Title: What Life to Choose?
Disclaimer: All hail the great Tolkien, of whom I cannot compare to. This is a work of fanfiction.
Rating: PG
Summary: What every peredhel must choose. Written for the OAA prompt—Life.
What Life to Choose?
What life to choose?
What life is right?
-
A peredhel must make a choice—
Immortality,
Or mortality.
-
To be immortal is to live until the world ends,
To see the years of Arda pass,
To encounter many things,
To feel ageless, endless,
Eternal.
-
To be mortal is to live until you die,
To see only a few years,
To encounter fewer things,
To feel age, temporary
Finite.
-
What choice is the better one?
Which will give you the greater reward?
-
An immortal grows weary of life,
Life that he has lived for so long,
Wishing it may end.
-
But a mortal longs for eternal youth,
Life that is infinite,
Wishing it could go on.
-
Immortals never forget;
They remember everything a person has done,
Who helped them,
Who wronged them.
-
Mortals will always forget.
Once they die, they have no more memory,
And others will also soon forget them.
-
Eternity or ephemerality?
Unending days or numbered days?
-
Immortality or mortality?
-
Peredhel, man lîn?
Na Alfirin egor fireb?
The End
Translations:
Peredhel – half-elf
Man lîn? – What is your choice?
Na – to be
Alfirin – immortal
Egor – or
Fireb - mortal
