Inside the Fire by Lyra

Chapter 1

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Inspiration strikes, and the world ceases to exist. Gone are the sounds of his busy household: the shrieks and giggles of the children, the slamming of doors and scraping of chairs, the tic-tic-tic of Nerdanel's hammer and chisel or the scritching of quill on paper, even the pop and hiss of the coals in his furnace no longer reach his ears. Gone are the myriad thoughts that normally crowd his brain: the projects he considers and discards while working on something else entirely, the information he filters from the smells and noises and sights around him, the words spoken and songs sung; the memories of something somebody told or asked him; the plans he is making for the next day, week, season, forever. Gone, even, is all sense of self: He does not feel hot or cold, hungry or thirsty, awake or exhausted, happy or sad; he simply is. The world ceases to exist, time ceases to exist, and he ceases to be Fëanáro: he becomes one with his work, whatever that may be.

It is never something that he has consciously planned. Afterwards – well after the inspiration has passed, when he has recovered from the strain of it, reassured his worried family, caught up on his duties, and admired the creation he has unwittingly brought forth – he analyses the time leading to the moment when inspiration absorbed him. He can see, then, that it planted its seed early on, sometimes years in the past, prompting him to study the properties of light, to observe the Trees more closely than usual, to experiment with different compounds for no purpose except to understand their different properties; to read obscure books on message passing during the Great March or the mechanisms of ósanwë-centa in High Valarin. But only in retrospect do these things become recognisable as stepping-stones on the way to his greatest inventions.

It is not the same thing as the pleasant flow that sweeps him along his daily duties, when he teaches a gifted student or discusses philosophy with Nelyo, when he makes progress on the challenges he sets himself or on one of the more rewarding commissions he has been given, when he and Nerdanel tease and please each other. Granted, to outsiders, it may look similar. He appears ignorant to distractions, is intensely focused, and demonstrates a certain indifference to the passing of time that in his early days of teaching regularly had his apprentices speak up, timid but determined: “We have already missed supper and bedtime, Master, but may we please go and have breakfast now?”
But it is not the same thing. He chooses to ignore distractions, to focus fully on his work, to disregard the Mingling of the lights and the rumbling of his belly until his work has reached the point that he wants to reach. When he is in the grip of true inspiration, he has no choice. He is not aware of anything; he does not know what he is doing, nor to what purpose he is doing it, or when it will be finished.

It is not an experience he relishes. It is terrifying in the way it absorbs him with no thought to his safety or health or his dignity. It can last for days, and they tell him grim stories afterwards: how Nerdanel pleaded with him to stop working and take some sustenance, to deaf ears; how he brutally pushed Curufinwë aside when the youth tried to keep him from touching molten glass with his bare hands; how they found him passed out on the bare floor of the forge, too weak to crawl to bed after a week's exertions. It is greedy, overpowering and dangerous.
It is frustrating, for when inspiration takes over and erases all conscious thought, it also erases his working memory. He cannot afterwards say just how he created these marvels: the Silmarils, the Palantíri. He refuses to admit it – he says that their making is a secret that he will not share with anyone - but the humiliating truth is that he could not share it if he wanted to. It is locked even from himself. More humiliating yet is the nagging feeling that, since he is not in control during these spells, since he is unaware of the process and can neither begin nor interrupt it of his own volition, that these astounding achievements are, somehow, not properly his; that he is in fact nothing more than a tool, however useful, in their creation.

Nelyo, the practical philosopher, proposes that it must be a great honour for a hammer to be worthy of the forge of Fëanáro, where only the best tools are used; and similarly, to qualify even just as a tool for such magnificent inventions would be the highest of honours. Fëanáro tries to internalise that thought, but it still irks him that any aspect of his work can be so wholly and mercilessly beyond his control.
He does not know what frightens him more: The thought that it might not happen ever again, that his potential for great deeds is all used up; or the suspicion that it will happen again, and that one day it will prove too strong for him. One day, it may wring every last spark of life from him, consuming him in one final, relentless surge of grandeur, in the same way that his mother's strength was burned up in the effort of giving him life.
When that happens, he can only hope that it will be worth it.