Author's Note: I wanted to write about Fëatho's mother, but I'm determine to keep her under wraps right now, for complicated reasons. I don't want to give away Fëatho's Numenorean lineage, yet, because… I'm a monster who hates revealing their secrets. That's really the honest answer. But for some other less horrendous excuses: I don't want to reveal his lineage quite yet, as I think it'll bog down the story with useless information (the irony of me saying that.) And because it opens up some potential drama in the sequel which at this point I think is going to happen. As in I'm in a rudimentary drafting phase.

But some important questions remain: Who should Morgoth run through with a spear or crush under foot; Sauron or Fëatho? What's going to hurt more/be more thrilling. Sauron resuming his role as Morgoth's unwilling Lieutenant until he either betrays Morgoth or Morgoth murders him? Or should Fëatho get shoehorned into that role, mentally and emotionally broken, then sent in a replica of his father's armour to fight against the people he swore to defend, where he meets Sauron on a field of battle. And Sauron can see exactly what Morgoth's done to his lost son?

Or should I do both/all of it?

These are important questions that I've been stuck on for a while. I'm leaning toward a mix of all the above, but I'm always open to suggestions. And yes…the sequel will probably jump to a very high T-rating or a full-on M. As M is for Morgoth, and I swear every time I write him, the horror gets kicked up into overdrive. ((You all should hear about what he was going to try to do to Sauron in the Last Days, and what he actually did do to Linaer. It'll help you sleep at night.))

But I really am eager to write about Fëatho's mother, but every piece I want to write gives away all the secrets I'm trying to keep. It's sad.

Disclaimer: Here there be a disclaimer.


Drabble: Memories

There were very few things Fëatho remembered from his earliest years. It seemed the loss of his mother, easily his sharpest and simultaneously haziest memories had over shadowed all that had come before, except for a few odd things.

He remembered his mother's voice when she hummed… but could not hum the tune himself as though his throat was incapable of capturing the notes, and to be honest he dared not try too hard, lest he unintentionally alter her song. But she used to hum, while she braided his hair in front of the mirror. But he could not remember her face.

He remembered a beach, grey and dark with the coming of a storm. The waves crashing tall as he was, violent and stained with ugly foam that formed ugly clots of disgusting bubbles on the sand.

They had found a dying fish, drowning in the air, as he would have drowned in the vicious surf, and asking his mother to save it, but afraid to save it himself, because of its jagged teeth, and armoured head. And without a word, she'd snatched it and tossed it into the waves.

He remembered looking back up at the hill, the palace standing tall and resolute looking over vineyards, and fields. Núrn with its fertile soil, intrepid irrigation systems, and vast farmlands was Mordor's breadbasket, and the palace; his family's retreat from the harsh winter in the capital.

His father had deigned to join them this time, but he had not joined them on the beach, busy working, meeting with important people and ever mindful of his land.

The sky was grey, and for off the storm was dusky dark blue on the horizon, and the air heavy with its encroaching menace. But it was light here. It was lighter than the world he knew in Barad-dûr if only just so.

His mother found a shell. A single circular snail shell, as grey and morose as the grey waters it had been cast from, and she set it in his hand, and he marvelled over is smoothness, the shifting shades of grey the faint streaks of tan and pale brown, and the beautiful spiral growing ever tighter and darker toward its centre.

It rested ever after on a shelf in his room in Barad-dûr, proof that he once he had ventured beyond Mordor's walls, and that hadn't been a wishful dream.

He recalled nothing more of that trip, and his mother with her braided ebony hair and dark heavy raiment and silver jewels had looked as morose as the sea itself, but even then she was a faceless entity beside him.

It bothered him sometimes, the fragmented hazy memories he had of his family's life before how happy they had seen, but he had a sort intuition that all had not been entirely well either. He couldn't recall anything specific, but for some reason he believed that, silently sure of the truth of it, though he could not say why.

He wanted a pet. His father had told him a bit about green growing things, on another trip to Núrn, and there summer abode, and he'd gotten it into his head to steal some grass and take it home, thinking if he planted it in a bowl of water and table scraps it would be able to happily eat and drink with its feet. He'd tried to hide it for a while, but there'd been no hiding the smell. It had nearly driven him from his own room, even after he'd tried to dispose of it, by chucking it out his window, and into the garden outside.

His parents had not been particularly pleased, and by the time the food and dead plant had turned foul had hadn't been particularly pleased either. It had been an important lesson that he'd later forget. There was nothing he could hide from his father …or his mother.

It was one of the few times he'd gotten in trouble with his parents.

If she'd ever thought to teach him how to grow plants, she never got the opportunity, and his father didn't seem particularly interested in that art, so what little he had learned he'd learned from her plat guides with all their hand drawn pictures, bow added to Barad-dûr's great library and its massive hoard of knowledge. As organized as the library was, he'd likely never find them again, unless he intended to dedicate a few centuries to the art of reading at the exclusion of all else.

His father told him stories on occasion, about historical events or the evil man who had taken his father's beloved ring. The man had died, but no one knew what had become of the ring. Angry that some evil man had taken something from his father, he'd told his father he wished he could go out and help him find it, before hugging him and scampering off with a cunning plan only the mind of a child could think up in an effort to help.

With paper, wax, and gold paint he'd set to work, trying and failing to make a ring. He'd had no true plan, nor any clue what it was he had been doing except wasting paper and making a mess of his desk and hands, until he sauntered into his father's study, grinning with triumph to offer him a silly flimsy paper band with outstretched wax covered and paint stained hands.

He'd hugged his father then too, eager to help, to make it better, unsure if he'd succeeded, but hopeful that it might suffice.

Stiff and rigid his father had sat there, before stiffly saying he appreciated it, but was very busy, and that Fëatho needed to leave. After another hug, several apologies on behalf of the evil man for being a ring thieving bastard, swift chastisement for that kind of language, and sternly given instructing to clean himself up, he'd been kicked from the room, unware that Orodruin was blowing off more steam than usual.

There was the endearingly titled 'The Waif Painting' as his parents had called it, and he hated even thinking about it. His mother had commissioned a portrait of him, and in cornflower blue robes with golden embroidery he'd been made to sit for painstaking hours, as the man captured his likeness. The end result was him perhaps at the most innocent he'd ever looked, doe-eyed and morose, staring out at the viewer guilelessly nervous and seemingly shy in spite of the poise he sat with -like the regnant little flower he was.

It took all that he was- all the things he hated most about himself and put them on full display. The sons of lords were supposed to be bold, princes were supposed to be bold, and the son of the Dark Lord ought to be bolder still, but he looked like a waif that had been foisted from the streets, dressed like a doll, and posed.

He was sure his mother had wished him to smile, and at the time she'd said she'd wanted something to remember him by as if he'd been about to go somewhere. But then she'd left shortly thereafter and she'd never gotten a portrait of him smiling.

The world had stolen her away so thoroughly she'd seemingly vanished, and even his father knew not what had come of her. If he'd tried calling back her spirit it hadn't been successful, and what had been found he'd never learned the nature of, and now that was lost in the crypt behind a huge stone slab and a statue of her, dark and sombre as the crypt itself.

For all his hate, he wished he could go back, and make himself smile, so that she would have had the one and only thing he remembered her asking of him.

His throat always tightened and prickled, and his eyes always stung when he thought about it. He had no copy of it for himself, and did not want one. What had come of it, he wasn't sure, but it had either been cast out with his mother's things, or it now resided in his father's possession. He'd never bothered to ask, because cared not to see it for the rest of his life.

There no other memories, from before he'd been brought the terrible news. Nothing before the funeral. Everything else he knew of his earliest years were the stories he'd heard.

In Núrn, small, curious, and innocently oblivious he'd happily wandered about the market and gotten himself lost. He had no idea how that had actually happened, only that his mother had been frantic, and that he'd been found with a pair of guards, watching a street performer dancing with fire.

But the story he loved was the duck story, and Ikshu told it to him on occasion, when stress was wearing at him, or he needed something nice to think about.

He'd been with his mother feeding some ducks, and there had been some distance between them when he'd decided he'd try to hug one.

It had snapped at his grabby hands, and chased him, in tears, to his father's legs. Or rather he had fallen in tears at his father's feet and the marauding duck had wisely ceased its pursuit far away from the ominous dark figure of a wrathful father.

But it had remained there, eyeing them as if weighing the risk of a second assault. And the dark lord had decided in that moment any bird brazen enough to test his patience after attacking his child was a bird that did not deserve to live.

His mother had rushed over to tend him, and on her way she'd given the bird a firm kick, and it took off flying deciding that there was no point testing Mordor's lord or his equally enraged consort.

She'd scooped him from his father's arms, and whole the duck was flapping over the water, it met a sudden and swift end, amid terrible red flames. Later some men had fetched the charred corpse from the water, and the royal family made an example of the duck for all the world's water fowl by eating roasted duck at dinner.

It was stories like that he heard once in a while, but possessed no memory of, and he wished that he could. But what he could remember, he wasn't sure he wanted to.

She'd gotten lost, or something, and he'd been missing her, pining after her, and clinging to his father, waiting for her to come back from wherever she'd gone, or finish whatever it was she was doing. He didn't rightly know what had happened, only that she was supposed to be there with them in their grand dark palace, overlooking the sea, yet for some reason or another she wasn't.

He must have pestered his father into an irritable mood, because he hadn't been overly pleased with her when she arrived, but he'd been thrilled, and happily ran to her, uncaring and unconcerned by the dampness of her skirts, or the smell of water, as if she'd gone wading. He'd only been relieved to see her. But he thought he recall some tension between his parents then, and he had a vague inkling that they had argued when he'd gone from the room, but he recalled no evidence to support such a thing. It was only a sense. A vague… sense, with no definitive proof, as his parents seemed nothing but a content and happy couple. If they had marital problems, he'd never heard so much as a rumour regarding them, which did nothing for his confusion. Why feel something when there was no proof for such a feeling? It was odd, and made him uncomfortable, but he didn't dare bring such questions to his father, afraid not only trying his father's patience, but afraid of the answers. Did he want to know the truth? He wasn't sure. He did, but he feared where such questions could possibly lead.

Still, it would be nice know to know something of his mother, the Numenorean lady who had caught his father's eye. How rare she must have been, and he knew virtually nothing of her. Maybe if he asked with great care he might not incur his father's wrath, but maybe for a moment see him grow nostalgic, and he wondered what it would look like to see his father sentimental. It would have been odd no doubt, and he stared up at the dark polished ceiling above, mulling it over.

All Featho had were his half formed hay memories of a faceless dark haired lady, but deep down he knew he wanted more, if only he could bring himself to ask.


Aside from The Waif Painting, and the beach scene I have no idea how much of this canon. I just wanted to get all this out of me head, and provide you all with something that's nearly fluffy, because over in TYW I'm revving up for some heartache and horror. XD