The Limsúl is a messenger-ship of Lindon, and its captain, Súldil is a conscientious sort, yet his younger brother and first mate is cut of rather a different cloth. For the carrying of messages, and sailing the seas between Forlindon and Harlindon do not content him, but ever his eyes look West, and whenever he sails he listens for the song of Ossë, the teacher of old of the Falathrim. 

        And there is something wild as the winds of the storm in his music, when the Limsúl flies through the water on his fluted song. Only under persuasion will he seek to evade the storms, and he laughs with contempt at rocks and pirates and other perils of the sea. 

        Yet for this recklessness of spirit, the sailor possesses a keen insight into hearts, and in him both wisdom and folly mingle.

        Dínfalver has travelled little on land—only on the coasts where the duties of the Limsúl take him, and that rarely beyond Lindon. 

        The doings of kingdoms of Men and Dwarves concern him little, though, when he does by chance have dealings with them, he is open-hearted and curious, if somewhat abrasive.

        For now a woman, a descendent of Númenor, oft sails with the Limsúl’s crew. She revives the ancient tradition of Númenor, and sets a green bough upon the prow of the ship in offering to Uinen, and with this Dínfalver aids her. But when his song rises on the vast sea, it is to Ossë, and the ambition of his heart is to know the inscrutable paths beneath the sea, where roam the maiar of Ulmo, and the mysterious creatures of which even the Elves know little. 

“I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all that I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown sprume, and the sea-gulls crying.”

-Sea-fever by John Masefield 

Banner images adapted using the Carta Marina and the painting Storm in the Sea by Pieter Mulier.