II. Feanor will never kneel.

do unto others as they have done to you,

but what the hell is this world coming to?

and

that's why I fight fire with fire

oh I'm burning inside and my heart is a-cryin

(Fight Fire with Fire by Metallica and Fight Fire with Fire by Kansas, respectively.)

-x-

We were not made to kneel.

If the gods made us to be their children forever, truly wanted us to be protected and obey them as parents and guiding forces, then they should have gone with the part and protected us. Actually acted as parents, as I do to my sons when I protect and cherish them. I asked nothing from them but love. And what do these gods ask of me? My very soul, split in three, delights to all the realms.

I will not kneel to these self-entitled beings. Their justice is none at all, and were I to enter the Máhanaxar with my jewels I would be torn apart. Eru alone I can trust, for if he had intended for the gods to receive my creations then I would already have given them away in fated events. Eru leads my life as he has lead my father before me. Finwëgave me this trust and I am not the Spirit of Fire for nothing. I will hold strong and true in the face of this farce and Yavanna shall simply have to be content with finding another way to recreate her Lights. Daily I attempt to invent items of great value that would fill yawning gaps in our culture and way of life, and daily do I experience failure. I forge ahead, though, and I do see success in its grandest forms, an experience that would have been all the more flat without the previous failures. But when Yavanna is greeted with failure? - to protect, to cultivate, to save, to even convince what should by all rights be one of her own children to part with a piece of something that could save her work - she collapses. She tries to persuade others to fix what she has not even attempted to correct and metes out twisted justice on me for trying to protect my own creations.

Is it so wrong for me to have created some glorious object and then to have defended it from those who would seek to take it as their own?

I always regarded my greatest work as my children, but after some time they were not my children any longer and I needed to create another life, another dependent being. A child that would stay a child, something to lavish love and luxury on, beautiful as I am and more so than any other inanimate object I had ever crafted. Each of my seven sons hold a small piece of my soul, and I rounded this shining collection out to include my three precious gems. Yet still do I keep my sons closer to my heart than anything else I have made.

"My love, you've fallen asleep over your work again."

I have, haven't I. My apologies, wife, but I must find a way to defend myself from the gods. They want to steal parts of my own being and never give them back.

Eru forbid I ever fall to kneel before them.

-x-