Etchings:
Nobody knows that Rumplestiltskin is an artist. His magic is precise, with a certain creative flair, and his deals are beautifully exact, but no one ever suspects he has other skills.
He started a month after Bae left, a crude and hasty sketch with charcoal on an old rag when he realised that he couldn't clearly picture the way his boy's eyes lit up when he smiled.
When the rag smudged, he spent an evening replacing it with a portrait on a piece of thick, dirty piece of paper torn from an old book. He recalls the way Bae's cloak fell around his shoulders, the way his hair sprung softly around his face. The way his eyes crinkled when he was happy.
When he leaves their village for a different home, he buys finer paper, brushes, ink and pens that won't spatter. He produces drawing after drawing, each one a better image of his son, who always smiles, is always happy.
As his skill in magic increases, so does his other skill. He spins to forget, but he draws to remember. Three quarter view, Bae focused on kicking his beloved ball. In profile, Bae watching the birds nesting in the trees outside the window.
Eventually, paper is not enough. It fades away while he continues on. He finds clay and moulds it, shapes it until his hands cramp and his eyes blur, but he sees his boy in three dimensions once more. Clay gives way to wood, wood gives way to stone. The clothing changes (sometimes it's even real), the expressions change, but the face and arms are always turned towards him.
His creations fill boxes, so he creates rooms to store them. The rooms fill to overflowing, so he makes a castle to house it all. He cannot bear to look at them once they are done, but he cannot bear to destroy them either.
One day in a fit of self-pity, he acquires another soul to light the tattered remains of his humanity. A bright, beautiful soul that reminds him so much of his boy. But this is not his boy, and the warm light of her gradually dispels the dark loneliness that has shrouded him for so long. He dares to hope, hopes to dream.
Then she leaves too, she leaves and will never come back, can never come back, and one evening he picks up his pencil again. The curve of her cheek, the dip of her waist, the swirl of her skirts as she moves. Initially, his fingers stumble over the unfamiliar. But his hands will come to know what they are doing, even while his mind shows him the impossible.
Nobody knows that Rumplestiltskin is an artist. No one will ever see his etchings.