It is about time that I start my story. It’s a tale of despair and sadness, of hope, loss, wanderings, peace, and war. It is a tale that has not ended. A tale that goes on through time and shall only end with my death. And even then, who knows... Of My Earliest Memory The first day that I remember opening my eyes is forever imprinted in my memory. I awoke in a field during springtime. The trees around me were full of leaves, and the grass was green. I had no memory of how I got there, or of who I was. I didn’t even know my name. In fact, my real name is still a mystery to me today. Throughout my life I had taken on many names, though only three have lasted. So there I was, alone in a field. I had no knowledge of my identity.

But worst of all, I didn’t even know that I was an Istar.

After spending many hours in that field attempting to recollect anything of my past, and being unsuccessful, I decided to venture out of the field and into the surrounding woods. Traveling for about an hour I came across a path. Following it, the path led me to a small village. I was much surprised to find out that I spoke their language very well, and we understood each other perfectly. While the villagers were at first doubtful and disbelieved my story, they still took me into their society. Upon going to the inn were I was to stay, I passed by a well in which I glanced. It was the first time I saw myself. I looked like an average man, however with a youthful appearance, like a man somewhere in his twenties. I kept this youthful appearance throughout my whole life, which became an object of question later on. However, knowing not of my being an Istar, I assumed that I was of the race of men. After spending some days with the villagers, they adopted me in their culture, giving me the name Surtel, meaning Forgetful One in their language. Now, so many centuries later, I can tell you that the village, whose name was Brutiel, was located in the far East, such a long way from the war in Beleriand, and I abided with the villagers of Brutiel some time in the First Age, at a point between Beren’s capture of the Silmaril and the Fall of Gondolin, I would estimate.

<Of the Bengal War lived many years in that peaceful village. In the small society of Brutiel, I took the job of being a farmer. My crops, along with some of the other farmer’s crops, fed the village, and in the small society everything was free. One just had to go to the place where something was needed to be done, say at the weaver’s, and it would be done. There was no animosity in our village whatsoever. I spent about fifty years in Brutiel, during which I didn’t age one day. All of the townsfolk believed me to be not a man, but an elf. Now the Far East was mostly inhabited by men, but every once in a while one would come across an elf. They are mostly Avari, those who didn’t take the Great Journey, or Nandor elves, those who forsook the Great Journey east of the Misty Mountains, but all of them Moriquendi. In those days, they weren’t any elves who had seen the light of Aman to be found in the east. In the later ages, a few of the descendants of the Noldor traveled to the lands far east, yet there were so few that there can not be counted as having been a society of light elves in the East.

So the villagers of Brutiel thought me to be an elf, despite my appearance. I didn’t have certain qualities befitting of an elf, such as the ears, but Istari and Maiar were totally unknown of, and I began to believe it myself. And though there was a mistrust of elves by men in the east, they knew me well enough to no fear or hate me, but once again they accepted me for who I was. My life was very peaceful in Brutiel, and I was willing to spend all of my days there.

Then the troops passed through…

Brutiel was a very small village as I have said, and very little of the outside world reached our ears, and we too were virtually non-existant in the minds of people outsiede. Yet our town was located in the outskirts of a forest named Suman. This forest was located between two kingdoms, Bengal and Hanthur, which were warring against each other. My village of Brutiel was unaffected by the war, in fact we barely know about it, until one day when the soldiers from the realm of Hanthur passed through. They destroyed my town as they went, raiding our storehouses and taking everything we had, and killing everyone in out town. The villagers of Brutiel were a peaceful folk, and unprepared for battle. It was a slaughter. The men of hanthur had no reason to kill us, they just wanted the food we had, and they murdered us for sport. I was the only serviver.

The only reason I wasn’t killed in the raid was because of my “elfin descent.” The villagers of Brutiel had, in finding out I was an elf, honored me by making a plaque and placing it above my door, enscribed with: Heletol Sur, Que Flunon Ath. In their language it meant House of Elf, our Loyal Friend. The troops of Hanthur, seeing the inscription, went in my house and took me prisoner, being interested in finding such a creature for their kind, so they said.