A/N: I don't own Harad, Gondor, or anything else from Middle-earth. Written for the Stranger in a Strange Land challenge at Tolkien's Realm.

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They say our lands are dead. The jungles breed disease and poisons as quickly as they do fanged animals and thorny plants. The deserts give us no grain and precious little water. It is true; our people go hungry in the heat and we thirst for the softer lands to the north. But I have been to the Garden of Gondor, and I cannot say that I enjoyed the taste. There is water in abundance and cooling breezes there, but the chill comes from steel and the forests are watered in blood.

The Dark Lord is gone now, but some of the younger men still wish to follow his warpath, still wish to claim those lands where their ancestors died for themselves. I offer my words of caution, for what little they are worth. Harad is a dead land, now, perhaps. Our empires are shattered and the ground is dust barely held in place by the great jungles. But there are movements within the sands, and a cautious man might find wonders within the dark of the jungle. Better a dead land than the killing fields of the north.