This was long ago. I can't tell for sure, how long. I completely forgot the days I was young. The days we spent with my wife - now she is the only memory that comes from that time, but I never ask her, for I shall suffer no memories of the darkness again - spent beneath the eternal woods of Arda... I know only that my father fought alongside Elrond and Isildur, when the Last Alliance marched to the slopes of Mount Doom. I don't even know how old am I.
From that times comes the other memory. Of the woods of Mirkwood and a troll striking us. We were there. All of us. My father, my mother, brother and my love. All were killed - I don't know, how did my wife, Mirvelleth, manage to escape, but I met her more than several centuries thereafter. What have I done, I don't remeber. Just the flashes of some moments of darkness passing away. The only thing I know is that I wandered around Middle-Earth, coming to the lands unknown seeking something to cease the pain.
One day I awoke. The sea of Rhun was many miles to the West. I was hunting the beasts beneath the stars none of which seemed familiar to me. And that day the recognition came to me. I saw the darkness behind and I felt the havoc, the pain of the world, the sufferings of innocenct. And there, under the stars which have no names in mortal tongues, I swore the oath to hunt down all the enemies of the Free Peoples until the Enemy is defeated. I swore to leave none of them alive.
Then I realized that I was far away from the lands I knew. Long was the way home, to the shores of Ered Luin, to the halls of Imladris and above all the Golden Woods of Lothlorien. My kinsfolk, the Elves, were very kind to me and in their lands all the sorrows disappeared. But all that days I tried to find my love. All the eternal years after my awakening I sought her, my Niniel - and only now I know, that bearing that sorrow she left her former name behind, and I, having spent the years in the darkness, could hardly recognize her.
I was hunting the beasts and orcs everywhere, from the forests of Mirkwood, to the distant bays of Forochel. I did not care for the owners of the land or it being corrupted, I cared only for my bow.
But one day everything changed...
