Summary: Olórin (Gandalf) meets a young Fëanor, back when Fëanor was still the name he called himself secretly in his heart.
Warnings: Rather Fluffy
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I walked in the raiment of an Elf, clad in grey. Curiosity had brought me from the gardens of Lórien to Tírion. I was near the residence of Finwë, the king of the Noldor, close enough to hear merry laughter and music.

But something more interesting than the dinner party of the Elf King caught my attention as I crossed the grassy plain. Children played behind the garden, chasing each other in a boisterous game. I watched them long, for it gladdened my heart to see such innocence and joy.

Eventually, though, I noticed something amiss. There was a child, like these, yet he sat far aside, almost hidden in the vale. I could not see why he would sit aside from the others and moved to speak with him. It was not my custom to speak with the Eldar as myself, Olórin of the Maiar, instead I would move among them as a spirit or clad in the form of one of them. Thus, as an elf man, I went to the little one that sat alone.

The lanky child sat sulkily on the grass, long legs stretched out, pulling the pointed toes of his shoes. Aside from a jewel-bright eye regarding him momentarily through the tangle of hair, I was resolutely ignored.

I waited patiently for a long time before the child’s curiosity won out. “Are you here for the party?”

“I was.”

“Wouldn’t they be missing you then?”

When the child had finally raised his head, I was taken aback, by the brightness of his piercing eyes, and perfection of his form, for even with the softness of youth on him, he was the most beautiful Noldo I had ever laid eyes on.

I recovered my voice, “And you? Shouldn’t you be at the party as well? Or be out with your friends over there?”

“I do not wish to be inside with them.” He gave me a suspicious look, muttering under his breath, “Strange people always fuss over me, calling me a ‘poor motherless child’.”

I must have started, for he straightened up proudly. “I am not poor. I never knew a mother to miss one. My father is wonderful. He is better than any mother and father one could have.”

“But if you are not at the party, would he not wish you to be with your friends?” I tried again.

The boy glanced behind them. He ripped out a handful of grass. “They are not my friends.”

“Did you not wish to play?” I asked, wishing to understand.

“They play childish things. They say I am strange.”

“Childish? But they seem hardly any younger than you.”

The young Noldo turned his face away from this prying stranger. “They are too babyish. I do not wish to join their game.” His eyes gleamed wetly. After a long pause he turned back enough for me to study his profile. I knew him now. We had met before, though he would not remember me. How quickly he had grown.

He pulled at the toes of his shoes. “Look at this,” he said suddenly. “See how much I can grasp without touching my toes? They are way too big for my feet.”

“Why didn’t the cobbler make them properly?”

“My father told him to make them this way. He said I grew too swiftly, and this way it would be a while before he had to have more made for me.”

I, who have never been a child, found this strange. “But, are they not hard to walk in?”

“Yes! That is what I told them! But they made them like this anyway, again. Look,” he rolled up his sleeve, revealing a badly scraped elbow, “I tripped on the rug earlier.”

“That must have hurt,” I said.

He jabbed a finger accusingly at one of the distant children. “He laughed at me. He laughed and called me things.”

“What things?”

“He said...he should not have said.”

“What did you do? Tell your father?”

“No, I jumped on him and hit him! I would have won too, if the cook hadn’t pulled me off him. He said my father would send me off with a stick in my hand this time for sure. But he deserved it!” He sat, silent then, but his skin shimmered white in remembered wrath.

I stared at him hard, and his eyes burned back into mine unflinchingly. This one’s spirit was hot and fierce, and knew not fear, I deemed. “What did he say?” I quietly asked again.

He turned so all I could see was his profile again. “I do not wish to say.”

“It is a very evil thing to attack another. If you had harmed him the punishment would be sev—“

“HE SAID,” he leapt to his feet, “ He said no wonder my mother laid down and DIED at the SIGHT OF ME! And I struck him, again and again, and if he even opens his mouth to me again I’ll do it again!”

Not sure which part of what he’d said horrified me more, I made a grab for him, to hold him, soothe him, keep him from doing anything rash, do something, but he wormed away from my grasp.

“Do not touch me!”

“Little one. Do not listen to that foolish, ill-tongued child...”

“Who are you?” he demanded. “You aren’t an Elf. I can see that. Are you a Maia? Why are you asking me these things?” He stamped his foot irritably.

“Hush, little one. Be still now,” I hummed, catching his wrist and drawing him into my lap. He seemed much smaller caged in my arms. I stroked his soft black hair as he squirmed and kicked.

He became still after a while, though he glowered crossly at me. “That was a very wicked thing for that child to say. Do not take it to heart, little one,” I told him. He regarded me with a strange expression, and then slowly reached up and prodded my face. He ran his fingers over my cheek, across my nose, and back to my ear before I caught his hand. “What are you doing?”

“Put me down.”

I set him back on the ground and he quickly moved out of reach. “You are a Maia.”
“How did you know?”

“I can see it.” He gave me a sly look over his shoulder, “And you do have an accent.”

He loped away, leaving me vaguely horrified. “I have an accent?”

I rose and followed him. He was balancing on the trunk of a fallen tree. He spun around in a little dance, his hair unfurling after him like a raven’s wing. “Speak it to me.”

I must have looked puzzled, for he repeated, “The language of the Valar. Your speech. I wish to hear how you speak.”

“Why?” Valarian was a powerful and harsh language to the Eldar, they usually stopped their ears and fled when we spoke it in council. I would not do that to this babe!

“Because language is everything! Language is tangible thought, through it comes understanding.”

“You wish to understand the Ainur.”

“Say something. I won’t run. I am not a coward.” He stood proudly.

“But there are some things that are beyond the ken of a race. You could not teach metal-smithing to a bird no matter how much they wished to learn.”

“So you are saying that we cannot comprehend the Ainur? You are too far beyond us? No of us can ever exceed you in thought or craft? Not yet anyway, for our race is young, and if you withhold knowledge from us, than we will ever be your servants,” he regarded me with an expression that should not be found on a child’s face, “Perhaps you prefer us that way.”

“Ai child! You are putting words in my mouth. I said none of those things. I see I choose my metaphor unwisely. I think you should come down from there.” I reached for him on the narrow branch, but he whirled away. But unfortunately, the toe of his shoe caught and he stumbled and slipped. I caught him before he hit the ground.
“There, now see? Are you alright?”

“Perfectly!” he snarled and ducked under my arm again. He fled deeper into the brush.

It took me a long time to find him again in the dense growth of dogwood. He sat in what seemed to have been a washed out foxhole, his stocking rolled up over his knee. He was rubbing at the scrape there, wincing.

When he spotted me, he sighed exasperatedly, “Can I not escape you?”

“I merely wished to see if you were alright. Rubbing at that wound cannot help.”

He scooted away from me when I kneeled down to see what vexed him about it. “Don’t touch it,” he warned me.

“I won’t, I just want to see.” It looked minor to me, no worse than the scrape on his arm, but he began picking at it again.

I stopped his hands, “What are you doing?”

“I have to get them out.”

“What?”

“Those bits of thread from my stockings. I can’t let them heal in there. I don’t want blue thread in my knee till the end of Arda!”

I think I may have forgotten till then how much of a child he was, no matter how precocious and prideful he may be. “It will heal inside? I do not think that it would heal inside your skin. Has thread healed inside any other cut you have ever had?”

“This has never happened before.”

He seemed so upset, I searched quickly for a solution. “Perhaps it would wash out?”

“Yes! There is a pond at the end of the garden.” He jumped up.

I followed him as he moved quickly through the brush, finding my height to be a great disadvantage. “Wait,” I called as I cleared the thicket. “I will help you.” He gave me a look, so I added, “It is after all, my fault that you slipped.”

“And these shoes,” he added after a long pause, and offered me his hand, “So you don’t get lost.”

I let him lead me, carefully avoiding the Elves out singing and making merry in the garden. I would have liked to carry him, since he was limping a bit, trying to keep the stocking from sliding down onto his sore knee. “Wouldn’t it be easier to go inside?”

“Nay, I would have no peace if I was seen like this.” He crouched down at the edge of the water and pulled off his shoes. He allowed me to help roll up the stockings so they wouldn’t get wet.

As I ladled water onto his knee, he asked, “Is there a word for when you really wanted to ask someone something, but now can’t remember what you were going to ask?”

“Besides ‘forgot’?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so.”

“There should be. Are they gone yet?”

“I think so.”

He balanced on one leg while examining his knee closely. I put a hand on his back to steady him as he teetered dangerously.

I followed him back out into the field. There was a small fire pit there, with some wood stacked by still. Since the young Noldo was, despite our best efforts, rather damp, I crouched down to make a fire. I carefully arranged the wood, looking around to see if there was anyone watching. I gave him a sly glance, and pointed at the kindling. “Fire to warm us!” I commanded, and a blue flame shot up. The flames quickly became cheery and orange.

My young companion had jumped when the flames arose, but he had quickly hidden his surprise. He scooted closer to the fire to let his legs dry. He seemed entranced by the flames.

After a long time he spoke again. “Why are the flames different colors? Why is the base blue, and then orange at the tip? Why was the fire blue when it started? It doesn’t do that when my father starts it. Can you make it other colors? Can you make green fire?”

“Goodness child, is there anything else you want to know?”

“The names of all the stars and all the animals and why we are here and everything!”

He reached out with his small hand and snatched at something. He uncurled his hand, keeping a small insect caged in his fingers. “It’s a lightening bug. He has a light inside him like a fire, but it does not burn him. Imagine if we had lamps that didn’t burn....”

“We have the Two Trees.”

“But we still need more light sometimes,” his voice trailed off distractedly as he twisted his hand around as the bug crawled up his fingers. “I was trying to read one of Rumil’s writings the other day inside and it was too dark to see that characters properly.”

He let the firefly go, jumping to his feet. I studied the flames, while he leaped and danced around the fire. “Is there a word for wanting to ask someone’s name but it has been so long into the conversation that it feels impolite to ask?”

I thought for a moment, “No.”

“Maybe I could make one up. It should be long, and have lots of syllables....”

Mayhap it was the company, but I was having a moment of inspiration. I took up a bit of ash from the fire and crushed it in my hand, changing it.

“Watch.” I blew the dust into the fire, where it ignited, sparking into glittering butterflies of purple and orange. The child was astonished.

I made more fire creatures burst into life, blue swans and golden bees danced around him as he laughed in delight. “And as you asked...” I threw a handful of dust in the air where it fired into tiny green dragonflies.

He dashed after them, leaping to try and catch them before they fizzed out. The little elf came running back, out of breath, “These things...what do you call them?” he asked earnestly.

I was leaning back on my elbow, fashioning little horses in pink and red. “I don’t know. I have never done this before.”

“Make a lion next!” he bounced, and added, “Please.” I gave the lion a mane of orange and yellow flames. It opened its mouth in a roar, spooking the fire horses, though it turned tail when my violet eagles swarmed over it.

He turned around in circles, trying to look at everything at once. “You create art with fire!” he declared.

“I have never done anything like this before! It is a most wondrous feeling.”

“What will you call this?”

“I don’t know. You like making up words, why don’t you think of a name for this?”

“Curufinwë?” We both looked up sharply at the voice.

“Father!”

I saw the stately dark-haired elf striding across the field, his brow furrowed in concern. I was right then about whose child this was.

He pulled the child into his arms. “Curufinwë, are you alright?”

The young prince said excitedly, “This man here,” he pointed, “He was making pictures out of fire for me. Green and red and gold cats and butterflies--did you see?”

I bowed low to the king, still in the guise of an elf. Finwë looked at me long and hard. The Noldor were few then, and he knew his people well. I bowed, “Your son is a delight.” And to the prince I nodded, “I was honored to meet you, Curufinwë Finwë’s son.”

The Noldor king picked up his child. “If you will excuse us, it is long past the mingling of the lights, and high time I put my son to bed.” The child grumbled and squirmed, but I noticed how he clung to his father. Finwë bowed to me then.

We exchanged pleasantries again. When Finwë began to walk back to the palace I thought my young companion had already drifted off into dreams, but he suddenly raised his head from his sire’s shoulder. “Goodbye,” he said softly, “Thank you for the fireworks.”