Yey, not two months this time! It's amazing! ... Probably should be noted that I have a huge presentation that I should be preparing for, and thus I have the need to procrastinate as much as possible. So sad. Anyway, hopefully I'll get around to writing the next chapter in a timely fashion. Then again, that might cause the world to end.

... So enjoy. Please.

Sauron had assumed that "amuse themselves" meant that Elbaras and Anariel would be able to go to their rooms and find something to do for a reasonable amount of time. To him, that seemed like a perfectly acceptable expectation.

This was apparently incorrect.

He had settled down in a chair wedged into a corner, leaning into the cushions with his head back to stare at the ceiling. There was a book he had picked up the week before in his bag – something discussing a new welding technique that had been introduced by elves recently arrived from Middle-earth – but at the present there had been no reason to delve into that.

No, he had more important things to consider. Now that he had learned a bit, and he did acknowledge that it was a very little bit, about the mannerisms of children, he needed to reason out the best way to proceed with the rest of the day. But, naturally, this wasn't to be, as he could hear the thumping of feet charging down the stairs.

Without looking down, Sauron figured it was Elbaras. The bright red tuft of hair he could see in his peripheral sort of gave it away.

Slowly, he raised his head and leveled a decidedly exasperated look at the boy. "Yes?"

Elbaras took a few more steps into the room before halting, the beginnings of a smile turning the corners of his lips regardless of Sauron's less than enthusiastic air. "May we go to the park?"

Sauron processed this comment and then slowly turned to face the window to his left. Through the airy curtains stirring in the breeze, he could clearly see the green he had stood in the night before. It had apparently remained there and not disappeared. "Why don't you just go then? It's right outside your door."

"That's not the park!" Elbaras cried.

"It's not."

"No! There's nothing fun to do there. The park is in the city more."

Sauron considered Elbaras critically. "And I suppose I would be expected to come along as well, hm?" he asked while pretty sure of the answer.

"Yes. But you don't have to play if you don't want to," Elbaras explained.

Sauron snorted. "Of course I don't." He looked at the clock set on the mantle and decided that he could probably spare some time if it would keep the kids out of his hair. "Does your sister want to go, too?"

Elbaras waved a hand "She always likes to go. I'm sure she'd want to."

"Go ask her."

With a sigh, Elbaras turned back and went upstairs, his exasperated calls for his sister reverberating through the house.

After listening for a moment, Sauron heard Anariel's assent to go on the outing. He rose, anticipating that they'd show up in a minute, and wondered vaguely what he was getting himself into by agreeing to take the rather hyperactive Elbaras where he was so excited to go.

Thankfully, once both kids were outfitted with their shoes and on their way, they behaved themselves rather well. In fact, while enthusiastic, they were fairly controlled. Anariel led the way, explaining the directions as they went, while Elbaras, not quite as interested in this, capered around them in happy circles.

Sauron imagined what sort of sight they made – the two bright children bubbling happily with him frowning in the middle.

He was disrupted from his thoughts when Anariel abruptly announced that they had arrived.

This was not the calm green of the many commons found around the populated areas of Valinor. This park was its own operation, directly made to provide the children with a place to entertain themselves. It was true that the city was a delicate-looking place full of seemingly fragile stone latticework and airy glass. Although well made and undoubtedly strong, 'strong' worked on a completely different unit of measurement in relation to children.

Strong did not exist.

Since it was universally understood that children had wealths of energy that needed to be released, it was necessary to create a place that would be able to perform this function without succumbing to complete destruction in one afternoon.

Therefore, places such as this park occasionally showed up.

Sauron, who had never had any interest in children and who could generally ignore them on account of how far they were below his line of sight, had not gone to any of these places. In fact, he had been able to completely avoid them until now; the high timbre of the voices and the general volume did not make this terribly difficult.

Now, however, he was being forced to confront it. It was considerably larger than the usual parks, although this seemed to be because of the buffering green space that encircled the main area of interest. This, located in the middle of the field, was an intricately built wooden contraption. It looked like a house, minus everything that generally marked a building as such.

It was the sort of place an insane person would build. Floors had holes in them or were uneven or placed at odd angles. There were webs of metal coming from various sides and enough rope to completely rig a ship.

While there was no discernable reason for this odd setup, the children seemed to understand it perfectly. Whether this was due to the fact that their imaginations were still unrestrained or their intellect underdeveloped, or both, Sauron could not say. He observed their actions for a moment, the wild capering and haphazard swinging and hurried climbing, trying to make sense of it, trying to categorize their actions so that it had some order.

He failed miserably.

He did not particularly appreciate it. The feeling had never really sat well with him.

Suddenly, his thoughts were yanked from his consideration by the tug of a hand on his.

Looking down, he found Anariel snatching her hand back and quickly hiding it in the folds of her dress. She tried to look oblivious to the raised brow on Sauron's face that clearly asked if she had just broken his rule of minding his personal space. "May we go play now, Iaewur?" she asked in an overly polite tone.

Sauron frowned. That plot of endearing manners might work on her parents, but not on him. Seeing as how the point of their coming had been to let them play, however, Sauron did not see any choice but to nod stiffly.

A massive grin spread across Anariel's face, and she grabbed Elbaras' hand before rushing off to the strange building in a fit of giggles.

Sauron shook his head. He was remembering why he had never involved children in any of his schemes, no matter how subtle their participation might be.

Since he had no idea how long it would take for them to get their restlessness out of their systems, Sauron found a shady spot on the grass beneath a tree. It was strange that, while perfectly comfortable there, he could not help but feel a bit uneasy that he had no idea where those two kids were. True, he was stronger than Haldir, and his height did help, but Sauron had never liked fighting and generally tended to lose in such situations if his opponent was motivated enough. If something happened to either of the children, Sauron was sure that such would motivate Haldir to the point of effectively disembodying him again.

It was truly unfair of Haldir to put so much trust in him. What had he ever done to deserve this? And why did he feel so responsible about the children's well being? He wasn't supposed to have these stupid feelings. It had been enough of a jump to positively expressing some of the simple ones while restraining himself with the negative ones when there was no tangible benefit to doing so. Seeing as how he had taken that step, the world should not have demanded more from him. The whole conscience thing was a pain.

Perhaps a bit frustrated with himself, Sauron leaned back against the tree and stubbornly closed his eyes. There were plenty of adults around keeping a close watch of the children in general; if anything went awry, no doubt one of them would step in. They would surely have more knowledge on how to care for a small child than he did.

Carefully, Sauron tried to plot out the remainder of his day while consciously ignoring any shriek or yell. This actually worked surprisingly well once he was immersed in it. Everything was pushed to the back of his mind, thankfully hazy. It was rather like…

There was a sudden prickling across his scalp, and Sauron slowly opened his eyes, wondering why it was so difficult to do so. Blinking to clear his vision, Sauron's mind began to come up to speed with his surroundings.

The sun was slanting down through the trees above him, chasing the shadows back up to his knees.

He had fallen asleep.

That had been unexpected.

Looking to his side, Sauron found Anariel smiling at him. It seemed suspicious. "What are you up to?" he asked warily.

"I made you a necklace," she stated.

He raised a brow. "A necklace?" What was there to make a necklace of… and, better yet, who would make a necklace for him?

She pointed to his chest, and Sauron now saw the string of linked flowers that had been lowered over his head. A distant part of his mind that was clearly more awake than the rest twitched uncomfortably – angrily, even – at this absurd decoration. Heedless of what general consensus the rest of his mind came to, that small portion raised his hand and lifted the flowers lying across his chest, prepared to take them off.

At that moment, Anariel sat down in the grass, legs stuck out at the odd angles only children could accomplish, and tipped her head up at him. "Do you like it?" she asked.

Sauron paused, glancing at her. Like it? Flowers, woven into a necklace no less? How was he supposed to like that? What had he ever done to come across as somebody who would appreciate it?

But… her brows were drawn up in a disgustingly pitiful manner, betraying how much she hoped he would. She'd probably cry or sulk or something if he told her what he really thought.

"I tried to make sure they were all the same length. Papa said you were a craftsman, so I wanted to be careful," she added as though trying to prove the flower chain worthy of his acceptance. "I had to look through all the grass over there." Her hand waved vaguely toward the other side of the green. "I didn't even get help!"

The little angry part of his consciousness was carefully pushed into the background. It did not require much to do so once Sauron made up his mind; over the millennia, he had often had to carefully keep that side from manifesting itself while he tried to accomplish his various acts of subterfuge. This case would no doubt have to be the same.

Slowly, he released the flowers, allowing them to drape around his neck. "They are very nice," he finally managed to form.

And lavender, his mind added grouchily, a very ominous lavender.

Anariel absolutely beamed. She giggled, clapping her hands together. "I'll go make you more!" she exclaimed while jumping up.

With a flare of panic, Sauron managed to catch her arm before she ran off. "That isn't necessary!" he said hastily. "Why don't you just make some for yourself? Or go play with Elbaras some more?"

"I don't know where he is, though," she murmured.

"Well, there you go. It can be your job to find him. I suppose it's getting near time for dinner."

She nodded, and Sauron released her arm. "Good. I'll be waiting for you here."

Sighing, Sauron went back to looking at the flower chain as Anariel left. It was obvious that she had spent a good deal of time on it; the stems were, indeed, pretty close to the same length, and the flowers were nearly at the same stage of blossoming. While he appreciated a job done carefully, Sauron could not understand spending so much time on something that would only last a few hours after completion. It hardly seemed worth the effort.

Especially if it was going to be wasted on him.

With another sigh,, Sauron thought of what Morgoth would say about this. While Morgoth did like beautiful things – the silmarils were an obvious example – it was usually because he wanted to permanently sully them so they could never be what they had once been.

Unfortunately, the situation made some old recollection pull itself from the depths and dust itself off. It made him remember the first time he had been told that he should not spend his time on things as trivial and useless as decoration.

"Sauron," Morgoth said exasperatedly, clearly on the edge of pinching the bridge of his nose, "what is this?"

Sauron looked down at the armor, gauntlets or something, and then back at Morgoth. "Armor…?"

"Yes, I do know that. What I don't understand is why it looks like this."

"Like what?"

"Like something elves would make!" Morgoth boomed.

Flinching at the volume but still completely baffled, Sauron tried to put his thoughts together. "I just made them the way I was taught."

"Then unteach yourself!"

Sauron paused and wondered if that was really a valid way to express that sentiment. He kept the thought to himself. "What part do you take particular offense to, my lord?"

Morgoth snatched the armor from him and jabbed a dark finger at the plates in general. "Designs. Embellishments. They're unnecessary," he grit out, each word punctuated with a jab.

"You want them to be plain…" Sauron ventured, feeling much more timid than he would have liked.

"No. I just want them to relate to what I do. There is no need to create things of beauty in this world. Understood?"

Sauron had nodded and trudged back to the forges. It had been a lie, however – he had not understood.

He had learned.

Shaking away the memory, Sauron smiled wryly. Yes, it had taken him a while to break the habits he had gained under Aule's tutelage, but he was an efficient learner. It had become natural to ignore the intricacies he would have generally included. Instances when he was allowed to indulge in those tendencies - say, when pretending to helpfully share skills in order to make some rings - were easy to explain away as necessity.

Now, of course – since that was just the sort of luck he had – he was being forced to recall that it had been difficult, regardless of his ability to apply the principle, to relinquish his initial impulses regarding his creations. Even after accepting his current situation years ago, he had kept so much of the smithing work he did to utilitarian purposes. Perhaps he had unconsciously known that anything more would require processing some deeply buried gunk.

Gunk he was apparently going to at least have to partially acknowledge at the moment. He glanced at the flowers and tried to accept them for what they were, ignoring the conflicting doctrine he had forced himself to accept for years.

Suddenly, he was able to make out the shapes of Anariel and Elbaras dislodging themselves from the general throng. What a convenient distraction from his current line of thought. Seeing as how they would be over in a minute or so, Sauron rose and wiped the grass from his tunic and leggings.

Unfortunately, this attempt at tidiness was soon followed by a clump of grass hitting him in the chest.

For a moment, he simply stared at it, watching as it fell off, leaving behind a dozen little grass blades on his tunic. It even took a second for him to register the giggling of Elbaras and the shocked chastising of Anariel.

Once he got his mind around the idea of a child senselessly attacking him for amusement, Sauron looked up from his tunic to Elbaras. Slowly, he raised a hand and flicked the grass off, and, with equal slowness, spoke. "Child," he stated evenly, noting that Elbaras actually seemed to find his grim tone humorous, "what possessed you to do that?"

Elbaras just let out another string of giggles before throwing the other handful, which had been hidden behind his back.

Anariel gasped and then shoved his shoulder. "Stop! You don't want him to be mad! Then Mama and Papa will not be happy!"

This didn't seem to have any effect either, however, and he began to hop from one foot to the other. "You'll have to catch me! Catch me! Catch me!" he chanted, before darting off back towards the other children.

Apparently, whatever length of time they had been there had not been enough to alleviate Elbaras' energy.

Sighing at how undignified it was, Sauron ran after the little boy. Thankfully, since his legs were significantly longer, he was easily able to catch up. Leaning out, Sauron picked the boy up under the arms, holding him out and observing with perhaps a twitch of amusement that Elbaras' legs continued to struggle forward.

"There will be no more of that," Sauron said seriously.

Still squirming, Elbaras tried to look back over his shoulder at Sauron. "But Papa always plays with us!"

"I, however, am not your papa."

Elbaras instantly went slack, his curly-haired head drooping. "I know," he murmured, apparently into the fabric of his tunic. "I just thought that you would play as well…"

Sauron shook his head and set Elbaras back down on his feet. "Don't assume. Now come on; we're going home."

He turned around and started back towards the house, picking up on the faint rustle of feet on the grass behind him. That was enough of an indication that the children were following to assure him that there was no reason to ruin his exit by turning around.