Bellona doesn't really need luggage, and - she knew El was leaving. She's already arranged for someone to watch the house and the strays and the plants, and she's wrapped up the ongoing experiments.

She follows El, locking up behind her.

(Why does El keep touching her pocket...)

She ignores her armored shadow the whole way to the departure point.

Bellona is mostly failing to not project an aura of depression alongside her determination. She's clearly anxious, too. Hasn't shown any of her usual signs of happiness, even when people she knows call out to her.

The caravan members - a faster moving party than the main army, scouting ahead to join Gondor in coordination against Mordor - are kind of leery of the obvious tension between the two genius sisters, but no one brings it up.

Bellona can at least be reassured that El is just as snappish with everyone else as with her.

She also takes to using the ring at night, vanishing out of her tent for some time in her private world.

Bellona is SO WORRIED. About El's behavior, about El's health, about the destructive nature of the weapons El's been designing...

(Bellona has a portion of rations set aside for her. She leaves them all just inside of El's tent after every meal. It's not like she needs to eat, and she knows El gets hungrier than these rations will support.)

But, mostly, she's -

Silent. Like a statue, sometimes. She's largely stopped emoting as expressively. She doesn't talk to El. Doesn't give her reasons to snap.

(She reads. A lot. She befriends Estel, who somehow finagles his way into accompanying the dwarves heading to Gondor despite being really a kid in their eyes. El and Bellona are kids too, after all.)

(It feels like she's going insane, trapped inside her shell of a body - she's more aware, lately, without El around, how she can't feel anything. How utterly horrid that is.)

El doesn't like Bellona staying too still. She expresses this by shoving at her, finding excuses that she's in the way.

She withdraws into herself even more, sits more out of the way, interacts with people less.

She starts trying to pick fights on purpose.

Bellona is very carefully not reacting. To much of anything, these days.

"Get out of your own head, dammit!" El finally shouts one morning. "I'm sick of this statue act. Either stop walking around or wake the fuck up!"

Bellona looks up at her. It's - never been more obvious, how little her helmet substitutes for a face.

"You haven't wanted much of anything to do with me awake," she says, tonelessly.

El works her jaw soundlessly for a moment.

"Fuck you too," she says, walking off and kicking at the ground. Her hand strays to the same jacket pocket.

She almost lowers her head, but -

Something's weird.

What does El have in her pocket that's so -

...El's been not acting herself.

Bellona stays there, still, thinking, but then starts watching El more even as she stays silent. Seeing how she acts. Keeping track of her.

El stays more to herself after that episode.

(Starts working more on alchemy with the ring. The enhanced senses should be good for something. Finer detail, better targeting, whatever. She scribbles scraps of arrays out on paper, leaves them lying around when she doesn't need them anymore.)

The ring is oh so very helpful. Her alchemy gets better - not just her detail work. Her energy. Her speed. Her understanding.

(They come to Gondor. The machines of war turn, uncaring who they grind beneath their wheels.)

She saw the universe when she went before Truth. Most of that locked itself away, a world too big for her brain.

It's like that's unfurling, now. Like something's helping her slowly unspool it, page through it, absorb and filter it.

Learn it.

There's quite a bias, in what she's learning. All the terrible secrets of her world, all the easy, easy ways to kill people...

(A vision in her dreams. The universe rearranging itself to her pleasure. Perfect. Orderly. Controlled. Even Bellona slotted obediently into place. A circle of perfect gold - an ouroboros, almost - on her finger.)

Bellona begins intruding on her space again. Pushing her. Questioning her. Disobedient. Unruly. A proof of El's - of the universe's - present uncertainty.

(Has El considered making herself a god? Has El considered she could be greater than Truth?)

It's a good dream. Fitting. A god is no less than she deserves.

But she doesn't want to break Bellona. That would be... incorrect.

The vision adapts, a little. Bellona by her side. Every bit of spontaneity accounted for, planned for, so she can be herself without destroying El's perfect world. Bellona restored to her human shape, immortal and unbreakable, kneeling at El's feet, looking up at her with worship in her eyes. Mischievous, but entirely under El's power, and accepting of that. Happy with that.

Ah. She likes that.

It's a pity the current Bellona falls so far short of that dream, isn't it? When she should belong to El. Should be hers so thoroughly. Not broken, but guided. Not cut into shape, but taught. Transmuted into a more perfect self.

Mm. She should start talking to her again. Mend fences. Appropriately repositioned, of course.

Bellona's still trying to chip away at what's going on with El.

She's wary, internally, when approached. Doesn't react externally, though - she's been making a good show of a statue again lately.

El practices persistence in her attempts to get Bellona talking again. And more subtlety than is characteristic.

"...El," Bellona says eventually. "There's - what changed?"

"Ah, you know," she laughs. "Just growing pains."