A Different Kind Of Peace by Tyelca

Reunion in Mandos - Part I

Celebrimbor realizes he is dead and in Mandos.

When consciousness returned to Celebrimbor, he first became aware of a lightness in his limbs, almost as if he were floating. He was pleasantly warm and could feel his extremities again; they were blissfully free of pain. He had no desire to move or open his eyes and for a long time he simply basked in the feeling of existing. Eventually questions began to rise though, like where was he? What had happened to his numerous injuries? He remembered the sight of his own body with arrows sticking out of his flesh, and the thought occurred to him that he might be dead. This, in turn, would mean he resided currently in Mandos’ Halls as a disembodies fëa; Celebrimbor was not entirely certain he wanted to verify that thought and for the longest time he kept floating, trying to convince himself to open his eyes. Did he still have eyes?

It was this scientific aspect that pushed him to finally leave the bubble of warmth; from the moment he’d decided to explore Mandos he gradually became aware of his surroundings. The soft earth beneath his feet, the cool air like a soft breeze, the echoing sounds of a thousand voices. At the same time he noticed that he did not truly have the body parts necessary to sense these things, but somehow he did; Celebrimbor did not think about it too much. Being dead still came as some sort of shock, even though he’d expected and even welcomed his end, and in hindsight it was foolish to expect physical laws could be applied in Mandos.

Celebrimbor looked down upon his body that simultaneously was and was not there and saw he was clad in a dark robe with a blue sheen to it; it was and was not real in the same indescribable way as his body. The scars he’d gotten as Annatar’s captive were gone, but the callouses on his hands, gained during countless hours in the forge and in battle, were still there.

His surroundings were equally present-and-not, like a maze of glass; Celebrimbor felt he could see for miles and miles, but blurred walls blocked his way when he tried to move through them. He was currently in some sort of dead end, with only one way leading somewhere out. Following the path through the maze, Celebrimbor was unaware how much time passed, or if time passed at all. He didn’t grow tired or hungry and there were ever new crossings, intersections and corridors branching off. Celebrimbor’s keen mind noted that many of the halls overlapped others, but no ways were blocked. And during all that time he saw no one.

Were he still alive, such solitude would have put him on guard, but now he felt strangely calm inside. With measured strides he chose random ways in the maze, without seeing an exit. Then again, Celebrimbor wasn’t searching for one, and the moment he realized this, some of the transparent walls bled away to allow him straight passage. Celebrimbor followed the new route and it didn’t take all that long anymore for him to see a shape in the distance, then another, and then another. The closer he came, the more people he saw, mixing and mingling, but also gliding past each other as they were in their own private world, and there were even some who had retreated to private corners, as well as walked into corridors with high arches and fading from view when they turned out of sight. How that could be in an entirely open space was something Celebrimbor was unable to tell.