I'm going to leave Valinor for the Outer Lands as soon as I'm big enough."
subtly_artistic
"Don't take a boat." She offers him the necklace. "Your father says you really freaked out when your necklace broke. I knew it would upset you but it sounded very bad."
"I lost a whole day and then realized what'd happened and I thought maybe you'd left or been sent home and taken all the magic with you - I didn't have any mana to check - and I felt like my mom was dying all over again."
subtly_artistic
"Oh no. No, I'm still here." Hug. "But I heard you were banging your head on walls and screaming at people."
"I was. I was scared and hurting and they kept saying really unhelpful things and not going away when I asked."
"Like "Fëanáro you're scaring us" when I was scared and didn't know how to pretend I wasn't and "oh it's fine" when it's not and "we're not going to let you go out" when -"
subtly_artistic
"What would you have wanted them to say? Besides that they'd let you go out, that one's obvious."
"That sounds really scary and I bet you're really scared let's go figure out what's going on."
subtly_artistic
"Unfortunately," she said, "no one in the conversation decided to address somebody else being scared instead of themselves."
"I had a better reason to be scared."
subtly_artistic
"Their kid was running around in a panic hitting his head on things and screaming at people," she points out. "That sounds pretty frightening to me, enough that they might have trouble concentrating on whose reason was better. Did you tell them what you were scared about?"
"Yes."