THE GREEN LANDS
Faramir wakes from a dream.

There were flowers among the green grass. Elven-flowers that I have not seen in waking life, for they grace not these shores. I call them by name. Larielosse the ever-white, lissuin of the sweetest honey, and pale lavaralda, whose colours are lost to mortal lore. Elanor, and nephredil, that grow not in the land of Gondor.

Immortal alfirin, that covers the grave of Elendil.

In my dreams, it covers all of Númenor.

To the west the hills, the emerald grass, the empty halls and idle shepherds; to the east the vast shipyards, glass lamps, and tall black masts. I climb on the steps to the hill where once Elros held the Scepter under a starry sky. But the King has forsaken Meneltarm and all the land is under shadow. There is a trilling in the air that sounds of an unearthly spring.

Fear and love flood my heart.

Suddenly the wave comes. Rising out of the mist in the West, a great, peering wave, taller than the mountains, blotting the sky. It falls like a wrathful hand. Over all the green lands and bright lamps it falls, swollen and mutinous. The sky is as impenetrable as shadow, indistinguishable from the Sea.

The wave pounds on the rocky shores. It swallows the panicked decks of Rómenna, and rolls from flat and heathered moors into the valley of the dead. It froths on the wheat fields like an animal. The ships are foundered and afire. Akallabêth! The Sea is a mouth. I am among the uprooted fir-woods in Hyarrostar, washed into shadow; I stand on the golden hills of Armenelos, where the noblemen are downed like ants. The earth is rent. The light is faint and weeping in the sky.

All is the Sea, shoreless and unbounded.

I am awake. An owl sounds. I open my window.

Down below the guard lights still shine. The day is barely alight, peering beyond the Shadow in the East. The City spreads before me like a queenly jewel though it is but the shadow of the splendors of Númenor.

Yet not for me lost glory, not for me the golden halls.

I yearn for the lost colours of the Elven-flowers. There is a wind that comes from the West, now and again, and in it I hear the terror and the grief. No more can we gather boughs of oiolairë for the prows of our ships, no more for us the golden laurinquë. The ships have sailed and the Tree blooms no more. But alfirin ever grows on the graves of Men.