Macalaurë bit his lip as he tried to think of a method for his task. Atar was busy in the forge, presumably making a gift for his own atar. Lately he had been spending more and more time in the forge, and more and more time away from his own family. Ammë was in her room, chiseling her own sculpture, and all of Macalaurë's brothers were off doing their own things. Macalaurë, however, was growing increasingly frustrated.

Each son was already off on his own little assignment, but it all boiled down to one command, involving one son, his father, and certain instructions. Their instructor told Macalaurë only, with a firm and serious voice:

Describe your father in thirty words.

How was one to describe Curufinwë Fëanáro in a mere thirty words?

Macalaurë cursed to himself and tried to start writing.


Fëanáro walked into the house, wiping sweat from his brow with his open palm. As he treaded through the living room, he found his second son resting his head upon the table, his icy blue eyes glazed over in sleep. Next to him was a quill drowning in an inkwell, and beneath his slender fingers (with slight disappointment, Fëanáro noted that they were not the hands of a smith) was a paper marked with elegant handwriting.

Define Atar in just thirty words?
Impossible.

I am the one left alone
a shadow brighter
than the light
of the secondhand throne.
I am son of the king
son of the þerindë
greatest of my people
master of the great craft
that
my hands will bring
to life

Carefully, Fëanáro replaced the paper under his son's fingers and took the blanket from the couch onto Macalaurë's shoulders, whispering to himself "forty-two" with a smirk. Then, he reached for the quill and wrote upon the parchment with his leisure scrawl:

Macalaurë, tell your instructor that I cannot be restrained to thirty words.
Love,
Curufinwë Fëanáro


Nerdanel eyed Fëanáro as he stepped into the room with a light air about him. "You seem excited about something," she noted, taking her eyes off of her finished sculpture. He simply gave her a cryptic smile for her to decipher.

"Can you define me in thirty words?"