elennalore

Day 2 of SWG 30-Day Character Study. My character is Mairon | Sauron | Annatar.

Today's prompt: Down Memory Lane, Part One. Think about your character’s childhood (or the early days of their existence if they had no childhood). What was the environment and daily life of their formative years like? Did they have siblings? What was their relationship to their family like? Who were their friends? What made them feel sad/angry/frightened? What made them feel content/excited/happy? Who were their teachers?
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As a Maia, Mairon was not born, but Eru made him of his thought before the creation of Arda together with other Ainur. It is not said that the Ainur had a childhood, but I imagine that Mairon had certain child-like traits in the beginning, and he developed like a child who later becomes a teenager and then a young adult during his early days of existence.

In the beginning, Mairon was a Maia of Aulë. I imagine that the Maiar choose the Vala that attracts them most, and Aulë, the master of all crafts who delights in works of skill [Valaquenta] was certainly an attractive master to someone like Mairon. Mairon lived in Aulë's Halls in Almaren, the first dwelling place of the Ainur in Middle-earth, and he worked in Aulë's forges and workshops and learned much both practical and theoretical knowledge from Aulë, whom I see both as a father-figure and a teacher to Mairon.

My headcanon is that the Valar name their Maiar, and thus, Mairon (The Admirable, Precious) is a name Aulë gave to him. For me, it tells about the affection and admiration Aulë had towards his most promising Maia. Later, when Mairon left him, it must have been a great shock to Aulë, and he must have felt betrayed.

Aulë's spouse is Yavanna, and I think she was also present during Mairon's early days, like a mother-figure, but perhaps even more as a teacher. Yavanna knew everything about growing things, mostly plants but also animals, and she was known to be a shape-shifter. I have the headcanon that Mairon learned his shape-shifting skills from Yavanna, and her knowledge about all living things together with Aulë's knowledge about the mineral realm gave Mairon a good background education about how Arda worked - and perhaps also gave him ideas how to perfect it.

Mairon had Maia-siblings, Maiar who lived with his master Aulë, and I think he knew some of Yavanna's Maiar as well. We know only a handful Maiar by name, but I suspect that Curumo (Saruman) and Aiwendil (Radagast) were sent to Middle-earth to oppose Sauron partially because they knew him from before: Curumo as Aulë's Maia, and Aiwendil as Yavanna's. I'm pretty sure that Mairon and Curumo never got along. Curumo may have envied Mairon who seemed to be "the golden boy" of Aulë's Halls. I think that Aiwendil didn't have such problems with him, and they might have even been friends at first - I can imagine them playing together, perhaps shapeshifting to various animals in Yavanna's gardens.

Outside Aulë's Halls, Eönwë was definitely Mairon's friend. When they meet in the aftermath of the War of Wrath, it's clearly a meeting of two people who once were friends. Mairon can change himself into winged creatures, so perhaps they enjoyed flying together over Almaren. Ilmarë might have sometimes joined them, too.

Mairon was never really sad, and seldom frightened, but he was easily frustrated and became often angry if things didn't go as he wanted. He was a perfectionist from an early age on, demanding a lot of himself - and of others as well. I think he was happiest when he managed to forget his perfectionist traits for a while, like when he shapeshifted into an animal, or concentrated in the process of creating instead of the end result (which never fully satisfied him, especially when he was young and still learning). His main teacher was Aulë, and he learned everything he could from him, but it was not enough, and Mairon, thirsty for knowledge, started (unconsciously at first) to look for another teacher. But that's a story for another day of this character study.