Step Into Starlight by StarSpray

Chapter 1

The Halls of Mandos were a strange place. They were not dark, but there were no lamps, nor windows. There were many spirits found there, but it was not crowded. Many flitted through and away, hardly stopping to linger at all—these were the spirits of Men, called away in death to someplace Beyond.

Eluréd and Elurín found this curious, but only in a distant sort of way. Mandos was not a place for curiosity, or for change, or for growth—but for rest, for healing, and contemplation of past deeds. It was hard to tell time, except by the tapestries that lined the walls, the only source of color in the halls and all the more beautiful for it. It was a good place, for those whose spirits were in dire need of rest.

Six-year-old boys, however, were not restful, whether they were children of Elves or Men. And there were very few deeds that Eluréd and Elurín could contemplate there in Mandos. Their short lives had been happy ones, and if teasing their baby sister or refusing to eat part of their supper was naughty, it was not wicked. And there was little that distressed them about their death after a time. But still Námo kept them in the halls, unable to follow the Men as their grandparents had done, or to return to Elven life.

At last, Námo himself came to them. Their sister was grown up, he told them, and had come to Valinor with her husband. There were other important things they had done, but most important for Eluréd and Elurín was that the Halfelven—they, their sister, and their father—were now to be given a Choice. They could choose to die and pass out of the Circles of the World, as mortals did, as Lúthien alone of the Eldalië had done; or they could choose the life of the Eldar, like their mother, as Elwing had done, and her husband Eärendil, to live in Valinor for ever.

It was not a difficult choice. Eluréd and Elurín had been six years old for long decades: they wanted to see their mother.

 .

The door out of which Elves stepped into new life was a small one. It opened into a glade of grass and ferns and fragrant flowers. It swung open on silent hinges one quiet evening, when the sky in the west was purple and the sky in the east night-dark, and the stars burned bright overhead. A cricket hid in the grass and chirped. An owl swooped overhead on silent wings.

Eluréd and Elurín stepped outside hand in hand, blinking in the twilight. They were clad in unadorned, soft grey clothes; their hair was unbound, falling like shadows about their pale faces. The grass was soft and cool beneath their bare feet. For a few moments they stood in silence, just breathing, marveling at new lungs and new skin and new eyes, and a new world all around them ripe for exploration. In the shadows beneath the trees fireflies flickered, and pale moths fluttered. Somewhere in the distance, fair voices could be heard lifted in song.

A path wound through the glade and into the wood beyond, pale in the gloaming and lined with small white stones and shells. Elurín stooped to pluck a flower from the grass, a blossom of white Evermind that grew all about the walls of Mandos, with petals softer than satin.

Someone called their names from down the path, and out of the tree-shadows came a woman, dark haired, clad in white. Eluréd and Elurín ran to meet her, though they did not know who she was. Her face was familiar, though they had never seen it before. She stopped in the middle of the path and watched them running own it, hands pressed to her cheeks. "Hello, lady!" Eluréd said as they reached her. They skidded to a stop, nearly stumbling on feet that had never run before, and wobbled a little as they bowed. "Are you going to take us to our mother?"

"Oh," said the lady. "You don't recognize me." She knelt on the path in front of them. "Of course you wouldn't. We've switched places now. I am Elwing, your sister."

"Oh, but Elwing is a baby!" Elurín protested, before remembering that they had been a very long time in the halls, and remembering too the tapestries that had shown a little girl grown to a woman with a bright star in her hands, that she took with her into the sea and then across it.

"I've grown up," Elwing said, smiling, but with tears in her eyes.

"We haven't," Eluréd said.

"No, you can't, not in Mandos. And our mother and father are still there." She rose and held out her hands. "In the meantime you will live with me. I have a tower by the sea, near Alqualondë where our great-uncle Olwë lives."

"The sea!" they exclaimed, each seizing one of her hands. "Is it far? Will we walk all the way? What else is there to see?"

Their sister laughed; she sounded like their grandmother Lúthien when she did, and she looked like her too, when she smiled, and with the starlight glimmering in her eyes. "There are trees and forests and fields to see," she said, "and cities, and lords and ladies, and birds and beasts and Elves."

"I want to see everything!" Elurín announced.

"Are the cities like Menegroth?" Eluréd asked at the same time.

"No, not like Menegroth—you'll see everything you want and more, I promise. There is no hurry, here!" They walked together down the path, passing through wood and glade, beneath the stars and beneath the rising moon, away from the Halls of Waiting into lands undying.