A/N: Another short chapter. Don't worry, they get longer from here. Writing from the perspective of a spirit with no sense of time or physical senses is hard. I tried my best.

History Will Be Kind To Me

The Road Goes Ever On

"Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see." - Helen Keller

02. The Halls of Mandos, 1344 Y.T.

They were strange beings, these Valar.

Their curiosity was like a living thing and their intangible touches pressed at her spirit with unrestrained wonder.

What are you?

Where did you come from?

How did you get here?

The whispers echoed in her mind, less like true voices and more like the feel of summer or the rush of waves smoothing stones. She could feel the Valar delve into her soul, feel them plucking at her memories like the strings of a harp, seeking to understand.

Whatever they were expecting, it certainly wasn't what they discovered.

Not possible

Could this be

And then a voice rang out like a sigh, The One is silent.

One by one, Lucy felt the fey murmurs go quiet. And then…

Come child.

The cool touch of the Keeper of Souls guided her through the stillness of his caverns. Inside she could feel the brush of other spirits at the edge of her senses.

At least, it seemed, she would not be alone.


Námo.

That's what the other souls whispered when he appeared. Ever at the back of her mind, Lucy could feel the Keeper of Souls. Watching. Waiting. Once she had called out his name. Like a curtain being drawn back, his presence had filled her senses, there before her and yet far away.

Why do you keep me here? She had asked.

Because you are not like the others.

And he was right. The other souls in the Halls were fey. The shape of their minds held memories of the shadowed places of forests, of starlight, and of the mirrored surface of a great lake. There was a strangeness to those souls, an unfathomable ancientness that Lucy could only guess at.

Is this Heaven? Though Lucy had never been raised to be religious, it seemed a fair enough question, all things considered. She had felt Námo reach into her mind as if peering at her thoughts to glean some mystery. There was a beat, a moment of contemplation, and then…

No.

Of course this had only left her with more questions than answers. If not Heaven then what was this place? It seemed too quiet and too peaceful for her to consider it Hell. Had the Abrahamic religions had it wrong then? Could this be one of the other myriad afterlifes spoken of throughout history? Whatever the case, Námo was silent on the matter.

She had no idea how long she spent in that place. There was no sense of time in the endless darkness of the Halls. The other souls seemed as ignorant as she and thus they proved to be of little help in that regard. There were strangely fewer of them than she would have thought though. Wouldn't the afterlife be overflowing with the dead? How many billions of people had died since the dawn of time? Whatever the number, the Halls of Mandos proved to be significantly less crowded than Lucy would've first assumed.

After a while, Lucy found herself seeking some of those souls out. Some preferred solitude, as she soon learned, the flickering of their spirits dimmed and introspective. , but others proved to be as curious to meet her as she was in return. They would whisper to her in their fey tongue, their spirits flaring against her own inquisitively, and she would whisper back in kind. At first Lucy found conversation difficult as her own native language clashed with their's but when all else failed she found herself able to turn to the much simpler language of memory and emotion. She would share with them the joy of swinging on a swing-set and they would share the mesmerizing awe of awakening to glimpse the stars for the first time. It was a crude and yet very intimate way to converse, but it helped Lucy to have a better understanding of the strange souls around her.

Time passed.

And then…

Námo came to her, pulling her into his ethereal embrace and murmured, It is time for you to leave this place. And then the other Valar were there, brushing whisper-soft against her mind, though their presence was unmistakeable.

It is time for you to live.

To live.

To live!

The voices of the Valar chorused in her mind, one after the other. With delicate care, Lucy felt herself pulled towards…something. She realized with a queer jolt that she was no longer in the Halls. She could not see where she was. She could not hear or smell or taste…

Lucy sucked in a breath…and opened her eyes.


A/N: And now the fun really begins. Next stop, the Gardens of Lórien.

Chapter Timeframe: Winter, 1344 Y.T. - Fall, 1345 Y.T.

Today in "Middle Earthean History, Culture, and Geography Notes AKA Stuff I Feel Like Talking About":

- Y.T. stands for the Years of the Trees.

- Námo is the original name for Mandos (which is really just the name of his Halls). Like Hades of the Underworld in Greek Mythology, Námo ended up being known by the name of the place he ruled over.

- Many of the souls Lucy encounters in the Halls of Mandos are those that awoke on the shores of Cuiviénen but were slain by Melkor and his ilk.