LOTRO Week

Lorien-themed corner:

The garden:

It's hard to see in screenshots but I have the falling petals (ambience? lighting? ceiling? whatever hook that is) in there to go with the pink tree :-D

Dining room, complete with pastries!

And a forge, with flying embers:

The geode room:

Every [kin]house should have a shrine to Candaith 🥲

My favorite part of this house is the waterfall! I saw something similar in a house featured on Deco du Milieu and had to try it.

Upstairs, the office...

And a sitting room with sunbeams (for all the cats, of course)!

Bonus: Do you get feedback from using one palantir that close to another? XD

===

Your mother told you stories of spirits in the water, ones who guide and guard and watch from the waves.

“What do they guard?” you asked, because like any child on the lake you knew it wasn’t always kind.

“Themselves first, like most any living creature,” she told you. “And second those who are kind to them- so remember to be kind to the waters, Esterín.”

“I will.”

And you did.

Your father told you stories, too, old ones from beyond the mountains and older ones that began in the forest when the wood was still green. The water-keepers were always maidens in his stories, elfin and fae, but they weren’t all so different from the ones in your mother’s stories.

---

You went out on the water once, alone on your father’s small craft- small, but not so small as to be crewed by one, especially not with a storm rolling in. You made a study of the storm- you should have known better than anyone. All you thought as the cold water embraced you was this is how Mother died, too.

When you woke again in your own bed, you wondered if it was only dream- but your father’s boat was broken, and your sibling said they found you floating in the reeds, and around your neck you found a crystal vial of water you didn’t remember receiving.

Everyone watched you a little closer by the shore after that.

---

You met a stranger on the lakeshore once, silver-haired and solitary. You couldn’t tell from a glance what he was, human or elven or something more like you. For all the stories, he was kind, so you tried to be in turn.

You touched the vial you’d worn as a pendant since that day on the lake, and he saw it, and asked, “Is it working, then? I was hopeful.”

“Is what working?” you asked, the vial warm beneath your fingers. He looked at you strangely, then, but he only wished you well and sent you on your way.

---

“You are an odd one,” Goldberry said to you in the shadows of the Bree-land woods.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that you’ve made choices most would not,” she said with a laugh like the running river, but her words chilled you.

“I’ve made no such Choice yet.”

“No? But you cannot be made like this unwillingly- not without a steeper price than you have paid.”

“Made like what?” you demanded, but she only laughed and splashed river water at your face.

“Like us, of course.”

---

“How are you as you are?” Gwindeth demanded in her cavern sanctum. Not all the Rangers at Tinnudir believed in the Blue Lady, but you knew the truth of her the moment you set foot in this place.

“How do you mean?” you asked and she scoffed.

“Like this! Here! How have you come here?”

“Calenglad sent-”

“No, not here- how is it you walk abroad? We are not like the river-kin, but even they could not wander so freely without aid.”

“I don’t know,” you said. “I don’t know what you speak of.” Gwindeth surveyed you, her gaze piercing more than flesh.

“You are young,” she conceded, “but not so young you should not know your nature. How did you come to be among our kindred?”

“I don’t…” Among? “I met the spirit of the Long Lake beyond the Misty Mountains once, if that is what you mean, Lady.”

“Perhaps it is,” she muttered. “There always have been those who like to meddle beyond our purview. If you desire answers, you will have to seek him again.”

“I have much to do here, yet.”

“So you do.”

---

“Well met, sister,” Grey-eye said to you as you stood knee-deep in her river, the crystal pendant about your neck humming as in greeting.

“I am not…” you began, but Grey-eye only raised a brow.

“Not from Gondor, most surely,” she said. “And… perhaps not so fully among us as I first thought. You chose, then, to return to your waters once your body next died?”

“What?” You stepped back, but Serni tugged at your boots and held you fast. “I don’t recall…”

“Yes, that’s not uncommon. It’s not a gentle thing, this, but neither is it a thing that can be forced.” Her lips turned down. “Under most circumstances. It’s not a gift commonly offered, and less commonly accepted.” She drew near and reached out, lifting your pendant to examine. “This is even rarer craft- a gift for a wanderer, surely. Even those not yet taken back to the water couldn’t come so far- and you are quite far, indeed.” Stepping back, she let her waters surge about you, suffusing you with borrowed strength.

“I will await the day we might call you sister truly. Travel swiftly; you are needed.”

---

You passed the shores of the Long Lake quickly and did not linger in the Dale-lands. You were hunting; you had no time for this particular mystery.

---

“I am glad you will be the one to rescue me, runekeeper,” Rauniel said in the morgul-lit valleys that cradled Ithilduin. Her projection circled you as if whirlpool-drawn, and in her wake there stirred no wind nor taste of rain as had followed every other river-maid you met.

The Witch-king’s wards must have been strong indeed.

“You are nearly there,” Rauniel said. “My prison lies just beyond.” And she vanished into the muck-slimed passages that had upon a time given fresh water to Minas Ithil. The storm sparked at your fingertips and cleared the way to the heart of Eithel Gwaur.

You stepped into the prison-chamber and you knew, as surely as you once recognized Gwindeth, that this was no home to a river-maid. Rauniel appeared before you, no projection now and bearing the air of fetid pools and long-spoiled magics, and before you could run she snatched your water-filled pendant from your neck with the snap of a chain.

It was as if she ripped your lungs from your chest, as if the great limbs of the gatekeeper wrapped round your throat, as if you were drowning again. No breath gave you air. Shadows crowded your vision. Some great crook hooked itself around you, pulling north, north, north. You knew even in your terror where it led.

“Would that I could have you take my place, as I was once made to take hers,” Rauniel said, “but even had I learned the ways that it was done, it seems you are already claimed. Go, then. Return to your own domain and leave me. This I shall take in recompense- and perhaps one day I shall come to you.”

The moldering waterway dimmed before you and the pull came harder and harder like the call of the deeps, and almost you could see the reeds on the shore and the floating city and the looming mountain beyond.

It called, but you were a student of rune-craft even before you were this, and you were never ready to let go.

A great lake only strengthens the storm.

You spoke, breathless, of the might of the storm and the crash of thunder and it came, and in cisterns carved from mountain stone it echoed and echoed and cracked the walls, and you heard nothing more. You told the tale of a storm that, upon a time, cast you into a great, cold lake, and it gave Rauniel pause enough for you to claw your pendant back. At once the pull receded, but still Eithel Gwaur shook under the force of a thing that ought rightly to cover miles of sky. Stone cracked, and fell, and if the spirit that called herself Rauniel had aught else to say, you never heard it. Stone crumbled beneath you.

The water here was just as mountain-cold as it was in the north.

You returned to Echad Uial soaked to the bone, your pendant clenched in your fist, and had nothing to say of the hows or whys of what shook the Ephel Dúath enough for them to feel it there.

---

You returned to the Long Lake in the early summer, your friends left behind for a time. They had their own affairs to settle, after all.

You went down to the lakeshore among the reeds south of Loeglond, where the road was far from the water and the sails and barge-shadows were distant. You felt stronger here, more potent, if less at ease. You removed your boots and your heavy cloak and left them with all you wished to keep dry, and you waded into the lake.

The water was cold with recent rain, but it barely touched you this time.

Distantly, in the deepest part of the lake where sunlight hardly reached, you felt a presence as familiar as that which lived in your vial. You sank into the water, letting it wash over you in an embrace you remembered most as a neighbor to death, and spoke into it.

“I have questions.”

The deep presence answered like a smile and like greeting and like a welcome home.