Bella starts the equivalent of an art restoration project, tugging things carefully back into place and smoothing out all their edges and checking against the intact version, slowly-slowly-slowly.

He, in fact, can't feel it at all. Leareth resists the urge to keep checking his core memories, it seems like that might get in her way, and instead reads his book about gardening (he didn't even know the library had books about gardening, of all things), a sentence at a time with breaks in between.

He does his best to be relaxed about the fact that his mind is being altered (aaaaaa), and manages to level out at slightly tense but not panicked. It takes a lot of willpower, though. The book isn't great as a distraction because he's hitting the point of being too tired to process sentences.

"- are you okay?" she asks, though not immediately.

"...Mostly, but it is taking a lot of effort. Do I need to be conscious for this?" 

"No, if you'd rather be asleep I can work that way."

"I would prefer that." 

Sleep!

And on she goes for another hour and a half.

Local Leareth sits calmly the whole time, practicing some innocuous magic and then having a Mindspeech conversation with Nayoki for a while. 

"I'm low on arts, and this is a good stopping place for the day," she says.

"Thank you. Just to check, what proportion of it do you think this covered?" 

(Still asleep.) 

"Maybe ten percent."

Nod. Sigh. "This is going to be a time consuming project." He keeps his voice low, and stands up quietly. "There was something else I wished to briefly discuss." 

"Yeah?"

He waits until they're out in the hall and the door is shut. "I spoke to Maitimo, after Vanyel. I think he is being entirely the correct level of paranoid about Melkor's ability to scheme against them - I think he learned it from my alt, actually - and, also, I suspect it may end up being very important, whether they decide they can trust us and therefore can use non-Velgarth magic which Melkor cannot interfere with as easily. My impression is not that it is extremely urgent, or that their chances of success drop precipitously the longer they wait on their plan, but - I think giving them the demonstration of your abilities that they requested would be highly valuable. I am not sure how costly this would be to you, of course." 

"It's not so much costly as risky. I mean, if I land in Angband again and he's waiting for me..."

"How long would it take you to draft an interplanar version of the spell that teleports another person?" 

"I'm working on that one, it should be safer - at least if it pulls someone to the caster. And I should have it soon because I can copy parts, like a week out."

"Noted. I think we can afford to wait a week, and that seems much better than risking you, since we have only one of you and it would be utterly disastrous if, instead, Melkor had you." 

"Yeah. I can summon Ninquë when I have it, and then maybe he can try going home after there is not an Angband to land in."

"Sensible. Anyway, that is all I had to discuss." 

"Okay. I'll plan to come back tomorrow and make more progress."

"Thank you, again." Pause. "If doing this now will delay you on the spell creation, I think both I and my alt would prefer you put that first, although I can ask him directly once he is awake." 

"...I guess if I'm doing hours every day it might delay it a little, but I can't concentrate on nothing but spellwork all day every day."

"Fair enough. A minimal delay seems acceptable. I cannot concentrate on inventing magic all day every day either."