Memories in photos
It all started when Amrod and Amras both received a camera each, from their maternal grandparents as birthday gifts the same year they started school.
"Thank you, grandpa, grandma!"
"It can be fun to look back at those photos taken at this age when you are adults, to see how things could seem from your view now," Mahtan smiled at them as Maedhros found himself the first victim of a attempted photoshop from Amras a little too close to his face. Not that the oldest brother protested much, the twins needed to learn how the child-intended cameras worked.
"Alright, everyone, time to taste the birthday cake!"
Nerdanel had ordered the carrot cake in the form of a tree stump from one of the local bakeries in Formenos, knowing it to be a favorite of the twins, and personally thought that the decoration of wild forest animals made of marzipan were adorable.
"Photo! Photo the cake!" the twins agreed with each other, and their father suddenly found himself busy in trying to save the cake from the two small cameras getting a little too close.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
As the school years passed once the five older brothers had finished their own schooling and started to work, it was not uncommon to see the two red haired twins in separate parts of the school yard, trying to catch a squirrel or some other passing wild animal on picture. Most often they did this during the school breaks, since school lessons were hardly a good time for taking photos when they needed to focus on what they would be taught.
One autumn day in 1986, Formenos:
"You two really like to take photos of nature in your free time, are you not?" Celegorm joked one day when he drove the twins home from school due to to a powerful rainstorm striking Formenos in the afternoon, and since he already was returning home from a hunt which had been interrupted because of the sudden change in the weather, it had been perfectly natural to pick up his youngest brothers from school on the way home.
"Actually, brother, we have been thinking of choosing a career to become nature photographers or filmmakers. We looked around on the nature documentaries in the movie rental store, and we found Himring only have one about its history and nature, about Morgoth the monster bear back in the fifties!" Amras spoke up, looking upset for some reason because they found the older bear hunter to be awesome, not fearing bears while he was out to hunt.
"And the narration had the nerve of claiming that it was one of the older hunters who had shot Morgoth, when everyone knows that it actually is your mentor who killed him!" Amrod added in, entering a minor rant about how ignorant people from the south was about the truth.
"Oromë will not be happy to hear about that documentary are still around, no, that I can tell you straight away."
Celegorm knew about that documentary his little brothers was telling about. Oromë, who had become a local hero at the age of sixteen by shooting that infamous bear after that it had killed several humans, had complained about how his heroic deed was treated like if he had been a teenager bragging about shooting Morgoth for attention. All the hunters who were still alive from that time, had not been pleased with how Oromë's role in the big bear hunt had been ignored while the narration flat out claimed that no one really knew who that had shot the fatal shoot in the forehead of the monster bear.
"Celegorm...would your mentor like it if a new documentary was made, with all the proper facts?"
He had to think for a moment as he also focused on the driving. Knowing Oromë rather well after so many years, Celegorm had always hoped that one day, the actual truth about the legendary bear hunt so many years ago would come out, the famous event when their parents had been just teenagers, fifteen years old at most, the very year before their maternal grandfather Mahtan had moved to Formenos with his family and Fëanor soon following after them as he had hated life in the southern cities.
"Hey, that is actually not a bad idea. I will bring you to his house tomorrow after breakfast, doubtful that anyone of my fellow hunters are out in a weather like this to hunt."
The twins cheered in thanks from the back seats for his help.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
The Nos Feanor twins spent their remaining three high school years on the project. They interviewed everyone who was involved in the legendary hunt of Morgoth, those who were still alive and not losing themselves to the misery of old age with bad memories. Following with the adult hunters during their summer holidays, they filmed and photographed all the important sites during that summer of 1951. Research was carefully done, not only with the interviews, but by looking over the old newspapers from the local library.
When Amrod and Amras graduated from high school in 1989 at the age of 18 to become nature filmmakers, their amateur documentary about Oromë and his legendary killing of Morgoth as a teenager was finished.
"They have outdone themselves!" Fëanor whispered in pride when the whole family and other locals were seated in the movie theater to watch the documentary. Nerdanel nodded, her eyes shining with emotions over seeing the result her youngest sons had worked on for three whole years. To see this talent they had, and to know that they would use it for more in the future, was something that had been hinted when they were children but seeing it for real…
"Alright, a photo of the twins and all the hunters together, please!"
The five older brothers might not have the same skills with a video camera or photo camera like Amrod and Amras, but they managed to create a fine memory of this important scene, where their little brothers restored the importance of Oromë in the legendary hunt of Morgoth.
And the documentary would, with time as they grew older, be the first of many nature documentaries based in northern Valinor which the twins created together.