1There is a mountain in northern Mirkwood that has been standing since the beginning of time. While once its peak spilled fumes of steam and ash, now the mountain is quiet. It is rugged and tough, a lone island in a sea of trees. There is a stair leading up its side, small and winding and steep, carved into the stone many years ago. It is called the Watching Stair. The steps are adorned with eyes, hundreds of thousands of pairs of eyes, hewn into the cold, hard rock. They stare at the few travelers of the path, threatening and perilous, a warning to all who wander unaware. They are the eyes of the dead, carved by those who knew them well in life.
At the top of the mountain there is a sacred basin known as Annon, the Gate, and there the carved eyes stop. No stone orbs peer into the silent glade within, for there can be no witnesses but the moon and the stars and the eyes of the Valar.
For there, in the night, death dances.
The steep walls are carved with trees and flowers and woodland animals, but not a single eye is to be seen. The animals turn their faces and avert their gazes in respect for the dead, creeping within the stone trees with blindfolds of leaves and bark. Never do they remove them. For this is the place where elves are sent to Mandos, and here the lost souls of sinners and spies and criminals come to play, dancing under the twilight sky. And yet, in the times of Anor's reign, the living also come. The Silvan elves of the wood burn their deceased in the carved tomb of the mountain's solitary eye, laying the abandoned bodies on a stone table in the center of the clearing and setting a fire to the place that safeguards the road to the Houses of the Dead, for they believe that the body must be destroyed for the soul to truly be free. The elves do not watch, they do not see, but they know, for once again the mountain smokes as if in life.
The Silvan elves believe that life must come from death, and so after the fire has burned down and the fëa has fled away, the Spirit Hunters return to the mountain and collect the ash of their kin. They put it into their open palms and stand at the very edge of the mountain, chanting prayers to Elbereth and Oromë, letting the breath of Manwë pick up the small offerings and carry them into the trees, fertilizing the ground with the life of the deceased.
When first the Sindar came over the mountains into Rhovanion, they were ignorant of the power of the mountain. Only when their forces retreated to its walls did they find the Gate and were educated of its importance by the watchful Tawarwaith.
After that time, it was used as it had been for years uncountable, ferrying the dead to safety, until one day King Thranduil lost his wife, and for the first time, one of the living ventured into Annon at night. Stricken with grief, the king climbed the Watching Stair at dusk and laid himself upon the stone table, for he could feel the presence of his lost love, and he took comfort in the residual warmth of her soul. As the stars began to show their tiny silver faces, so did other things. The Lost appeared, argent and shimmering, beautiful in death. And as the light of Arien's vessel faded, so the light of the Lost grew in strength. And then Eretel stepped forward and reached out a hand to her husband, and he took it, and she led him into the Realm of Spirits, and his body was left behind, cold and lifeless upon the sacred table.
All night did they dance, frolicking around a funeral pyre of freezing blue flames, and the carved animals appeared to move, shrinking away from the light of the spirits and their cold fires. When dawn came and the stars began to fade, Eretel lead Thranduil back to the stone table, and after a soft kiss, she pressed his freed soul back into his waiting body and faded away. The king breathed again, his heart began to beat anew, and he stood up and walked down the mountain to return to his duties.
He came often again to Annon, dancing with death, for there he could be with those who had chosen to remain in Middle-Earth as wanderers. It was a warm feeling, to see those who were dead, but it was also cold, for the nights spent felt like fleeting moments, the thrill and freedom of the Spirit Realm making the world of the living seem dull and constricting. Walking is not so easy when one has learned how to fly.
And though it brought him great sorrow, the King continued to visit the dead in secret, stealing away in the night to fly with those who are lost.