So, I have taken on the one hundred Drabble challenge issues by NirCele! By her permission, many of these will be one-shots instead of just a 500 word Drabble, because I like writing emotion and angst as well as humor. ;) No race or time will be excluded from this series, so be prepared to learn something new!

So, let's wander through the halls of Mandos and let me be your guide as we explore and see the many tapestries that depict scenes from the history of Eä. I hope that I may make you both laugh and cry, as we learn new things and rediscover old friends in our wanderings...

#001 Fire

Reminiscent of Perilous Fire

He was wandering through endless darkness, where space and time did not exist. Where there was nothing but a vast emptiness, filled with regret and pain. He could have sworn that something gashed teeth at him, watched him, reached out for him with black, burnt fingers to drag him farther into the darkness-

A voice called out. Filled with desperation and a plea not to leave it alone. It tugged at him, begging him to come back and make things right that were terribly wrong. Something that only he could make right. And slowly, the darkness began to recede.

"Faramir! Faramir!"

His eyes slowly opened, the world swimming into hazy view to see a fog of orange clouding his vision, licking at the edges of his consciousness. Heat smacked him rudely awake as he forced his sluggish mind to focus. There was someone calling him...

A pale, pasty face looked at him with a horror-stricken expression, one framed with dark hair that seemed vaguely familiar to him. A face surrounded by burning, judgmental flames that tortured him, forced him to wake up, be better, do things right, be more like his brother-

"Faramir?"

The whisper somehow reached his ears despite the crackling that surrounded him, and the long-forgotten care in it made him smile faintly and unconsciously, reminiscent of better times when he was very much loved and cherished. It sounded so good, so familiar, and made his smile dreamy.

A pain-filled scream filled his ears, both of mental and physical pain, and a figure robed in living flame disappeared from his vision as did the rest of the world.

"And so passes Denethor son of Ecthelion, sixteenth steward of Gondor."

Faramir started up from his desk, breathing heavily and sweating as he gulped the cool air coming in through the window. His hand shot out in terror at the sight of a candle, and he winced as his hand smarted from the sound, fleshly smack against the metal candlestick. It tipped over the side of the desk, falling on the stone floor and burning for a moment before petering out.

He looked down at his hand where a bruise had formed, black and purple and red.

"I know what it's like." He turned to see the famous golden-haired Balrog-slayer of legend looking at him from where he sat by the window. Faramir nodded jerkily, swallowing heavily.

"Yes, I know what it's like, the feeling of it wreathing you in a passionate embrace of death, smothering you, unconscious of the destructiveness of its love." Glorfindel murmured, his hair glowing like a halo in the moonlight that streamed in ribbons through the window. "A burning candle... Mortal flame that goes out in a final burst of light, as though defying fate..."

"But the moment it goes out, how much darker the shadows seem." Faramir murmured.

"Indeed."

The two sat in the darkness, breathing it in together. There were no words needed to be said. They know. Perilous Fire.

A/N: Exactly 500 words, take that! Ah ha! But anyways, this was fun to write. Please tell me what you think!