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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 that would probably be something you could apologize for just fine, not something you feel like you have to stand by."
He shifts his weight unhappily. "Yeah."
subtly_artistic
"Maybe if you can tell her in very concrete terms what makes you so awkward around her she'll be able to improve. What does 'trying too hard' mean?"
"It's like there's something very important at stake every time we talk, even if it's just that we're eating breakfast."
subtly_artistic
"Well," Bella says, "apparently whenever she eats breakfast with you she accidentally gives you impressions about how she feels about you which probably aren't what she meant at all, and if enough of those accumulate she might not be able to salvage anything out of her relationship with her only child; that sounds like something very important at stake."
"But it makes it really scary and hard to be around her."
subtly_artistic
"Yeah. Which is the sort of problem I bet she'd like to solve! But I'm not sure how actionable 'pretend it's not really high stakes' is."
"I mostly just avoid her."
subtly_artistic
"I think it would be really nice if you could figure out a way to do a project together without it being really uncomfortable the whole time but maybe that's a bit much to ask."
"I can try to figure out how, I just don't know."
subtly_artistic
"I'm not expecting you to know right away. Maybe if you got good at perspective taking you could try to figure out what it is she wants when she does something you don't like - sort of like I needed to figure out what you were getting out of hitting your head on stuff, although it'd be a little harder because it might not be easy for her to describe it to you - and then tell her a better way to get what she wants."
"I want her to love me and be proud of me and not feel afraid around me and not make me feel like the world might explode every time we talk if it doesn't go right."
subtly_artistic
"Then she needs to know how to make you feel loved and prided in because whatever she's doing isn't working, and you need to know how to not frighten her, and you both need to relax."
"Yeah.
That sounds hard."
That sounds hard."
subtly_artistic
"I know. I know, it's so hard, I wish you had an easy family." Snuggle. "Families when you're growing up are supposed to be easy as practice for everything else and you don't get that and it sucks."
"I don't need lots of practice at most things."
subtly_artistic
"Well, that makes you lucky in some ways but it does mean that when something you aren't naturally perfect at comes up you don't have any practice at having to practice."
He gives her a wobbly smile.
"Would you still love me if I did all those horrible things?"
"Would you still love me if I did all those horrible things?"
"Yes. The ones I would do if we hadn't ever met."
subtly_artistic
"Nobody I loved has ever gone and done horrible things before. And I don't know why you would have done them, either, there wasn't very much context. I don't know exactly how I'd feel. But I would never think I was wrong to love you now."
"I think I'm going to go work on something alone right now."
He leaves.
subtly_artistic
And she goes and works on things in her house until it's bedtime and then she comes over to hand off the necklace.