He hadn’t even meant to get on the boat! One minute he was walking along in a fairly jolly mood and the next minute he found himself looking down on the blue ocean. It had all began some hours previously, as Thogar walked along Lómëdor's Ëarsúl Marina in the late morning. It was a staggeringly beautiful day, particularly for this time of year. Though it was not particularly warm, the temperature was just about right and the sun was pouring down on the beach. He wandered along it for what seemed like hours and eventually, he had wandered off of the beach and on to the stony ground of Port Adúnë.
As per usual, he hadn’t really been paying much attention to where he was going; well, any attention at all really. He had soon found himself being pushed and ushered around by the surrounding crowds. He didn’t like this one bit, but no matter how much he persisted in bellowing at them, the crowd was too vast and his voice was sounded out. He forced his way through the crowd with his short broad shouldered body, eventually pushing his way onto a wooden deck of some kind. He didn’t really know what it was, but it was empty and there was no one barging into him! He turned and walked ahead and soon realised where he was. In his haste to escape the hustle and bustle of the crowd, he had turned off of the port and directly on to a boat. Everything in sight seemed to be made out of old, slightly rotting oak.
He took a few steps forward and rather stupidly tripped over a piece of rope that was dangling around at knee-height. Thankfully, he didn’t completely fall and managed to regain his composure and keep on his feet. He pulled on the rope and it instantly came lose. He continued on to the boat and looked around, intrigued by his new surroundings. In all his years of travelling, he had never been much of a seafaring fellow; he had never known a dwarf to be so, as a matter of fact. This, however, did not stop him appreciating the beauty of boats, floating majestically atop the water. He continued to look around the deserted deck, and then he found a big steal lever. He was, to his admittance, a curious old dwarf and he couldn’t resist such a thing. He turned the lever, and kept turning it around and around, until something actually happened. He heard a clinking noise on the side of the boat. He could only just see over the edge, and so he gingerly climbed on to a nearby crate and looked overboard. There was an anchor up against the side of the boat. That was interesting…
He stepped off the crate and walked back to the middle of the deck. He hadn’t noticed at this point that the boat was moving very slightly, and it was only going to get worse. Standing in the middle of the boat next to the mast, he noticed a large assortment of ropes, some tied to the large woode pole, and others casually left on the floor. He approached these ropes, not intending to touch them, merely to look at them and try and figure out what the purpose of them all was. As he reached them though, his right foot became tangled in the ropes. He sighed and decided that now would be an appropriate time to leave the ship before anything else went wrong. He pulled his foot away from the rope, but it was actually stuck! He pulled again, but still stuck. A normal person would simply have leant down and untied themselves, but old Thogar in all his infinite wisdom decided to pull his foot away again, but this time with even more force! This was a very bad idea. As he did so, he realised the rope his foot was stuck in was also tied to the mast. Well, it was anyway, before this particularly forceful tug at it. It disjoined from the hook on the mast and in one sweeping motion, the sales dropped and the rope in which his right foot was caught shot upwards through the air, carrying him with it.
He dangled there, suspended in midair and that’s when everything finally clicked into place. He had pulled off the rope securing the boat to the port, and he had raised the anchor. And now, he had lowered the sails. The boat began to really move now, and the wooden bridge dropped into the ocean below as it pulled away from the dock. It was moving and in a surprisingly quick fashion at that.
He made repeated attempts to lift himself up to his feet and cut himself free, but he was too old and lacking in flexibility to even get close. Time passes incredibly quickly when you’re dangling upside down on a moving, unmanned boat. Somehow though, the wind managed to carry the boat clear of Lómëdor, which was an amazing bout of luck in itself. In the time spent hanging by his foot, he continued to look at the boat below him. From up here, it didn’t look nearly as big as it had from down there. There wasn’t really much space on the deck and to the best of his knowledge, there wasn’t even a cabin below deck; there wasn’t a visible door for one at any rate.
The boat sailed on for hours without hitting a thing. He did his upmost to keep his head and back craned forward, so as to not let the blood flow to his head. As bizarre as it was, these unfortunate circumstances resulted in his mind being more focused and attentive than it had in many years. After what seemed like days, but in reality was just a couple of hours, something finally happened. It all happened so quickly that he had little time to prepare himself. He was facing the back of the boat and so couldn’t see it coming. The boat crashed up against something with incredible force. The entire boat rocked forward, the back of it seemingly lifting completely out of the water. The force of this movement caused him, still dangling precariously by his foot, to swing forward at rather volatile speeds. This violent crash caused the mast to topple forward. As it fell and as the rope swung forward, Thogar suddenly found himself dangling over the edge of the boat. The mast continued to topple forward, tipping right over the edge and causing him to plummet to the water.
Only when he landed in it, it wasn’t very deep at all, barely even a foot. The mast fell into the water at his side and he ducked his head to avoid being whacked by it. He had just fallen around ten feet and his body felt extraordinarily sore. Add that to the fact that dangling upside down is really incredibly uncomfortable and he had just done so for hours on end, his entire body was numb with discomfort. He leaned forward and sunk his hands into the water, pulling the rope from his ankle. The water around the area was instantly polluted with blood, as the rope rubbing against his bare skin had caused a rather unpleasant gash. He forced himself to his feet and for a minute thought he was going to keel over; his legs were very numb and he felt rather dizzy. Presumably this was down to all the blood pouring out of his legs and down towards his head. He managed to keep his balance and turned around. Around him was a large assortment of gigantic boulders, one of which the boat had crashed into the front of.
Beyond those boulders was an Island. It was Haidhiaur Island, that became apparent early on to him. He had never been there, but he had travelled enough in his long life to have at least heard of effectively every place in Arda. He trudged ahead, splashing through the water in the direction of the sandy shore. When he got there, he wasted no time in plopping down on to the sand, and relaxing for the first time in hours. What were the chances of all those things happening? The rope being detached, the anchor raised, his foot getting stuck, the sails raising and the boat actually moving in the direction of this island without hitting anything when unmanned. It seemed impossibly convoluted, and as he sat on that beach with the late afternoon sun beaming down upon his old and tired body, he considered foul play to be an option. He was not an overly spiritual fellow, and he did not particularly worship any God, but he believed that they were watching and that once in awhile, they felt the need to intervene on the lives of other beings. Surely such a ridiculous chain of events could not have occurred unaided? Though, he had to admit to himself, his own stupidity had weighed quite greatly in all of the events occurring.
The severity of his situation began to hit home: he was tired and barely strong enough to move, and he was ship-wrecked on an island and as far as he could see, there was no one else on the beach. He was lost and stuck in the middle of no where. ”… Excellent!” he yelled aloud, roaring with laughter. This is what he had missed! A real adventure! A journey where he risked his life and death, where anything could happen at any given moment! This was living! But before he continued this little adventure, a good rest was in order. He laid back on the soft sand and looked up at the sky. He was tired and so very weak, but all he needed was a quick rest… just a quick rest. Within a minute, his eyes were closed and his mind had drifted off.
OOC- This was originally much longer, but I decided that most of it was awful and removed a lot of stuff.