I could not sleep. The forest is restless, and I can tell there is something going on here. Collecting some of my equipment and dowsing my campfire, I chose to investigate.
A breeze whistled past the tree’s leaves. Things were still, but I could hear a faint sound in the distance. Travelling further forward, I could see motion in the trees. Dark figures moved around in a clearing several hundred feet in front of me. Now moving with silent steps over the leaves, I could tell that the figures I saw were Dunlending tribesmen, and they seemed to be setting up a campsite.
This was odd news, Dunlendings rarely travel so far north, and tend to keep to their territory by the gap of Rohan, so I am told. They had bundles of wood stacked in piles, and were beginning the framework of a large tent structure. They kept no campfires lit, and only could be seen by the light of a few torches.
Their presence in this forest seems to have gone noticed, and the trees were uneasy. In old tales it was written that trees once could move and speak, perhaps these same trees hail from that same lineage. I could sense their despair, and it saddened me.
These trees have a beauty to them I cannot quite describe, but now it seems that the old elven forests must meet a sorry fate at the hands of these crude folk. If only there were more with me, I would end this atrocity, but alas, one man could not succeed against so many, even under the cover of dark.
