The Unbearable Smugness of Being (Fëanor) by IgnobleBard

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Floating in the cold, soulless void beyond the stars, Fëanor was surprised to find he was no longer alone.

"Melkor?" he groaned, "what are you doing here?"

"Same as you, it would seem," Melkor snapped testily. "What about you? I thought your spirit was consumed by fire."

"And so it was, but just as the flame of a snuffed candle ends in lightless oblivion, so too does a spirit consumed by fire I guess," Fëanor's incorporeal remnant shrugged.

"Oh."

Thus fell a silence of an hundred years.

"So," Melkor said at last, "what do you do for fun around here?"

"You're looking at it."

"But there's nothing to see."

"Precisely."

"Oh."

Thus fell a silence of two and an hundred years.

"It's kind of ironic when you think about it," Melkor mused.

"What?"

"How we both lusted after light, were jealous even, and then we end up like this, in the dark."

"I don't think that word means what you think it means," Fëanor said.

"What word?"

"Ironic."

"Contrary to what is expected or intended."

"That's one meaning," Fëanor smirked.

"You want to know your problem?" Melkor accused.

"Oh, yes, please, do tell," Fëanor said in his most Fëanorianly derisive tone.

"That's it right there," Melkor griped. "You're smug, that's what you are."

"I think you mean cynical," Fëanor offered. "Oh, the irony, that one with your gifts of prevarication and deceit should have such poor communication skills."

"Quit telling me what I mean, you miserable lout!" Melkor shouted. "If it wasn't for you and your stupid shiny jewels neither of us would be here."

"It's a risk of creation that others will either covet or ridicule your work. Yet those whose wills are bent only on the corruption and censure of the works of others, be it from pride or resentment, they who know not the joy and freedom of creation, must needs suffer in their own self-imposed and ignominious exile, their hearts shut ever from the light they seek to destroy," Fëanor said sadly.

"Asshat," Melkor mumbled.

"Name calling is the riposte of a tiny mind," Fëanor huffed.

"Smug prick," Melkor rejoined.

"Yeah? Well so's your old man," Fëanor countered with considerably less eloquence than was his wont.

"Tell me about it," Melkor sighed. "Nothing I ever did was good enough for him."

"Try having a half-brother who goes all noble on you when you're trying to keep the Valar from stealing your jewels."

Melkor gave a snide chuckle, "Couldn't protect your jewels, huh? No wonder you were unmanned."

"You are so immature," Fëanor sniffed.

"Hey, you set 'em up, I'm gonna knock 'em down," Melkor laughed. "Grow a sense of humor, why don'tcha."

"If you're going to be a putz I'm not going to talk to you anymore," Fëanor said crossly.

"Fine by me, no skin off my nose."

"Considering you don't have skin."

"I thought you weren't talking."

"I'm not. That was my last comment."

"Except for the comment you just made."

More galling even than his banishment at the hands of the Valar was it for Fëanor to speak not in the face of this most obvious attempt to get him to break his word, but speak not he did.

Thus fell a silence of time out of mind.

"Oh, come on," Melkor finally spoke, "give me a break here, we both got a raw deal."

"We sure did. If I had known I was going to have to share a void with you, I'd have pitched all three of those stones into the sea to begin with," Fëanor groused.

"I can swim," Melkor said cavalierly.

"You are working my last nerve here," Fëanor growled.

"What are you gonna do about it, Elf boy?" Melkor challenged.

Pushed beyond his limit, Fëanor flew at the sound of Melkor's voice and what bits of matter were left of them slammed into each other, imploding in their fury and then blasting outward into the void with a really Big Bang! Their creative and destructive forces mingled and coalesced, gasses formed and ignited into stars, and in due course a small, round, wet sphere formed.

Eru Ilúvatar looked over the design and nodded approvingly. Round, yes, he should have thought of that before. Weary of the old creations, which had been so ultimately disappointing, Eru thought he might take a break this time and let evolution have a go. See where the day might take him, so to speak.

Eventually he grew bored watching the dinosaurs duke it out, and so created people - who then invented steroids and professional wrestling - and thus the circles of the world are circles indeed.

The End