"It does eidetic memory. You wouldn't have to learn it all at once but if you lost the necklace we can't replace it."

"I definitely shouldn't take your irreplaceable important magic stuff out there. Sorry, what does it do to your memory exactly?"

"It makes it so you can't forget things?"

"I guess something that takes days to read is probably pretty easy to misremember," she muses.

"It also doesn't make the least bit of sense by itself, so it's not just long, it's meaningless."

"Wow. No wonder you need magic to remember it. The songs seem more convenient that way," she says. "I guess I could read a little of your healing spell at a time while I'm here, just in case? If I put the necklace on and take it off again, does weird stuff happen to my memory, will I forget the spell-bits and then not remember them even if I put it on again later?"

"The one I have isn't retroactive, so yeah," says Nelen, "which also means I'd need to re-learn the spells if you gave it back."

"Oof. I'd better not, then."

She nods to them all and then leaves. The first few notes of the healing song are audible before she exits this reality.

Usually, when the Hero leaves an area, her effects on the world take a fairly short time to fade out, something on the order of a few minutes. This time it's much more gradual; the dimness and blurriness of the little house take almost half an hour to return to baseline.

Huh. Zanro takes a timelapse video.

And she's back!

"Forgot to try putting a new face on. Got eaten by star dogs again," she says. "Hard to tell if the healing song is helping, I might just not be good enough at it yet. I can keep working on it."

"The thing where it gets less bright and solid around here when you leave was slower this time," Zanro tells her.

"...was it really? Don't think that's ever happened before," she says, blinking. "What was different this time... it wasn't you throwing stuff into the void, right, that was earlier..."

"Can't rule out the singing," says Zanro. "I took a video in case that's useful."

"Took a what?"

He shows her.

"...huh. That's... really good, actually. I wonder if I should just walk all the way around the village singing the song for a while. Most things aren't worth doing when I could be on the path instead, but that might be. Maybe just the places where people aren't sleeping right now, though..." She chews her lip distractedly, then shakes her head. "Right, can I hear the song again?"

Tarwë will sing it as many times as she likes.

She sings along again, for a couple repetitions this time, and she seems to have hit diminishing returns by now but she is still improving. It's not out of the question that what she's got now might work, though it's by no means a surety. The noticeable brightening of her surroundings when she sings might be a little stronger this time, too, though she has her eyes closed in concentration and probably hasn't noticed it.

Zanro continues recording.

"...huh," she says when the song is over, "is it brighter in here or is that just me?"

"It's not just you," says Cassiel.

"So probably the singing, then. Good to know. I think that makes it worth wandering around singing before I head out again, if I keep to places where I won't wake anyone up."

She starts into the song again and walks out of the house, trailing brightness in her wake.

The envoy team waits.

The sound of singing recedes into the distance as she circles the edges of the village. It'd take a pretty sharp pair of ears indeed to hear her all the way on the other side.

In a few minutes she comes back around. She looks thoroughly disgruntled under her mask.

"Think I've got a new face coming in," she says. "Feels like having something stuck in my teeth, but without the teeth. Like needing to sneeze and not having a nose."

"Oh, no, how long will it take?" asks Cassiel.