Note: I know that nobody's reading this anymore, but... I dunno. There is a strange irresistibility to the site, something that keeps me posting even when my readers have deserted me... Just as well, though, because things get a little odd after this, which I think I mentioned, and when I told the story to my friend she laughed and said I'd killed her soul. So, I suppose you read at your own risk. But you should review anyhow. Or something. I'm done now.
I noticed a change in the Dead City's population during the century or more that I spent there - gradually the mute, shuffling orcs began to be joined - even replaced - by their raucous, sneering counterparts from neighbouring Mordor. At any given time there were only two dozens or so, but their small presence was strongly felt - and heard, and smelled, alas - in that green mausoleum. 'Living' orcs, I called them; the silent ones seemed walking corpses next to these their obnoxious, belligerent, foul-mouthed counterparts.
And now let me confess that I rejoiced at the Living orcs' arrival more than I would have at anything else save perhaps my freedom. The reader may stare aghast and incredulous at such words from the hand of a wood-elf, but surely he must by now understand at least a little my state of mind. You who have not lived five decades cannot so much as imagine what ten can do. After countless years of soundless lethargy and isolation, a bunch of loud, rowdy, bad-tempered uruks felt as welcome to me as a company of elves might have been.
The newcomers treated me with derision at first, but also something else, almost- almost like fear. I suppose I must have looked frightful in those days - I walked hunched, Earnur's helmed skull under one arm, glaring menacingly from under heavy lids, and my skin became pale and my eyes strange and cold - but surely that could not have worried my misshapen companions. I imagine some rumour of that which was still to come for me and had already been for Sauron, which kept me live and safe in these dark places, reached their tattered ears, and made them wary of the whisper-voiced elf-maid with the head of a long-dead king always at her side. They may also have been impressed when I spoke to them in a dialect of Black Speech, though it was not their own; they taught me theirs also, that we need not converse always in the Common Speech. I hesitate to say that I made friends of these creatures ('friend' does not translate into any Orcish language); but I will not say I did not take pleasure in their company, mean-spirited as it was.
Many incidents which occurred during that time might be found amusing to the more thick-skinned or morbidly-inclined individual, but as none bear direct pertinence to my narrative I will describe none of them here. Suffice it to say that I passed the years becoming better acquainted with unsavory folk, and doubtless I absorbed more than a few of their habits before the order came that I was at last to leave Minas Morgul.
Alas, I could take no delight in the announcement, for horrid as the Tower of Sorcery was, it at least sat on the edge of Sauron's realm - now I was to be relocated to its very heart. My ultimate destination lay beyond even Orodruin, across the ashen wastes in the far corner of the Black Land - the Sea of Nurnen, on the shores of which I would be put to use tending crops. I will admit surprise upon first hearing that anything grew in that fell country, but nonetheless orcs and goblins too must eat, and the food has to come from somewhere. The journey... was horrific, and seemed endless, but I shan't go in to that either. The unpleasant things of Mordor ought to remain there, as I see it, and recalling and writing the events at its borders has already too much shaken my resolve in setting down this chronicle. Telling of Earnur's valour, and of his men's, was a duty I could not shirk, but nothing between the twisted caverns through the Mountains of Shadow that we followed to Cirith Ungol and the ghastly fields on the shores of that endless fuming lake needs to be elaborated on. All that need be mentioned in any detail may be summed up in two words: I escaped.
