Spells!

That I'm sure will happen! Though let's save Bella's Planar Travel for when we've reinvented lots of things that'll make the Valar scowl at us, I've had enough of danger for a while.

Oh yeah, that's waaaaaay in the future. It'd probably be 'Swan's', usually it's by last name.

Last name?

Oh - I have three names, Isabella, Mariel, Swan. My parents picked the first two, the first one is the one used for most purposes, you only ever use the middle one if you're being really formal or don't like your first name and want something to switch to or to make your initials less ambiguous, stuff like that. And my last name is a family name; my mother took my father's when they got married, and I got that, and still have it even though they got divorced. She actually kept it too, she could have stopped but she didn't like the family name she had before so she preferred to use Swan.

Ah. We have both the father and mother pick a name for a child, and then some people pick a different one if they don't like either. Fëanáro is his mother-name; his fathername is Curufinwë but he declared a while ago that he wanted to go by his mothername. Sometimes one or the other is used because the context is formal; people will call Fëanáro 'Prince Curufinwë' because he's a prince through his father. If he had a sister, and she had children, those children would be "Princess Mothername' on the same principle.

It sounds hard to keep track of where everybody you know got their names. Are they always in a specific order?

In formal introductions it'll be fathername mothername chosenname. That's how I'd assumed yours were ordered, though I realized after a little while that you didn't go by 'Swan'.

Surnames are generally much more formal. Teachers at school were supposed to formally address everybody, so I'd be Ms. Swan to them, but Bella to peers.

I am delighted to be your peer.

She giggles.

I spent most of this afternoon writing the Ainulindale - the story the Valar told us of the making of the world. It's well-known, so a good thing for people to learn to read with, and easy to illustrate beautifully.

Can I see?

It's in my rooms, the ink's still drying, but I can bring it out in an hour or so, or show you there?

There works as long as I can avoid Miriel en route.

The palace has a lot of entrances. One of the nice things about not having to worry about dangers.

Bella locates Miriel and routes around her and follows Rúmil to his rooms.

Where there is an extraordinarily beautiful illustrated manuscript drying on the table. It might have some words you're unfamiliar with, he says.

You're very, very good. Fëanáro is not a good bar for comparison for other people, I don't think. He's either easy to surpass or impossible to even aspire to.

I'm forgetting lots of things, I knew some of these words the other day and forgot them and I'm still not used to the sentence structures. I knew I wasn't trying very hard with Kharoline but I sort of vaguely imagined that if I ever REALLY wanted to learn a language it'd be easier than this.

Is there a spell for a hairclip of language-learning? Can we invent one?

There's a 'comprehend languages' spell but even if I knew it it'd just do the thing subtle arts does - let me work around not knowing the language.

No, I was thinking of something that expanded memory, made it stickier. That'd be useful for lots of other things, too.

There's items that make you smarter - sort of - like my boots make you more agile, but I don't know if there's anything that helps with languages or memory in particular.