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An Alphabet Book for the King's Children  by Larner

Jewels were Fëanáro’s passion.  First he crafted jewels just for their beauty—jewels as limpid as pools and as solid as the earth and as sparkling as the stars.  Jewels that under light appeared to have fire just below the surface, or in which light appeared to move, even jump, if their position was shifted but a little.  Some of his jewels were smooth in one’s hand, and some were jagged or sharp edged.  Some were the green of juniper, and others brought to mind jungles.  Some reflected light, and some refracted it into rainbows.

But it was in creating jewels that held and gave off light that he found his chief joy.  Fëanorean  lamps were widely sought after and jealously held.  He finally sought to equal the Trees of the Valar for both light and beauty, and crafted three great jewels that rivaled the light of Telperion and Laurelin at their zeniths, one silver, one gold, and one jointly silver and gold, its brilliance unparalleled.

But Melkor was jealous that this one, one of the Eruhini, had managed to produce creations that rivaled those of his fellow Valar, for he had not aided in the construction of the great Lamps, which he felled; nor in the raising of the two Trees, and thus had no part in lighting this world.  So he sought out Ungoliant, whose appetite for Light and disdain that light should enlighten others equaled his own, and together they slew the Trees, Melkor jabbing them deeply with his spear and Ungoliant jabbing them again with her mouth parts, sucking the Light out of them as if it were juice.

The Trees might have been restored had Fëanáro not become so jealous regarding his own creations.  But he would not give them up even for his own people, much less for others.  It was not his only jealousy:  he equally was jealous of his father’s second wife and her children, making cruel jests, jeers, and threats at their expense.  When he drew his sword against his own brother, however, he’d gone too far, and he was exiled for a time along with his sons and joined by his father Finwë, taking with him the Silmaril jewels and many of other creations he had once joyed in and locking them in his vault.

Melkor coveted the Silmarils for his own, and when Fëanáro was summoned away by the other Valar he came stealthily to Fëanáro’s keep, slew Finwë when he would have protected all that his son possessed, and stole the three Jewels of Light, leaving the gates to Fëanáro’s fortress and the doors to his vaults ajar, the jambs bent and broken along with the locks.

“I demand justice!” cried Fëanáro as he stood beneath the juttering light of torches before the Valar and his own people.  “I demand justice against Melkor, whom I now name Moringotto, the Black Enemy, for the death of my father and the theft of my jewels!”  He crafted an oath, in which his sons and even his half brothers joined, to journey after Melkor and to harry him with war until the great jewels of the Silmarilli were returned to them.  Even faced with the judgment of the Lord of Mandos, the greater part of the Noldor set off on the journey eastward across the grinding, jagged ice of the Helcaraxë back to the Mortal Lands where they would join in war against Morgoth and his armies.

But Fëanáro was slain soon after the burning of the ships of the Teleri upon the hither shore, and he died joylessly, even as he had lived since the deaths of the Two Trees.





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