What began this was the image that popped into my head of a bit of father-son time between Fëanor and little Maedhros. It irritates me that my skill with the pen is limited to words, for there is no way to convey what I visualize. Jenny Dolfen (Gold-Seven on DeviantART) has heavily influenced my mental images of the characters, though.
People often approach to compliment me on my work, and invariably they say that they initially thought metal or stone to be flesh. Fëanáro says that it is a testament to my talent that they do not notice the lack of color or motion. I say that it is a testament that they are idiots. Perhaps, perhaps it is merely my trained eye, or the fact that I do the creating, but I cannot for the life of me understand how people can make such mistakes.
Except for this, my latest piece. I have been a sculptor for fifty years, yet I believe this is the first time I have ever been completely satisfied with a finished result. It is not simply the amount of work that I put into it, but the familiarity of the subject matter that enabled me to be correct in nearly every detail. After all, who knows a man's form better than his wife, and who better than a mother to know her baby?
The inspiration for this came around half a year ago, when Maitimo was almost three seasons old: I had entered a room to see Fëanáro tossing Maitimo into the air. Maitimo was laughing, absolutely delighted with this form of play, and Fëanáro was laughing as well, his face alight with a joy I rarely see. Fëanáro stopped when he caught sight of me, knowing that I dislike having Maitimo anywhere but on solid ground (someday he will have to do things more dangerous than stacking blocks, but for now he is just a baby, and my first one at that).
"Maitimo was asking for it," he said apologetically. "Begging, really. Is that not right, yonya?"
"More!" Maitimo said. He looked at me. "Fly?"
"No, sweetheart. Besides, Atar knows he should not be doing that. I will let him go without punishment this time, though," I said, "because I want to immortalize that image."
Fëanáro groaned, knowing what I meant by that. "Please, Nerdanel…" He had agreed to sit for me several times and he hated both the sitting still and the way he looked in any medium but flesh.
I shook my head. "It is your own fault. Now let me have my boy for a moment."
"Your boy?" Fëanáro handed him over, but Maitimo grabbed at him, saying, "Atar!"
We both stared at him, I feeling miffed, Fëanáro proud. "Someone has made his choice," he said.
I shrugged. "A sign, then, that I have to get to work."
That day seems both recent and long past—I have worked on this piece almost nonstop, so the little Maitimo is still in my mind. But recently he celebrated his first begetting day, and in a few seasons he will be a big brother. And when Fëanáro, responding to my call, brings him in, he is walking—walking!—on his own.
Maitimo looks at the statue in front of him. "You made Atar," he observes.
"Yes, and you," I tell him, lifting him up to see. I spent weeks figuring out how to pose him in relation to his father—I could not suspend him in the air, of course, yet I wanted the illusion of motion. "You, when you were smaller."
"I looked like that?"
"You did," Fëanáro says, coming up to inspect the statue more closely. He examines the portrayal of himself, trying, as ever, to locate faults. Watching him next to the statue is strange, as if a stone doppelganger suddenly walked out of a mirror. It was his face that I spent the most time on. Emotion is hard to capture, especially in a statue, and it was the undiluted love on Fëanáro's face as he looked at his son that to me made the scene most worth recording. "Nerdanel, quite excellent," he says.
"That was the intention, dear."
"Your depiction of me is quite flattering."
"That was not my main intention, dear."
He laughs and takes Maitimo from me. He holds him up, mirroring the pose I have used. He glances from the statue to his reflection in the window and back again. "Well done indeed." He tosses Maitimo, likely just to annoy me, and kisses his head and says, either of the statue or of his son, most likely the latter, "Thank you, my love, very much."
-finis-