The Carriage held but just Ourselves by StarSpray

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

- Emily Dickinson

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When Elu Thingol was slain in his treasury, the forest outside erupted in a sudden storm, of gale-winds and driving rain, and the land itself shook with Melian's anguish, as she raced to his side. In the distance she was faintly aware of a party of dwarves moving fast through the caves, and then through the wood, but her thoughts were only for Elu, lying in a slowly-spreading pool of blood. It matted dark and sticky in his beautiful silver hair, and was smeared across his robes, the floor, spattered on the walls and on the treasures scattered about during the struggle.

He was still alive, but not for long. Melian wept as she knelt beside him, taking his head into her lap and clasping his hand to her breast, over her own heart that had beat for so long in time to his. It was too late to call for help; it was too late for even her most powerful songs to save him. Her tears fell like raindrops onto Elu's face, leaving pale tracks through the smear of blood on his cheek. "Melian…" he whispered. There was blood on his lips, staining them too-bright red, like the threads she used to weave poppies into her tapestries.

She had known that Doom was coming to Doriath, had tried to warn him, but she had not thought that it would come like this, a crashing discordant note in the song of their lives—a song that should not have had an ending. "Oh Elu, Elu," she cried, as the Light in his eyes dimmed, and his spirit departed his body with one last sigh.

It was as though something had been torn out of her with a violence she had until that moment been unable to comprehend. Melian wailed her grief to the unyielding stone, as outside a storm raged.

The Halls of Mandos were quiet, the only sound a susurration of whispers from the spirits of Men and Elves as they passed through or waited patiently (or impatiently) to leave again. The Men were easy to spot, often moving swiftly as the Elves lingered, going no one knew where. The Elves were both bright and dim, and their whispers were often mournful as they bade the younger Children farewell.

Lúthien and Beren passed through the ghostly throngs hand in hand. They did not linger, except to say a few final farewells—to her father, whose embrace was warm with love and grief and regret, and Felagund who shimmered in the twilight of Mandos like starlight on calm water, and others who they had known in life across the Sea.

Then they passed down a long corridor, with floor and walls of pearl that shimmered in the soft light, to an archway with no gates or doors to bar it. What lay beyond no one knew, but through it they glimpsed unfamiliar stars, and heard the faintest strains of music, sweet and solemn and more beautiful than any music they had heard in their lives.

Beren's spirit beside her flared with anticipation, brighter than the Silmaril had ever been. Lúthien laughed out loud, and together they sped down the corridor without looking back, and alone of all the Eldalië Lúthien Tinúviel passed through the archway, and out of the Circles of the World.

It took less than a second to make her Choice. Life, always always she would choose life. The terror of the destruction of Menegroth, the sacking of Sirion, had not left her. Death was violence and blood and swords; it was fire and terror in the night and water rushing burning cold into her lungs. When Elwing had jumped from the cliffs into the sea she had expected to die, but she had not welcomed it. She just had not seen another way out.

Now she stood on the cool green grass beneath the sun in Valinor, in Elvenhome where the Enemy no longer had a hold, breathing the sweet fragrances of flowers and hearing the bells in Valmar in the distance, and farther away yet the calls of eagles circling over the mountains. Eärendil stood beside her, warm and solid and alive. They had lost so much—their parents, her brothers, their sons—but they were together and they were alive, and so there was still hope. There was always hope in life, where Elwing had never been able to find any in death.

Out of a nearby cluster of bushes a lark sang out, and took off in flight, its yellow breast flashing for a moment before it disappeared into the woods beyond the path that wound down through the flowered hills from the Ring of Doom to Valmar proper. Eärendil took her hand, and they made their way down it, to see what life in this new and strange land had in store.

The tradition was to find somewhere quiet, somewhere peaceful, often secluded, when one's time came. It had not begun with Tindómiel's father, but he had embraced it, for it came from the tales of Beren and Lúthien, who had disappeared into the wood one day, and whose graves had never been discovered, except perhaps by Ulmo or his servants after the sinking of Beleriand.

Tindómiel had been thinking of her great-grandparents often lately, as she put her affairs in order. Now as afternoon drifted into evening, and the starts started to appear one by one in the darkening sky, she thought of her grandparents. She was glad, she thought, that she had been spared the Choice of the Halfelven. It was better to know what awaited you from the start, than to have that hanging over your head.

She rose from her seat by the window and went out into the small garden that had been her mother's pride and joy; upon her death Tindómiel had taken up its care. There were roses climbing the walls, red and white and pink, niphredil growing wild and unchecked along the pathways, and purple lilacs (her mother's favorite) perfuming the air around the small fountain where a statue of Nessa danced—there had been a rumor once that it was a gift from Nerdanel herself, but Tindómiel remembered watching her father carve it with his own hands, while her mother posed as his model.

Tindómiel took a turn around the garden in the starlight, and remained there, sitting and thinking and simply being, until the eastern sky began to lighten with the coming dawn. Her grandfather and namesake glimmered on the horizon, as he had the morning she was born. Then she went back up to her bed, and lay down, and with a sigh, closed her eyes one last time.

When Arwen returned from Cerin Amroth with the Ring of Barahir on a chain around her neck, her grandmother smiled, but with sadness behind her eyes, and something that might have been pity. Her grandfather embraced her as though she were suddenly something fragile that he was afraid to break.

Arwen had seen death before—the Dúnedain chieftains had long come to spend the last of their years in Rivendell, and they often slipped away in the quiet hours of the night, going to sleep and never waking. It was a peaceful thing, she had always thought, though sad for those left behind. She did not understand why her grandmother looked at her the way she did. The bitterness of the Choice of Lúthien, she thought, was in parting forever from her father, and her grandparents, and her brothers if they did not choose as she did, and in never seeing her mother again.

It was not until she was left alone, and could feel at last mortality creeping into her bones that she understood at last the fear that had driven the Númenóreans to their fall. She was not weary of the world, but she was being called away anyway.

Lúthien had laughed, and Tindómiel sighed. Arwen lay down on the green grass of Cerin Amroth and wept.