Author’s Note: This piece recounts a series of live-RP sessions I participated in with the 'Men of the Lost Realm'. The narrative has been shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own (as adapted from live-play with others naturally), but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI assistance in producing this as a finalised piece. I hope you enjoy it.
“Stone and Song”
The road to Cardolan was not marked upon any map I carried. No sign bore its name. It wound west and south through hills and quiet woods, sometimes fading altogether, and yet I followed it. Not by sight, but by feeling. Some part of me, shaped by old songs and older stories, knew where it led long before my boots touched its stone.
Garveth said only that the Edhelion had passed through The Angle. That Rangers had answered the King’s call to rebuild the south. When I returned from my errand in the wild and found the settlement near empty, I did not ask more. I packed what little I had, bound my father’s knife to my belt, and walked out beneath the dawn. My uncle stopped me. He would not let me go without taking his armour and longsword. The gesture meant a lot, though few words passed between us. His last words to me linger in my mind still: "Old things are stirring Arny. The Chieftain's hand has weight once more. Do your part to restore our people."
----
I eventually would come across their camp on the edge of the Chetwood.
A flicker of firelight led me to it, and laughter carried on the wind. I approached slowly, wary not to disturb the quiet rhythm of a fireside chat already in motion. But as I stepped from the brush, it was not swords that met me, but a wary glance and a keen eye.
Her name was Eregwen, though she had once called herself Elfhind. She looked half-wild, alert as any doe, and bore herself with the cautious grace of one who had learned the forest as cradle and wall alike. And then there was the Edhelion himself….. Elegost… tall as a young tree, broad of shoulder, silver-eyed, and bearing a sword that glinted like it remembered battles I had only heard of in tales.
He spoke my name before I gave it. Called me kinsman. There was no grandeur in his voice, but there was weight; the kind that settles on a man who has seen much, and still chooses to hope.
We spoke by firelight of the King's decree. Of Towerglan and the ruined tower that rose above it. Of how they meant to raise more than tents, a village, a home. I listened, still half in awe. These were names I'd known since childhood. Elegost, the Edhelion. Nenaras, the Lord of Streams. And now some of them walked beside me, flesh and bone.
I did not sleep that night, not truly. My thoughts roamed too wide. I sat up long after the fire burned low, the stars wheeling above, and whispered an old verse to the dark: "Let their memory live not in earth alone, but in stone and song, in the halls yet to rise."
----
The days that followed were a blur of labour and quiet discovery.
At a new camp for the builders of this dream, near Towerglan, I watched as canvas tents rose under older eyes and younger backs. There was something so appealing in the rhythm of it all: hammer striking stake, rope pulling taut, soil clearing to make way for stone. I worked beside Grimjack, beside Esthryth, beside Tirillith and Tirnel. I watched little Estric tie knots with eager hands and saw the way Siriloth kept one eye on him even when she pretended not to care. New faces, new people, new names, new places, but one shared path.
It was there, while setting stones for drainage and securing the canvas of a tent, that the music truly came to me. Lines of verse began forming unbidden as I moved through the work… simple melodies, half-shaped refrains that clung to the cadence of effort and breath. Not grand like the lays of Elendil, but something closer to the ground. Something living.
♫♪♪ “Stone by stone, and hand to hand,
We build where none but shadows stand.” ♫♪♪
I hummed them to myself at first, then aloud, and others joined in…. some in jest, others with earnestness. Some matched the rhythm with the clang of their mallets.
And then he came.
Nenaras.
We heard only a soft greeting at first, light and melodic: "Hello." I looked up from my task, and there he was, standing beneath the boughs with the last light of evening catching in the folds of his cloak. He bore no banner, no trumpet of arrival. Yet his presence rippled through the camp like wind through high grass.
Elegost greeted his father with quiet reverence. Others murmured, awed or wary. I did not know him, not truly, but I felt as though I did. Garveth had spoken of him. The Elf who had fostered Elegost and his sister. The Lord of Streams.
But not all welcomed him.
Orhal, the elder Dúnadan whose voice was as rough as his gait, watched him with a face like thunder. No word passed between them. No accusation, no greeting. Only a silence deep and bitter. Then Orhal turned, cast his hammer to the ground, and walked away.
He did not speak. He did not return. Elegost went after him.
I did not understand the rift. None spoke of it. But I felt it, keenly. As if a wind had passed through the firelight. And yet, Nenaras remained. He said little, though his sorrow was plain. He joined us not as lord, but as worker, and laid his hand upon the timber like any other.
-----
Some days later I found myself at their first camp, in Andrath, where carts jostled for space and tools passed from hand to calloused hand in prepared delivery to the builder’s closer camp by Towerglan. I found a place not by skill, but by usefulness. Water fetched, stones shifted, equipment lifted. None asked more, and I gave what I could.
There I met Tirillith properly… Tiril, as the others called her. A midwife turned baker by necessity, her voice was firm and hands ever busy. I carried pails from the stream while she stirred blackberries in a pot, and by day’s end the air was sweet with promise of good food to come.
Grimjack arrived not long after. We had hardly acquainted ourselves the last day by the builder’s camp. A wanderer by the look of him, road-worn and sharp of tongue, there was something steady behind his mirth I thought. In fact, I had not expected to find mirth here at all. And yet, between pies and jests and little Estric’s berry-stained fingers, I felt something stir in me that I had not known was missing.
The boy had no father here, they said. His mother Esthryth had brought him from Rohan, seeking a life among her late beloved's kin. The lad did not yet speak our tongue, not well, but his laughter was clear enough.
We sat and ate warm slices of pie while the rain tapped gentle rhythms on the tents. Tiril told me she'd been the one to deliver me into the world, and for a moment the years collapsed inward. I could not recall my mother clearly, but I remembered a voice, a scent of sage and barley. A laugh like wind through wheat. Perhaps it was true; that they were friends for a time.
As we ate, I found myself softly humming the words that had settled in me since the work began, but which Grimjack uttered into being:
♫♪♪ “Some roads end when they should not,
Worn away or long forgot.
Others bend with time and tread,
'Til they rise in song instead.” ♫♪♪
Grimjack chuckled at the tune, claiming I was too wistful for a lad my age, but Elegost arrived just then, drawn perhaps by the scent of pie or the sound of verse. He stood near the fire, cloak damp with rain, and listened as I finished the last line. His face, often solemn, bore a rare warmth then. He nodded once and said quietly, “Keep singing, Arnethir. That’s what builds memory into stone.”
----
That night, I sang more softly. The camp had shifted since the earlier business between Nenaras and Orhal, just slightly. Joy was still there, but it had learned something of sadness perhaps.
We were not builders by name, but we built nevertheless. Those who knew their craft were going to be in high demand; perhaps others, perhaps I, would learn their ways in the doing too.
Some came from Bree. Others from the North Downs. Some, like me, from The Angle. A few bore no name we knew, but still they lifted hammer and hauled wood. There were dwarves among us too, though they kept to their own corners, muttering of stone and soil. All walks. All stories. Yet we worked together.
And in that work, something shifted.
I had grown up with stories. With songs of Elendil and Isildur, of Henneth Annún and of lost Fornost. Of kin-strife and watchful peace. Of toil, and pain, and death and of war….. though many of those stories had yet to be written….. but these days, these moments, they are not stories. They are stone laid by our own hands. Pies shared around a fire. The patter of rain on canvas. The sound of children laughing.
I do not know if Towerglan will stand for a hundred years. I do not know if the King will send his new kingdom to our aid, or if the roads will be paved in stone one day hence. But I know this:
I came seeking purpose. I found people.
I came seeking a movement. I found a hearth.
And if ever songs are sung of this place and this time, let them speak not only of a village raised, but of the ones who raised them. The quiet ones. The laughing ones. The ones who kept the fire warm and the wine flowing. The ones who mourned in silence and kept building still.
Let them sing of us.
Let them remember.
For we are Dúnedain. Sons and daughters of silence. And now, perhaps, sons and daughters of something more.
Let it rise.
Let it stand.
Let it be ours.
