Chapter 2
What I saw
Six days later, I set forward to Umbar.
Standing on the deck of my own ship, hearing the shrill cries of seagulls drifting on the waves, I was looking forward to my future that awaited me in the Great Lands.
Aspiring to immortality, I abandoned all what had bound me with my former life- I left my house, my lands and my wife there, in Numenor. I disowned my name and my noble origin for what origin, wealth or anything else, has any importance in the face of death?
And I was afraid of death, indeed, I didn't want to die.
I was fleeing from my fate, and from this magnificent stone tomb, dark and dry, where my lifeless body would slowly have been turning into dust for years. There, I would be lying among gold and silver and gems… but it will not matter for me anymore. There, grave worms would be my only companions.
I will be dead, sooner or later. I am still young, according to the Numenorean standards… but for what person does the coming of old age turn out to be unexpected?
People used to tell me that they saw a shadow of the sense of doom in my gray eyes, even since childhood. I didn't fear night rustles under my bed in the dark room, but I was afraid of coming nigh to the sea, for I feared that transparent cold waters could close above my head… for I had seen men who drowned, I remember well their swollen blue corpses, empty goggled eyes staring at void, gray seaweeds in their tangled hair, the stench of rotten flesh already eaten by voracious sea beasts …
No, I didn't want to die.
For I saw my mother dying when I was ten. She was poisoned by one of my step-fathers secret concubines. I still never forget her face, slowly turning green, and distorted by excruciating pain… and tightly clenched by convulsion fists. And her desperate cries becoming lower and lower, turning into a faint moaning before they ceased forever…
I, indeed, didn't want to die.
For I saw valiant warriors writhing with searing pain, choking in their own blood, peering at the bottomless blue sky that is so beautiful, so ruthless in its beauty, trying to inhale for the last time in their life… and washing with their gushing blood the green grass that is so soft and thick, where they had laid with their graceful merry maidens without any thought of death…
And clinging, clinging to life, to their unbearable pain- this straw in the ocean of non-existence, only not to fall into the abyss from which no return can be possible…
While they were dying in anguish life went on…
The grass becomes thicker, sun is smiling from above… but they will see it no more…
And this they call the Gift of Men…
The Numenorean shook his head, trying to drive away his dismal thoughts. A gentle breeze was playing merrily with his soft black hair. His gray eyes narrowed for the surface of the sea was glaring pitiless.
There in Endor, there is a land they say, is a land of shadow. A dwelling of hideous wicked beasts marred by evil, a realm of torture and cruelty. So they say.
Well… But I'd rather say, that there I throw down this bondage of mortality… and there I will enjoy every day of my existence, without counting them.
There I could forget, that all in this world comes one day to its end…