Disclaimer: The universe created by the Professor is majestic and vast, and the Halls of Mandos is only one small part of it.
Please note the rating. The second chapter contains ramblings on some of my weirder notions about the Halls of Mandos, etc.
Great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading, as always...
The Fabric of Space-time
A single red thread, suspended in mid-air. It was perfectly straight, stretching away into the shadows of the uncountable rows of pillars, its end lost in the distance. It was a love-thread.
Of course, red always was her favourite colour for love.
He stood gazing down, thoughtfully, at the fine strand of crimson. But just then, at that very moment, almost as if by design, something about it changed. For only the briefest span of time, there was an infinitesimal movement of space, a miniscule perturbation, and the thread suddenly sang out like a plucked string, vibrating under an unseen harper's hand. Ping. It was the sound of a heart skipping a beat. And he perceived a green glen far beyond these Halls, where two lovers stood face to face, trembling and expectant, their eyes mesmerized by each other, their fingers laced. They moved close for a first kiss. A sunbeam caught on the red ribbon in the girl's hair, and back here before his eyes, the thread, which was the exact same vermillion shade, flared to incandescent life, as if it was also struck by the sun. The swift golden flame ran rippling down the line, and vanished into infinity with a flash.
And somewhere far away, very faintly, he heard the echo of soft laughter.
At that half-imaginary sound, his heart, too, gave a leap and quickened, startling him momentarily. Even though he knew that he should not have been surprised at all, not after so many ages of this world. It was just that he had never become completely used to this.
The Lord of Mandos listened intently, though not with ears; he sought her presence, though not with eyes. Then as if coming to a decision, he turned quickly and began to walk past the vast stone columns, towards the shadowy interior of the Halls, following the thread's gossamer path, now silent and wine-dark once more. As he went on, an unaccustomed sensation of corporeal solidity settled upon him, and with it, the strange feeling of vulnerability. He caught himself indulging in the smooth coolness of the tessellated floor against his feet, keeping pace with the rising and falling tide-cycles of blood in his body. Light and darkness flashed past him, alternating in fitful sequence. Not that he needed light to see.
This place, these ever-expanding Halls--he could feel her here, so much of her. As familiar as his own consciousness, as strange as the myriad dreams of the Eruhíni. In all the creases and manifolds, all the nooks and crannies of curved space, and in the steady trickling flow of time's sands. In the walls and in the air. Reverberating among the carved beams, winding with the countless passages and hallways. In him. And in all the tapestries.
The thread was no longer linear-taut, but an arc now. Then it began to twist and spin, to bend in new directions and loop back on itself. A cusp was reached: a point of ramification. Its hue lightened, changing from blood to snow, and one strand of silk became two, then four, then eight. As if passed through a crystal, the gleaming whiteness split instantaneously into a full rainbow spectrum. The lattice of colours led in every direction and every dimension; it glimmered, shifted, and melted into the vast tapestries which surrounded him on all sides.
The tapestries. Even he could not encompass in one glance their immensity, nor enumerate their endless and heart-rending variety. Extending from the distant vault all the way down to the abyss, the woven figures seemed to permute and mingle each moment in movements of indescribable complexity. And behind the tapestries were more tapestries, as dense and numerous as leaves in a great forest; they fluttered gently to his footfall like living things. This glint of mithril before him was a lofty and desolate mountain range, many thousand leagues east of Rhûn, shining beneath a newly-risen full moon. A splash of blue: dolphins frolicking above peaks that once had encircled Gondolin. There were in them wild-maned horses on the steppe at dawn, sea-birds before a roaring storm, and small children playing in the snow. A flash of swords, and blood spilled across many a field, of grass, of wheat, of sand. There were in them the proud symmetries of stony towers and the mirror-brightness of icy lakes; there were lions, letters, butterflies, bones, atoms, singers and songs. And there to the left, a pink smear--that was the fall of a single petal from the branch, whirling a slow spiral in the breeze. It settled against a blade of grass.
As always, he reflected, she was effortlessly intrinsic and integral to this universe--for Mandos was, in essence, a universe of its own--which he merely inhabited. In every pattern, every knot, every parabola and lemniscate of cotton and silk, she was there. Everywhere he turned, she was calling him on, brushing against him, enfolding him in all the teeming dimensions, at once amused and tender. Of her physical presence there was no sign.
She was teasing him for a game of hide-and-seek.
Although he had never been one for games, there appeared on his face the barest trace of a smile. This was--not uncharacteristic of her. Carefully and without a sound, he slipped through the shimmering matrix. After all, here she had the entire world in which to hide. She hid so that he would find. And he needed to find her. All of a sudden, this need, an irrational and all-compelling urge took him and suffused him completely, coming from some place so deeply within that even he could not understand. Find her. Find her not only in the music of her spirit and the hints of her art, but in form and matter and the stuff of Arda. Find her in flesh and blood.
"Vairë?" he called out. Vairë? I can feel you now, in the soft rustling of fabric and in the silence. All the passages of the labyrinth, all the connected halls...I am becoming lost in you. Hide no more, Vairë, spinner of mysteries, my beloved...
He stopped.
There. Right there. Above and a little to the side.
Among the millions of intermingled threads overhead, one was unstill, quivering like a tiny star beyond innumerable black lightyears. Another red thread. Another glint of gold. Her favourite colour, after all.
Reaching out with one hand, he took hold of the sliver of light between his fingers, and gave it a slight tug. It was warm to the touch, and a loose end. And very gingerly, he began to pull, almost with a fear that all of Arda would unravel with a single false move, gathering in the bright fibre, winding it about his palm, once, twice, counting, rhythmically.
Have I found you, my lady?
Another thread joined the one in his hand. Scarlet and gold converged, like the delicate roots of an ancient tree, or a filigree of capillaries merging to arteries and veins. Now he was holding a thick braid, a brimming handful of fire.
Vairë?
She laughed again, but this time the sound was close by, bell-clear and full of joy. Moving rapidly, he lifted a corner of the nearest tapestry (lined with grey clouds, silver-fringed with rain) and pushed it aside. Vairë stood right there behind the tapestry; the spindle in her hand shone like a glorious torch. Her other hand was raised high, putting the finishing touches on a blazing meadow of wild poppies and roses. She turned to look at him, and smiled.
"Are not the colours and scenes of Arda lovely indeed, my lord?"
"Your representations of Arda distil and transform it, my lady," he replied after a pause, voice low, eyes fixed intently upon her. "They are one with reality, yet I find them more beautiful."
The playful smile faded from Vairë's lips as she met Námo's eyes, which were like a midnight without the moon. Anyone else gazing into them would have seen only his own reflection, but she had always caught the most subtle of ripples in these deep wells. Although even she did not have the art to depict them.
"You are always far too serious, my lord," she murmured.
He came up close to her, still clutching the river of blood. There was something abrupt and precarious in his chest, something that he would have called, in honesty, an ache. What was this incompleteness? What was this weakness he felt? Love? There was love, yet love was something he could understand. He was in Eä because of love. But desire, body for body, limb for limb: that was different, inexplicable, though he had seen so much of it. Desire caught him off guard every time.
"I am always far too much like the souls in my keeping," he replied. "Losing my detachment, caught up in rights and wrongs, joys and pains...Foolish, is it not?"
She shook her head, her composure slipping. Almost imperceptibly, the tapestries beside them were beginning to flicker and tremble as if with a breeze out of nowhere.
"Not at all."
Lifting her face, she parted her lips slightly, and met his kisses. His arms came around and closed about her, and she could feel the pressure of his hand against the back of her neck, sensitive fingers running through her hair, exploring. Now liquid thoughts caressed the edge of her spirit, lingered, glided on with wordless whispers. Resisting all her urges, she pulled back a little instead, raising one hand to run the tip of a finger teasingly along the side of his face, barely making contact, tracing the angle of his jaw and up to his ear, feeling the tremors of electricity between her skin and his. The tendrils of her mind reached forth to wreath and entwine with his, and she heard him draw in a sharp breath.
This shape, his shape, muscles and bones, like unto those of the Children: so simple and tangible, and so strong--
All the tapestries were billowing about them now, as far as thoughts could see, a rising wind in the forest--
She let go. The spindle of thread dropped from her hand, but it never hit the ground. The universe changed beneath them, and they fell.
After immeasurable distances, a soft tangle of cotton. They landed together in a luminous pile of half-finished worldsheets, lips burning against each other, tongues duelling. Throwing her head back with a gasp, Vairë pushed her own body forward against his. The palms of her hands rubbed hungrily along the sides of his torso, down to his hips and then forward, insistently inciting, until he groaned with uncontrolled pleasure at the strange and maddening sensation of the physical touch. A weaver's hands, an artist's hands...
He was not sure if it was he or she or the orientation of the world itself that shifted, but suddenly she was atop of him, eyes closed but still watching him intently, the way she had always watched him intently even before time itself, before she had eyes. The heat of her embrace enveloped him, setting form and spirit ablaze. All around them, the air of Mandos surged like the breakers of the sea, a silken swirl of space-time.
"Would we not disturb your handiwork, my lady?" he whispered huskily against the heavy cloud of her hair, darker and more vivid than any cloud ever seen in the sky. A probability cloud. An improbability cloud.
"Quantum effects compensate, my lord...patterns arise, even in pure chaos...all possibilities..."
Her voice trailed off, submerged in a fresh wave of kisses and tender cries. Then she opened her eyes, the light in them mischievous and innocent at once, and with one blink he was naked in his body, taut skin and sinews freed from textile constraints. The corners of Vairë's lips curled into a radiant grin.
An easy fluid movement of muscled arms, and she was lying back against the shimmering fabric again. The midnight clouds parted, and she was staring into Námo's half-quizzical, half-amused eyes.
"Much too impatient, my lady..."
Catching a breath, he began to unlace the top of her dress, very carefully, very deliberately, tugging it open to reveal the pale glow beneath, while his mouth slipped down to explore the little concavity just above her collarbone, sensing her shivers against his lips. Gradually, he continued to the rose-tipped curvature of her breasts, the narrow valley between them, the perfect hidden arches below them. He could hear the wild pounding of her heart, though she had already forgotten to breathe, and he had to fight to keep his passion in check, to remain yet on the tantalizing side of the limit. Slowly, slowly, downwards. The flawless surface of snow, now turning to flames--then the heat of her limbs shuddering in delight, then the nimbus'd vertex.
One last quick flick, and the dress disappeared into the shadows, so that she was clad only in the white raiment of her skin. With a low moan, Vairë pulled him up hard against her again.
This shape, this beauty, so like unto those of the children. Fiercely he claimed her mouth once more. Keep it?
She nodded tremulously.
Keep it.
Centre to centre, flesh to flesh. A part of this had always been, even before the Beginning, in the powerful constant chords of his voice and the intricate soaring dreams of hers. Yet the union itself was never imagined in the Music, and it was richer with knowledge and existence, with wonder and grief and endless ages. For though the body was finite and the spirit unbounded, it was the joyous joined movements of their bodies that drove them on, tumultuous, ever nearer to utter rapture, ever rising and mingling. And then, in a flash, the boundaries between Being and Being dissolved, and they were one single thought, continuous and whole.
Had there been another pair of eyes in this part of the Halls, they would have seen only a conflagration, and a many-splendoured storm in the emptiness.
Q. E. D.