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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
The sort of people who want to learn magic tend to be the sort who don't like the idea of sleeping more.
subtly_artistic
She can understand that. She is pretty sure if anybody figures out a way to recharge mana without being bored or asleep Fëanáro will declare a festival for them.
Fëanáro will definitely do that.
subtly_artistic
In the meantime, she can figure out how to siphon mana off people who aren't using it. Nobody who doesn't practice has much, but it's still something.
Fëanáro is convinced that there must be some kind of mana supply somewhere that one can siphon off. It only makes sense. He starts studying it in his spare time.
subtly_artistic
Good luck with that. Bella's results are faster, although it does take a while.
Fëanáro ends up consulting with Olórin. It's not clear that the Maiar have a mana limit - at least, if so, none of them have reached it - so he thinks maybe that's the key.
Olórin thinks the Maiar just have a lot of mana because of being millions of years old.
subtly_artistic
That could be. Do Maiar sleep or do anything like it, though? Maybe they're large but finite supplies.
Maiar do not sleep or do anything like it. Does that mean one day he will run out? He is amused at the idea.
subtly_artistic
It could happen. Maybe he can siphon off some Maia who likes magic less at that time.
Or spend a century doing nothing but revel in the music! That seems like the sort of thing that might recharge magic.
He doesn't want to do that right now, things are so busy these days. He'd wake up and Fëanáro'd be started on the ten children.
They'd better not be much like him or Valinor shall fall apart at the seams.
subtly_artistic
She's just hoping he can tolerate waiting to grow up before insisting on figuring out how to reproduce asexually by magic.
Olórin did not know that was under consideration and is mildly alarmed. "Normally the Eldar can be trusted not to have children while immature because no one will marry them if they are immature. But he's a crown prince, that seems likely to affect some girl's judgment."
subtly_artistic
"Possible. I'm not worried he's going to get married young so much as that he's going to skip that part, invent freewilled golems, and call it a day."
"...your magic can do that?"
subtly_artistic
"Golems? Yeah. Most of them don't have wills but some of them do."
"Only Eru can create life. Even the Valar cannot do that."
subtly_artistic
"I think they're technically not alive but rather arcane artifice with a complex mental component, I don't know if that's the distinction you're drawing?"
"It might be? But they're people, not automata?"