The Malleable Metal of His Mind by Firerose

Chapter 1

Disliking all limits and limitations, he bound himself to neither place nor master, though he learned much at the forge of Aulë. But of all the many places he frequented, he came most often and lingered longest in the Halls of Mandos, not to comfort the spirits of the departed, no, that was never his way, but to peruse the tapestries of Vairë, which transformed all that was and ever had been into webs of cunning threads whose patterns appealed to him above all the stars of Varda. He would trace each line – the smooth curves of the Elves, the punctuated paths of mortal Men, the ebb and flow of the elements themselves – till the malleable metal of his mind absorbed and assimilated them, understood, where the Weaver merely recorded, copied – and he thirsted ever to delve more deeply, to know more completely, to stamp his own patterns on infinity. And so when the call came to forsake Valinor he accepted, even though he must clothe himself in mortal seeming, limit himself to wise words and humble habits.

Man of craft, he deemed, would sound very well in the tongues of Middle-earth.