The Time of Awakening along the Shore - what could have the first Elven eyes glimpsed dim in the starlight of Varda Elentari?  What difference of you and I then?  The sweet succor of no-difference is the poet’s riddle to attend the audience.  Purity-bound The.

In the Third Age, 1974, Fornost Erain was overrun by the forces of Angmar.  Many a fell deed slew the Hope of Men in those days, and Oaths taken were shattered by cowardice and greed; Oathbreakers lived where dead men lay rotting.  In the next year, Earnur of Gondor retook the city, but abandoned its broken battlements to time.  With the Witch-king and his forces routed, the ashen wastes and brittle air filled the hearts of Men with as little Hope as can be mustered.

It is here that the Tale of Torhthelm begins in earnest, a young Son of the Gondorian province of Calenardhon, sworn to his Captain.  Not all fought on the Fields throughout, and so the bringing back of the dying and honoring the dead are the result of any battle – the task of freeman - and it is on the Fields of Fornost that Torhthelm finds Fate.

The Tale of Torhthelm

In the mirror, the raftswoman saw reflected moonlight and golden bough.  She heard the whisper of the leaf and the Lady, “Look into the still waters and see.” 

See. 

What was seen was an man who did not come even after a long vigil, a man who had cloak and shadow wrapped about him.  The Lady whispered that words of hope needed life, for still the Dwarves delved deeply and needed help unlooked for from the west.  To the Winglord did the Lady motion, and the Great Eagle spoke of eyes above, a task he would do.  The Golden Woods lay below the moon.

Even in the darker days of Smaug when the trade from Lake Town and the Woodland Elves and points south was under his shadow, the raftsmen of the Long Lake plied their profession down rivers and through the heath.  Caravaners all, some worked only with the season or the destination, ferrying goods wrapped in oiled leathers in boats, on rafts or even lashed barrels; those that grew up around the waters of the Long Lake and the Forest and Rivers Running knew well the pathways to avoid and the ways to make coin.

Smaug was smote down, and the raftsmen profession grew.  Trade came down the River Running from the Lonely Mountain, and goods pressed south and west even unto Bree-land and the good and green Shire.  To be a Master Steersman of the Long Lake is to know the shore and the perils of the calm waters, though not everything on the River Running was about coin.  Dark shadows flitted about the Woodland Realm and all points north and east, and so the raftsmen ferried men as well - armored and sheened weapons to battle the evils that lurked and scurried.

~ The Raftsmen of the Long Lake on Landroval is an idea for a kinship I have for folks who hail from the Long Lake, Mirkwood, Dale and the Lonely Mountain.  In my concept, the Raftsmen are more a mixture of guild and kin, plying trade between destinations and yet assisting as best could be.  Not every raftsmen knows the sword, and not every raftsmen can steer the Falls that flow from the Long Lake.  Each of the raftsmen likely took a caravan south and west to the lands known as Bree-land or yet farther.  Slowly these goodly folks make their way back home to the Long Lake, yet fell things await them on that journey.  Not every journey is so straight as the River Running.