View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
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.
+ Show First Post
subtly_artistic
We discussed with Eru the question that we touched on when you were considered whether to depart for Tol Eressea, the question of whether your fate should be changed to match that of the Eldar. Eru thinks that it should not. You are not bound to Arda, but ought to eventually depart it; you create and innovate and desire stimulation and excitement at the pace of Men and not the Eldar.
This is probably the explanation of why your presence in Valinor has been so disruptive.
Yes.
Fëanáro is desperately unhappy about something different, that's something, but he's also more powerful and less happy, much much younger. And doing more as a result. At this rate he'll kill people before he's of age, which is in some sense an improvement since he can be partially absolved of those crimes.
Fëanáro is desperately unhappy about something different, that's something, but he's also more powerful and less happy, much much younger. And doing more as a result. At this rate he'll kill people before he's of age, which is in some sense an improvement since he can be partially absolved of those crimes.
Don't you? Careless, powerful, prone to angrily renouncing the love of everyone in his life because he insists he'll lose it anyway, currently blasting things for stress relief - it is a trajectory even more worrying than his last one.
It is not your fault. You did much good and we commend and applaud you for it.
It is not your fault. You did much good and we commend and applaud you for it.
We are not resigned to Fëanáro being dangerous.
What we are is overwhelmed. Valinor is changing so much, so quickly, that he can escape to the Outer Lands under his own design. We do not even understand all the things we're preventing from happening. People are not happier.
What we are is overwhelmed. Valinor is changing so much, so quickly, that he can escape to the Outer Lands under his own design. We do not even understand all the things we're preventing from happening. People are not happier.
subtly_artistic
"Some of them are -" She's been taking patients and helping them, people like the ethernet, people can talk to their lost loved ones -
Yes. We think very highly of you and your intentions; this is an observed collision course, an observed incompatibility, not a punishment. Mortals just make Valinor impossible to keep safe and stable.
subtly_artistic
"I - um - can I have a while to, to pack, if - if you're sending me to the Outer Lands -"
That seems very likely to result in Fëanáro running after you. And there are no Men like you there to keep you company. We do not think you should go to the Outer Lands, we think you should return to your home.
subtly_artistic
No.
"No - no please I can't go back please I'll die or worse I don't remember how to think like people have to think there I'm all bent out of shape I can't go back I'll die please please please no please -"
We will not allow you to die, Bella. We will not permit you to come to harm.
subtly_artistic
"The universe there doesn't work like here, it'll crush me, I can't go back I can't - please, please, I'll do whatever you want, please, not there, please I'm begging you I can't I can't -"
You will not be harmed. You will have safety.
And the air shudders around them - oh, it's just someone running into the circle, that doesn't usually happen and the Valar pause, disconcerted - and Fëanáro says 'I hate you all! You're worse than Melkor!" and then the blazing light of Valinor is gone.
And the air shudders around them - oh, it's just someone running into the circle, that doesn't usually happen and the Valar pause, disconcerted - and Fëanáro says 'I hate you all! You're worse than Melkor!" and then the blazing light of Valinor is gone.
subtly_artistic
- she barely has time to meet his eyes before she hits the floor.
She wasn't overwhelmingly familiar with this room when she got lost into it; the desks have been rearranged but that could mean anything. The calendar says -
well. Of course she's been gone almost twenty years.
It takes a little while before she can stop being hysterical. In that time someone drags her to a health center, and a subtle artist bounces off her shields, and Professor Winters comes in and recognizes her -
They put her in a healing center room with a bed to calm down. It's the ugliest thing she can remember looking at in a long time. She wobbles her way to the bed (her home-enchanted boots are broken, of course they are) and hugs the pillow and shakes and waits to expire of spontaneously generated disease or random monster attack or Vice-Chancellor Embries or divine smiting or the sudden failure of all her biology-she-means-natural-essence.
She doesn't die. The Valar might have done something that stuck.
Or she might just not have committed any offenses in this universe's jurisdiction and should consider herself on lethal probation.
She no longer has to check herself to see if she's being slow. She has to check herself to make sure she's being small. Shrink and shrink and shrink until she fits here.
She must not try to be a wizard: here she is not a wizard, all her gains ill-gotten. It's possible she shouldn't even cast high school cantrips. Maybe if she learns them from scratch out of textbooks.
Subtle arts is - mostly something she handled with books from here and practice. Practice is okay. She may have begun to unobtrusively practice in some science-tainted way but the basic principle is allowed, she can probably keep her teekay advances, her progress in range and finesse.
Professor Winters contacts her parents for her. They're both alive. Coming up on retirement age. They grieved her and moved on and now here she is, hasn't aged a day, came back in strange clothes unable to stop crying.
The university sends her home to her mother.
And she practices being small.
She gets a new pair of boots. Storebought. Similar to her last set. Plenty of money socked away for them - the university paid out for her disappearance because it was negligent on their part, not recklessness on hers (her? reckless?), and getting her back after twenty years doesn't oblige payback. She gets a new knife. She is not a wizard here. She sleeps in her childhood bed and reads - not a speck of science fantasy, she puts all her science fantasy away in the back of the closet. No thaumatology. She reads biographies and cookbooks and poems and tedious coming of age YA literature and the news reports on her own mildly interesting vanishment and reappearance.
She hasn't aged a day. She mumbles lies about the outfit and says she doesn't remember much because she will never be able to stop if she starts, she'll wind up trying to orchestrate a mass exodus to -
- to some other science fantasy plane, there must be - no. There might be more, it is possible. She'd convince people to try to find one and something would eat her while she was acting like an apocalypse preacher in the street.
She reenrolls in school. They make her start over, although Professor Winters waives some of her subtle arts requirements after a private evaluation. Her hand lingers over the form to declare a major. Some people do double up even on the heavy technical stuff -
No. She's not a wizard here. She doesn't dare try.
She enrolls just the same as she was. It didn't get her killed before. Subtle arts major therapy track. She studies trauma and personality disorders and depression and family/relationship counseling and anxiety and hallucinations and sleep disturbances. She attends classes. She does her homework. She reads books. People murmur about her when she goes by. She doesn't apply for the arcane exemption to the weapons policy and goes everywhere with a knife at her hip.
She braids her hair every morning.
She graduates.
She finds work at a little practice in Enwich. She keeps the hours and takes the patients her boss doesn't want to cover and does more than her share of paperwork. She sees stressed out lawyers and insomniac wizards and suicidal jewelers and traumatized soldiers. She helps them. Her boss wonders how he lucked into someone fresh out of school so comfortable with seeing patients on day one.
She has a little apartment twenty minutes' walk from work. She spends more than she can justify on decorating it - surely, surely the universe cannot care if she has a lamp shaped like a tree? She didn't commission it, she only saw it and -
- and the rest of her discretionary budget she spends on books.
She does not read them all. She has a stack of foreign language dictionaries and popular novels in everything from Kharoline to Yokano and she doesn't even crack them open. It's just the only safe thing she can think of that might distract someone who might try to rescue her.
He would not arrive with old safe habits to rediscover under the veneer of having grown so far. He would not arrive with the dubious protection of the Valar, of that she's sure.
So if he shows up she will throw languages at him and run as fast as she can to the university and find someone who can banish him home where he can take all the time in the world to grow up.
She wasn't overwhelmingly familiar with this room when she got lost into it; the desks have been rearranged but that could mean anything. The calendar says -
well. Of course she's been gone almost twenty years.
It takes a little while before she can stop being hysterical. In that time someone drags her to a health center, and a subtle artist bounces off her shields, and Professor Winters comes in and recognizes her -
They put her in a healing center room with a bed to calm down. It's the ugliest thing she can remember looking at in a long time. She wobbles her way to the bed (her home-enchanted boots are broken, of course they are) and hugs the pillow and shakes and waits to expire of spontaneously generated disease or random monster attack or Vice-Chancellor Embries or divine smiting or the sudden failure of all her biology-she-means-natural-essence.
She doesn't die. The Valar might have done something that stuck.
Or she might just not have committed any offenses in this universe's jurisdiction and should consider herself on lethal probation.
She no longer has to check herself to see if she's being slow. She has to check herself to make sure she's being small. Shrink and shrink and shrink until she fits here.
She must not try to be a wizard: here she is not a wizard, all her gains ill-gotten. It's possible she shouldn't even cast high school cantrips. Maybe if she learns them from scratch out of textbooks.
Subtle arts is - mostly something she handled with books from here and practice. Practice is okay. She may have begun to unobtrusively practice in some science-tainted way but the basic principle is allowed, she can probably keep her teekay advances, her progress in range and finesse.
Professor Winters contacts her parents for her. They're both alive. Coming up on retirement age. They grieved her and moved on and now here she is, hasn't aged a day, came back in strange clothes unable to stop crying.
The university sends her home to her mother.
And she practices being small.
She gets a new pair of boots. Storebought. Similar to her last set. Plenty of money socked away for them - the university paid out for her disappearance because it was negligent on their part, not recklessness on hers (her? reckless?), and getting her back after twenty years doesn't oblige payback. She gets a new knife. She is not a wizard here. She sleeps in her childhood bed and reads - not a speck of science fantasy, she puts all her science fantasy away in the back of the closet. No thaumatology. She reads biographies and cookbooks and poems and tedious coming of age YA literature and the news reports on her own mildly interesting vanishment and reappearance.
She hasn't aged a day. She mumbles lies about the outfit and says she doesn't remember much because she will never be able to stop if she starts, she'll wind up trying to orchestrate a mass exodus to -
- to some other science fantasy plane, there must be - no. There might be more, it is possible. She'd convince people to try to find one and something would eat her while she was acting like an apocalypse preacher in the street.
She reenrolls in school. They make her start over, although Professor Winters waives some of her subtle arts requirements after a private evaluation. Her hand lingers over the form to declare a major. Some people do double up even on the heavy technical stuff -
No. She's not a wizard here. She doesn't dare try.
She enrolls just the same as she was. It didn't get her killed before. Subtle arts major therapy track. She studies trauma and personality disorders and depression and family/relationship counseling and anxiety and hallucinations and sleep disturbances. She attends classes. She does her homework. She reads books. People murmur about her when she goes by. She doesn't apply for the arcane exemption to the weapons policy and goes everywhere with a knife at her hip.
She braids her hair every morning.
She graduates.
She finds work at a little practice in Enwich. She keeps the hours and takes the patients her boss doesn't want to cover and does more than her share of paperwork. She sees stressed out lawyers and insomniac wizards and suicidal jewelers and traumatized soldiers. She helps them. Her boss wonders how he lucked into someone fresh out of school so comfortable with seeing patients on day one.
She has a little apartment twenty minutes' walk from work. She spends more than she can justify on decorating it - surely, surely the universe cannot care if she has a lamp shaped like a tree? She didn't commission it, she only saw it and -
- and the rest of her discretionary budget she spends on books.
She does not read them all. She has a stack of foreign language dictionaries and popular novels in everything from Kharoline to Yokano and she doesn't even crack them open. It's just the only safe thing she can think of that might distract someone who might try to rescue her.
He would not arrive with old safe habits to rediscover under the veneer of having grown so far. He would not arrive with the dubious protection of the Valar, of that she's sure.
So if he shows up she will throw languages at him and run as fast as she can to the university and find someone who can banish him home where he can take all the time in the world to grow up.
Planar shifts are hard and Rúmil won't help him. Rúmil says he will help him once they have a plan that will not get them killed but there are no plans that are good enough for that and he is going to die anyway and everyone gets very upset when he yells that at them. He is confined to the palace. He develops a spell to walk through walls. Everyone in Tirion is told to keep an eye on him. He develops a spell to be invisible. He turns eleven. He is going to have planar shifting long before he is twelve, and the only way for them to stop him is to take away all his parchment -
They do.
He figures out how to use a tweaked version of Prestidigitation to take magic notes in the air. He figures out another spell that lets the notes be visible to no one but him. He is going to have planar shifting long before he is twelve and the only way for them to stop him is to bring his Bella back.
They do.
He figures out how to use a tweaked version of Prestidigitation to take magic notes in the air. He figures out another spell that lets the notes be visible to no one but him. He is going to have planar shifting long before he is twelve and the only way for them to stop him is to bring his Bella back.
subtly_artistic
Bella took up cooking. She doesn't get adventurous with it, but it's cheaper and she can get closer to Tirion cuisine starting from the basics than she can buying pudding cups and jars of soup. Not very close. She's never actually heard of someone having a disastrous accident messing with spices and broiling times but she can't be too careful.
She puts the biscuits in the oven and goes and collapses on the couch.
She puts the biscuits in the oven and goes and collapses on the couch.
He appears in her lap. "Bella!" he says. "We're leaving, I don't think you should take anything with you."
"It's okay. I remembered you being mad at me for not having enough of a plan when I went to the Outer Lands so I have one this time. But we should discuss it in my world in case your universe doesn't like it."
subtly_artistic
"I - I -" Suddenly it seems very hard to fetch him dictionaries and sneak out to send him away again. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. "- what do we do?"
"I have planar shifting now. We go somewhere that's not here and then we message Rúmil, who wants to help me but wouldn't but I think will once we already have you."