Chapter Text
Celebrimbor felt very at home in Father Christmas’ workshop. It didn’t take long until he got used to the daily rhythm of the workshop elves. A jingling bell woke him up in his room every morning, and he quickly washed himself and put on his red tunic and trousers as well as a red cap. He wore them proudly, his family colours. Then, he went to have breakfast with the other elves, red and green ones, and only when their bellies were full of porridge and nuts and fruit cake, it was time to enter the workshop for the day’s work.
Sometimes North Polar Bear joined them at breakfast, but as the autumn went on, he became increasingly sleepy and tended to sleep much later than the workshop elves did. He visited Celebrimbor in the workshop between his own duties, though, bringing him news from outside: the news of the local seal community, or the latest adventures of Polar Cubs. His tales were entertaining even though Celebrimbor hadn’t met any of these beings yet. The North Pole felt far from a desolate place.
The elves made toys in the workshop; toys for children living in foreign places Celebrimbor had never heard of. The parcels full of toys and other presents would be brought to the children at Christmas, when the magic of the giver of gifts would be strongest. Or so NPB had explained it to Celebrimbor. He looked forward to that midwinter day with a growing unease – he had already understood that Father Christmas was some kind of a Maia, and Celebrimbor wasn’t particularly interested in facing another giver of gifts in his full power.
Thankfully, there was the workshop where he could immerse himself in familiar things. A group of elves was building doll’s houses when Celebrimbor arrived, and at first, he joined them and helped them to assemble the parts. The empty houses made him melancholic, however, and one day he decided to find something else to do – perhaps something he could improve, too. He wandered among dolls and toy bears (some of them looked rather like NPB), among colourful balls, jumping ropes and pull toys, but nothing picked his interest until he came to the woodworking area of the workshop. The place smelled of sawdust and paint, and it was almost empty. Just one, sad-faced elf sat on the edge of a chair, holding a red wooden block in her hand.
“Oh, it is impossible!” she sighed as Celebrimbor came nearer.
“What is impossible?”
“To make these bricks interesting! Children don’t seem to like them very much; some of them have even written to Father Christmas that they find them dull, and customer opinions are very important to FC. He may discontinue this line altogether, and I don’t want to go back sewing clothes for dolls! But there’s only so much you can do with bricks.”
Celebrimbor’s curiosity was awakened, and he extended his hand. A small wooden cube, painted red, was placed on his palm. He weighted it in his hand; there was nothing special about it, but he instantly liked the shape of the object. There was nothing in it that would remind him of the rings, nothing round and menacing, and he knew that he could work with these wooden blocks.
“I have an idea. We need more of them,” he announced, and was delighted to see the eyes of the sad elf visibly brighten as if she were one of the Mírdain.
From that day on, Celebrimbor spent most of his time working with wooden blocks. More and more elves, mostly those with a red cap like Celebrimbor, came to help him as word got round that there was something new happening in the woodworking department.
NPB visited more often now, for – although he never admitted it – he was curious to see Celebrimbor’s inventions. Celebrimbor felt his previous creativity coming back; Father Christmas’ workshop was a good place for that. His latest invention was the interlocking building blocks – he was very proud of the locking mechanism he had invented.
“I’m happy to be able to create again,” Celebrimbor confessed to NPB as he showed him the latest prototype of the wooden blocks one day.
“What stopped you earlier?” North Polar Bear asked, poking a tower Celebrimbor had built with his paw. The tower didn’t fall, thanks to little wooden studs on top of each small wooden block that fastened the bricks together.
A surge of panic swept through Celebrimbor, and a yellow brick he had been holding in his hand dropped on the floor.
“Someone hurt you, didn’t they?”
Celebrimbor forced himself back to the present. There was still so much to do in the manufacturing process – the bricks were just prototypes, prone to imperfection that made them useless – what was he thinking, he sounded almost like –!
“It was a long time ago,” he muttered uneasily. “I need a break. Could you take me somewhere else, NPB?”
“I thought you would never ask!” Polar Bear exclaimed. “I want you to meet my nephews. Let’s go!”