Amid Varda's Halls by Scribe of Mirrormere

Amid Varda's Halls

The underbelly of the dome stretched high above, causing her neck to click as she took in its full splendor. Its stayed her attention for but a moment before her head spun around to absorb every corner of the long white marbled hall. There were others like her and her mother, they heads bowed, but she knew she could not remain as still as them.

To the middle dais her mother led her by the hand where the voices of prayers carried about them as sweetly as did the pleasant-scented incense.

“Is this where you spend your days, Ammë?” she asked, for she knew the temples were a sure place one would ever find Anairë her mother when looking for her. Even her father would say, “I am going to the temple,” and she would know it meant he was going to seek her.  

Anairë’s warm smile was her only response. She waved her hand above her daughter’s head, and the dome suddenly appeared to give away, and above and around them they were swallowed by the wide heavens, dark save for the twinkling stars.

“Look to the stars, for it is from they we are made, Írissë my dearest,” Anairë said.

“But I see the stars by light of the silver tree every time!” Írissë argued. “I could be battling my father to claim his crown, and you want me to see a star?”

“Your father is too busy with other matters to defend his throne from you today. Look again to the stars, and look deeper. Allow your heart to open to the skies, for you were once them.”

Curious as to what her mother meant, Írissë looked again, and tried her mightiest to focus as she had been instructed in her battle training, taking in a deep breath. And then, aided by the scent of the burning incense and the chanting of the elves in prayer, amid Varda’s Halls Írissë felt the rapture of all of Eä’s true magnificence then blaze inside her.

The earth fell away below her, her mother fused with the very stars which now because Írissë’s sole reality. The fire which burned in them burned in her, and for a moment she thought she heard of the fabled Song as close to her as the blood rushing through her veins. She tilted her head back and felt herself fly past the stars, beholding Eä as the Ainur themselves had long before a single speck of dust of Arda had been conceived. A light which wrapped around her, she suddenly realized, was her, as she was too a brightness in the dark skies. She charged deeper past more rows of stars so she may behold their beauty with her hungry eyes and clutch them in her hands, but when she exhaled she was back standing on the dais, and all else returned as how it had been.  

“Did the beauty of the stars bring peace upon you?” Anairë asked. “You suddenly seem quiet, Írissë.”

“I did, and I wish to dance among them again, and to touch them.”

Her eyebrows raised, Anairë asked, “You walked among the stars?”

Írissë nodded. She worried she may have uttered something sinful, but her mother smiled all the more.

“We are of the stars. If one passes in life here, they return to the skies to be among their kin again. That was the teaching of my mother to me before we took the journey. I am not of the Ñoldor, Írissë, though my people and your father’s had once been one, the Tatyar, before we were sundered. To all elves the stars are precious, but to my people they are also family and reminder of the greater world beyond us. They are both our birthplace and our grave.”

Írissë nodded again in silence. She peered down at her dress, woven in the blues of her father’s house, and found herself vowing to only don the colors of starlight forevermore. Her mind raced with the thought of taking a journey through all of Valinor and over to the land she only knew in stories, and above all else, to one day explore the stars themselves, for one step among them awoke a wanderlust far too great in her already restless spirit.