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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
Wizard detections confirm that Fëanáro's ring is magic, and give them enough to get a picture of what they're trying to do.
subtly_artistic
All right. It should be possible to avoid having the things interfere, although multiple spells on a single object is a new advance in the reinvented field.
Eventually it behaves itself and they have not broken its glowing property in the course of the attempt!
Eventually it behaves itself and they have not broken its glowing property in the course of the attempt!
Fëanáro bounces.
subtly_artistic
Bella gets underway on a version that gives a bit more distance (Fëanáro may have to share a room with people he doesn't want to hug him; people fleeing from orcs presumably have no such consideration and may be less polite about repelling orcs into walls than the subtle give worked into the ring's magic.)
He's busy with his lessons most of the time, so this one she does alone.
subtly_artistic
That's okay.
Here, would somebody visiting from the Outer Lands like to take this prototype and whenever (hopefully not too soon) they have cause to see it work let her know the results?
Here, would somebody visiting from the Outer Lands like to take this prototype and whenever (hopefully not too soon) they have cause to see it work let her know the results?
It will probably be a few years, the Outer Lands aren't constantly hazardous if you know what you're doing, but yes, they'd be delighted.
Oh, yes, everything happens much faster in the Outer Lands, why she had a child born at the same time as Olwë's son and her child is already grown while apparently only five Years have passed here.
It is. She wonders if somehow Valinor's anti-decay property also makes aging go slower.
subtly_artistic
That might be it; Bella doesn't know much about how the anti-decay thing works but has never thought of growing to adulthood as decay.
Her interlocutor shrugs. Valinor is weird. That's why she stayed.
subtly_artistic
Valinor is weird. Bella's glad it doesn't have to be all or nothing anymore.
Yeah, that's pretty great. Has Bella considered coming to the Outer Lands?
subtly_artistic
It's not that it hasn't occurred to her, but she'd cope less well with eternal night than with eternal day and also has had enough of living in places with things that want to kill her all the time.
Her interlocutor hadn't heard Bella's origin story and expresses tremendous sympathy and then heads off home.
subtly_artistic
And Bella goes back to everything else. There's plenty of it. She's getting pretty good at working at a respectable speed without the necklace; she just has to pay attention to herself (and wear a watch, and set timers). She's good at paying attention to herself.
And after a month's pause from his metalworking lessons during which he asks for the necklace quite a lot Fëanáro doesn't ask about it much, so she can have it when needed.
subtly_artistic
"Learning better self-monitoring strategies to keep all your hours in a row without the necklace?" Bella asks.
"It's your necklace."
"I'm growing up. And Mahtan keeps me on task."
He darts away.