sassenach77yle - Tumblr blog

[sassenach77yle]

"I Don't Understand It.

Not Yet. But I Trust You.

I Trust Your Word. Your Heart.

I Trust There Is A Truth Between Us.

So. Whatever You Tell Me.

I Will Believe Ye."

[sassenach77yle]

"People disappear all the time.

Ask any policeman. Better yet, ask a journalist. Disappearances are bread-and-butter to journalists.Young girls run away from home.

Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again.

Housewives reach the end or their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish into the smoke of imported cigars.

Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive.

Disappearances, after all, have explanations.

Usually."

[Outlander -prologue]

How is started... ...How it's going.

IN THE LIGHT OF eternity, time casts no shadow.

Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. But what is it that the old women see? We see necessity, and we do the things that must be done. Young women don’t see—they are, and the spring of life runs through them.Ours is the guarding of the spring, ours the shielding of the light we have lit, the flame that we are.

What have I seen? You are the vision of my youth, the constant dream of all my ages.

Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own . . . and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered only by the outlines of a face long-loved.

[Written in My Own Heart's Blood- prologue]

[sassenach77yle]

[sassenach77yle]

Complete Nobleman interview (plus photos)

[sassenach77yle]

And I'll get lost on purpose.

[sassenach77yle]

Strange, the things you remember.

Single images and feelings that stay with you down through the years. Like the moment I’d realized I’d never owned a vase. That I’d never lived in any place long enough to justify having such a simple thing. And how at that moment, I wanted nothing so much in all the world as to have a vase of my very own. It was a Tuesday afternoon, six months after the end of the war. Somehow in my mind, V-E Day, the end of the bloodiest and most terrible war in human history, grows fainter with each passing day. But I can still recall every detail of the day when I saw the life I wanted sitting in a window. I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if I’d bought that vase and made a home for it. Would that have changed things? Would I have been happy? Who can say?

I do know this: even now, after all the pain, and death and heartbreak that followed, I would still make the same choice.

[sassenach77yle]

You can't know that. It's much too soon. It... Oh, Sassenach, you have not been a day late in your courses in... in all the time since ye first took me to yer bed, but it's been two months now. You kept track? In the middle of this bloody war, you kept track? Aye. How long have you known? Not long. This child... this one is all that will be left of me... ever. But now, we must go, so I beg you, Claire... You heard me give my word to Rupert, and you made me a promise to spare Randall's life. You... you promised me that if it came to this, ye'd go back through the stones, back home.

But you are my home.

And you are mine, but this home is lost. And now you and the bairn... you must go to a safe place. To a man... A man that could care for you both. No. No, I... Claire. Claire, there's no time.

How will I explain all this? How can I go back? To Frank. All that I leave to you. Tell him what you will about me... About us. It's likely he'll no want to hear, but if he does... Tell him I'm grateful. And tell him I trust him, and tell him I hate him to the very marrow of his bones. The buzzing. It's so loud. I'm not ready, Jamie. I'm not ready. Come with me. Come with me through the stones. Na, I can't. You could try. You hear it, right? The buzzing? I don't hear anything, Claire. Even if I could... go back through the stones...

It's not my place. My destiny lies on Culloden Moor.

But I'll find you. I promise. If I have to endure 200 years of purgatory... 200 years without you, then that is my punishment that I have earned for my crimes, for I have lied, killed, stolen, betrayed... And broken trust. But when I stand before God, I'll have one thing to say to weigh against all the rest.

Lord... you gave me a rare woman... And God, I loved her well.

It has begun. Our wedding gift from Hugh Munro. You keep it with you.

Blood of my blood. And bone of my bone. As long as we both shall live.

Come on. This... belonged to my father. Give it to the bairn, when he's old enough. I will name him Brian, after your father.

I love you. I love you. And I you. Good-bye, Claire.

Outlander 2×13 “Dragonfly in Amber”💔

[sassenach77yle]

"Go wi' God…mo duinne."

He stepped off the ledge and made his way down the steep incline, bracing his feet against tufts of grass, catching at branches to keep his balance, not looking back. I watched him until he disappeared into the oak clump, walking slowly, like a man wounded, who knows he must keep moving, but feels his life ebbing slowly away through the fingers he has clenched over the wound.My knees were trembling. Slowly, I lowered myself to the granite shelf and sat cross-legged, watching the swallows about their business. Below, I could just see the roof of the cottage that now held my past. At my back loomed the cleft stone. And my future.

I sat without moving through the afternoon. I tried to force all emotion from my mind and use reason. Jamie certainly had logic on his side when he argued that I should go back: home, safety, Frank; even the small amenities of life that I sorely missed from time to time, like hot baths and indoor plumbing, to say nothing of larger considerations such as proper medical care and convenient travel.And yet, while I would certainly admit the inconveniences and outright dangers of this place, I would have also to admit that I had enjoyed many aspects of it. If travel was inconvenient, there were no enormous stretches of concrete blanketing the countryside, nor any noisy, stinking autos—contrivances with their own dangers, I reminded myself. Life was much simpler, and so were the people. Not less intelligent, but much more direct—with a few sterling exceptions like Colum ban Campbell MacKenzie, I thought grimly.Because of Uncle Lamb's work, I had lived in a great many places, many even cruder and more lacking in amenities than this one. I adapted quite easily to rough conditions, and did not really miss "civilization" when away from it, though I adapted just as easily to the presence of niceties like electric cookers and hot-water geysers. Ishivered in the cold wind, hugging myself as I stared at the rock.Rationality did not appear to be helping much. I turned to emotion, and began, shrinking from the task, to reconstruct the details of my married lives—first with Frank, then with Jamie. The only result of this was to leave me shattered and weeping, the tears forming icy trails on my face.Well, if not reason nor emotion, what of duty? I had given Frank a wedding vow, and had meant it with all my heart. I had given Jamie the same, meaning to betray it as soon as possible. And which of them would I betray now? I continued to sit, as the sun sank lower in the sky and the swallows disappeared to their nests.As the evening star began to glow among the black pines' branches, I concluded that in this situation reason was of little use. I would have to rely on something else; just what, I wasn't sure. I turned toward the split rock and took a step, then another, and another. Pausing, I faced around and tried it in the other direction. A step, then another, and another, and before I even knew that I had decided, I was halfway down the slope, scrabbling wildly at grass clumps, slipping and falling through the patches of granite scree.

When I reached the cottage, breathless with fear lest he had left already, I was reassured to see Donas hobbled and grazing nearby. The horse raised his head and eyed me unpleasantly. Walking softly, I pushed the door open.He was in the front room, asleep on a narrow oak settle. He slept on his back, as he usually did, hands crossed on his stomach, mouth slightly open. The last rays of daylight from the window behind me limned his face like a metal mask; the silver tracks of dried tears glinted on golden skin, and the copper stubble of his beard gleamed dully.I stood watching him for a moment, filled with an unutterable tenderness. Moving as quietly as I could, I lay down beside him on the narrow settle and nestled close. He turned to me in sleep as he so often did, gathering me spoon-fashion against his chest and resting his cheek against my hair. Half-conscious, he reached to smooth my hair away from his nose; I felt the sudden jerk as he came awake to realize that I was there, and then weoverbalanced and crashed together onto the floor, Jamie on top of me.I didn't have the slightest doubt that he was solid flesh. I pushed a knee into his abdomen, grunting."Get off! I can't breathe!"Instead, he aggravated my breathless condition by kissing me thoroughly. I ignored the lack of oxygen temporarily in order to concentrate on more important things..We held each other for a long time without speaking. At last he murmured "Why?"—his mouth muffled in my hair.I kissed his cheek, damp and salty. I could feel his heart beating against my ribs, and wanted nothing more than to stay there forever, not moving, not making love, just breathing the same air."I had to," I said. I laughed, a little shakily. "You don't know how close it was. The hot baths nearly won." And I wept then, and shook a little, because the choice was so freshly made, and because my joy for the man I held in my arms was mingled with a tearing grief for the man I would never see again.Jamie held me tightly, pressing me down with his weight, as though to protect me, to save me from being swept away by the roaring pull of the stone circle. At length my tears were spent, and I lay exhausted, head against his comforting chest.

It had grown altogether dark by this time, but still he held me, murmuring softly as though I were a child afraid of the night. We clung to each other, unwilling to let go even long enough to start a fire or light a candle.At length Jamie rose, and picking me up, carried me to the settle, where he sat with me cradled on his lap. The door of the cottage still hung open, and we could see the stars beginning to burn over the valley below.

"Do you know," I said drowsily, "that it takes thousands and thousands of years for the light of those stars to reach us? In fact, some of the stars we see may be dead by now, but we won't know it, because we still see the light.""Is that so?" he answered, stroking my back. "I didna know that."I must have fallen asleep, head on his shoulder, but roused briefly when he laid me gently on the floor, on a makeshift bed of blankets from the horse's saddleroll. He lay down beside me, and drew me close again.

"Lay your head, lass," he whispered. "In the morning, I'll take ye home."

[sassenach77yle]

"I swore I'd never set foot on this horrible place, but here I am. I'm not going to cry, 'cause you wouldn't want that. Besides, I've come with good news-your daughter, Brianna, named after your father just as I promised. Jamie, I... was angry at you. Such a long time... You made me go and live a life that I didn't want to live. Do you right, damn you. Brianna was... safe, and loved, and raised well. Sometimes, when she turns and the light catches her red hair or seeing her smiling in her sleep, it takes my breath away. Because I see you. She was born seven fifteen on a rainy Boston morning... That's everything, everything I can remember. See, no tears, but you didn't think I could do that, did you? That day, at Craigh na Dun, I said a lot of things. There was one thing I didn't say. Couldn't, and haven't for twenty years. But I'm here, and now it's time.

Goodbye, Jamie Fraser.

My love. Rest easy, soldier."

Outlander 2×13 “Dragonfly in Amber”

[sassenach77yle]

May 1, 1771 May Union Camp

I glanced sideways, careful not to move in case he was still asleep. He wasn’t. He was lying quite still, though, utterly relaxed, save for his right hand. He had this raised, and appeared to be examining it closely, turning it to and fro and slowly curling and uncurling his fingers—as well as he could. The fourth finger had a fused joint, and was permanently stiff; the middle finger was slightly twisted, a deep white scar spiraling round the middle joint. His hand was callused and battered by work, and the tiny stigma of a nail-wound still showed, pale-pink, in the middle of his palm. The skin of his hand was deeply bronzed and weathered, freckled with sun-blots and scattered with bleached gold hairs. I thought it remarkably beautiful.

“Happy Birthday,” I said, softly. “Taking stock?”

He let the hand fall on his chest, and turned his head to look at me, smiling.Aye, something of the sort. Though I suppose I’ve a few hours left. I was born at half-six; I willna have lived a full half-century until suppertime.” I laughed and rolled onto my side, kicking the blanket off. The air was still delightfully cool, but it wouldn’t last long. “Do you expect to disintegrate much further before supper?” I asked, teasing. “Oh, I dinna suppose anything is likely to fall off by then,” he said, consideringly. “As to the workings . . . aye, well . . .” He arched his back, stretching, and sank back with a gratified groan as my hand settled on him. “It all seems to be in perfect working order,” I assured him. I gave a brief, experimental tug, making him yelp slightly. “Not loose at all.” “Good,” he said, folding his hand firmly over mine to prevent further unauthorized experiments. “How did ye ken what I was doing? Taking stock, as ye say?” I let him keep hold of the hand, but shifted to set my chin in the center of his chest, where a small depression seemed made for the purpose. “I always do that, when I have a birthday—though I generally do it the night before. More looking back, I think, reflecting a bit on the year that’s just gone. But I do check things over; I think perhaps everyone does. Just to see if you’re the same person as the day before.” “I’m reasonably certain that I am,” he assured me. “Ye dinna see any marked changes, do ye?” I lifted my chin from its resting place and looked him over carefully. It was in fact rather hard to look at him objectively; I was both so used to his features and so fond of them that I tended to notice tiny, dear things about him—the freckle on his earlobe, the lower incisor pushing eagerly forward, just slightly out of line with its fellows—and to respond to the slightest change of his expression—but not really to look at him as an integrated whole. He bore my examination tranquilly, eyelids half-lowered against the growing light. His hair had come loose while he slept and feathered over his shoulders, its ruddy waves framing a face strongly marked by both humor and passion—but which possessed a paradoxical and most remarkable capacity for stillness.

“No,” I said at last, and set my chin down again with a contented sigh. “It’s still you.”

[...]

Jamie’s free hand rested on my back, his thumb idly stroking the edge of my shoulder blade. With his usual capacity for mental discipline, he appeared to have dismissed the uncertainty of the military prospects completely from his mind, and was thinking of something else entirely. “Do ye ever think—” he began, and then broke off. “Think what?” I bent and kissed his chest, arching my back to encourage him to rub it, which he did. “Well . . . I’m no so sure I can explain, but it’s struck me that now I have lived longer than my father did—which is not something I expected to happen,” he added, with faint wryness. “It’s only . . . well, it seems odd, is all. I only wondered, did ye ever think of that, yourself—having lost your mother young, I mean?” “Yes.” My face was buried in his chest, my voice muffled in the folds of his shirt. “I used to—when I was younger. Like going on a journey without a map.” His hand on my back paused for a moment. “Aye, that’s it.” He sounded a little surprised. “I kent more or less what it would be like to be a man of thirty, or of forty—but now what?” His chest moved briefly, with a small noise that might have been a mixture of amusement and puzzlement.

“You invent yourself,” I said softly, to the shadows inside the hair that had fallen over my face. “You look at other women—or men; you try on their lives for size. You take what you can use, and you look inside yourself for what you can’t find elsewhere. And always . . . always . . . you wonder if you’re doing it right.”

His hand was warm and heavy on my back. He felt the tears that ran unexpectedly from the corners of my eyes to dampen his shirt, and his other hand came up to touch my head and smooth my hair. “Aye, that’s it,” he said again, very softly. The camp was beginning to stir outside, with clangings and thumps, and the hoarse sound of sleep-rough voices. Overhead, the grasshopper began to chirp, the sound like someone scratching a nail on a copper pot.

“This is a morning my father never saw,” Jamie said, still so softly that I heard it as much through the walls of his chest, as with my ears.

“The world and each day in it is a gift, mo chridhe—no matter what tomorrow may be.”

I sighed deeply and turned my head, to rest my cheek against his chest. He reached over gently and wiped my nose with a fold of his shirt. “And as for taking stock,” he added practically, “I’ve all my teeth, none of my parts are missing, and my cock still stands up by itself in the morning. It could be worse.”

Cap 58 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU ~the fiery cross

[sassenach77yle]

He opened his eyes and gave me a dark blue look.

“Sassenach,” he said softly.

“What?”

“I would like ye to touch me . . . without hurting me. Just once before I sleep. Would ye mind much?”

I stopped and drew breath, terribly disconcerted at the realization that he was right. Caught up in the emergency and worry of his condition, everything I had done to him during the day had been painful, intrusive, or both. Marsali, Brianna, Roger, Jemmy—all of them had touched him in gentleness, offering sympathy and comfort.

And I—I had been so terrified at the possibility of what might happen, of what I might be forced to do, that I had taken no time, allowed no room for gentleness. I looked away for a moment, blinking until the tears retreated. Then I stood and walked over to the bed, bent, and kissed him, very softly. I stroked the hair back from his forehead, smoothed his brows with my thumb. Arch Bug had shaved him; the skin of his cheek was smooth, hot against the side of my hand. His bones were hard under his skin, framing his strength—and yet he seemed suddenly fragile. I felt fragile, too.

“I want ye to sleep beside me, Sassenach,” he whispered.

“All right.” I smiled at him, my lips trembling only a little. “Let me brush out my hair.” I sat down in my shift, shook out my hair, and took up the brush. He watched me, not speaking, but with a faint smile on his lips, as I worked. He liked to watch me brush my hair; I hoped it was as soothing to him as it was to me. There were noises downstairs, but they were muffled, safely distant. The shutters were ajar; firelight flickered against the glass of the window from the dying bonfire in the yard. I glanced at the window, wondering if I ought to close the shutters.

“Leave them, Sassenach,” he murmured from the bed. “I like to hear the talk.”

The sound of voices from outside was comforting, rising and falling, with small bursts of laughter. The sound of the brush was soft and regular, like surf on sand, and I felt the stress of the day lessen slowly, as though I could brush all the anxieties and dreads out of my hair as easily as tangles and bits of pumpkin vine. When at last I put down the brush and rose, Jamie’s eyes were closed. I knelt to smoor the fire, rose to blow out the candle, and went at last to bed. I eased myself gently into the bed beside him, not to jostle. He lay turned away from me, on his side, and I turned toward him, echoing the curve of his body with my own, careful not to touch him. I lay very quietly, listening. All the house sounds had settled to their night-time rhythm; the hiss of the fire and the rumble of wind in the flue, the sudden startling crack! of the stairs, as though some unwary foot had stepped upon a riser. Mr. Wemyss’s adenoidal snoring reached me, reduced to a soothing buzz by the thickness of the intervening doors. There were still voices outside, muffled by distance, disjointed with drink and the lateness of the hour. All jovial, though; no sound of hostility or incipient violence. I didn’t really care, though. The inhabitants of the Ridge could hammer each other senseless and dance on the remains, for all I cared. All my attention was focused on Jamie. His breathing was shallow but even, his shoulders relaxed. I didn’t want to disturb him; he needed rest above all things. At the same time, I ached to touch him. I wanted to reassure myself that he was here, alive beside me—but I also needed badly to know how things went with him. Was he feverish? Had the incipient infection in his leg blossomed in spite of the penicillin, spreading poison through his blood? I moved my head cautiously, bringing my face within an inch of his shirt-covered back, and breathed in, slow and deep. I could feel the warmth of him on my face, but couldn’t tell through the linen nightshirt just how hot he really was.

He smelt faintly of the woods, more strongly of blood. The onions in the dressing gave off a bitter tang; so did his sweat. I inhaled again, testing the air. No scent of pus. Too early for the smell of gangrene, even if the rot was beginning, invisible under the bandages. I thought there was a the tissue? Some breakdown product of the snake’s venom? I blew a short breath through my nose and took in a fresh one, deeper. “Do I stink verra badly?” he inquired. “Uk!” I said, startled into biting my tongue, and he quivered slightly, in what I took to be suppressed amusement. “Ye sound like a wee truffle-pig, Sassenach, snortling away back there.” “Oh, indeed,” I said, a bit crossly. I touched the tender spot on my tongue. “Well, at least you’re awake. How do you feel?” “Like a pile of moldy tripes.” “Very picturesque,” I said. “Can you be a trifle more specific?” I put a hand lightly on his side, and he let his breath out in a sound like a small moan. “Like a pile of moldy tripes . . .” he said, and pausing to breathe heavily, added, “. . . .with maggots.” “You’d joke on your deathbed, wouldn’t you?” Even as I said it, I felt a tremor of unease. He would, and I hoped this wasn’t it. “Well, I’ll try, Sassenach,” he murmured, sounding drowsy. “But I’m no really at my best under the circumstances.” “Do you hurt much?” “No. I’m just . . . tired.”

He sounded as though he were in fact too exhausted to search for the proper word, and had settled for that one by default. “Little wonder if you are. I’ll go and sleep somewhere else, so you can rest.” I made to throw back the covers and rise, but he stopped me, raising one hand slightly.

“No. No, dinna leave me.” His shoulder fell back toward me, and he tried to lift his head from the pillow. I felt still more uneasy when I realized that he was too weak even to turn over by himself. “I won’t leave you. Maybe I should sleep in the chair, though. I don’t want to—”

“I’m cold,” he said softly. “I’m verra cold.” I pressed my fingers lightly just under his breastbone, seeking the big abdominal pulse. His heartbeat was rapid, shallower than it should have been. He wasn’t feverish. He didn’t just feel cold, he was cold to the touch, his skin chilled and his fingers icy. I found that very alarming.

No longer shy, I cuddled close against him, my breasts squashing softly against his back, cheek resting on his shoulder blade. I concentrated as hard as I could on generating body heat, trying to radiate warmth through my skin and into his. So often he had enfolded me in the curve of his body, sheltering me, giving me the warmth of his big body. I wished passionately that I were larger, and could do the same for him now; as it was, I could do no more than cling to him like a small, fierce mustard plaster, and hope I had the same effect.

fit the rounds of his buttocks. They tightened slightly in surprise, then relaxed. It occurred to me to wonder just why I felt I must lay hands on him, but I didn’t trouble my mind with it; I had had the feeling many times before, and had long since given up worrying that it wasn’t scientific. I could feel the faintly pebbled texture of the rash upon his skin, and the thought came unbidden of the lamia. A creature smooth and cool to the touch, a shape-shifter, passionately venomous, its nature infectious. A swift bite and the snake’s poison spreading, slowing his heart, chilling his warm blood; I could imagine tiny scales rising under his skin in the dark. I forcibly repressed the thought, but not the shudder that went with it.

“Claire,” he said softly. “Touch me.”

I couldn’t hear his heartbeat. I could hear mine; a thick, muffled sound in the ear pressed to the pillow. I slid my hand over the slope of his belly, and more slowly down, fingers parting the coarse curly tangle, dipping low to cup the rounded shapes of him. What heat he had was here. I stroked him with a thumb and felt him stir. The breath went out of him in a long sigh, and his body seemed to grow heavier, sinking into the mattress as he relaxed. His flesh was like candle wax in my hand, smooth and silky as it warmed. I felt very odd; no longer frightened, but with all my senses at once preternaturally acute and yet . . . peaceful. I was no longer conscious of any sounds save Jamie’s breathing and the beating of his heart; the darkness was filled with them. I had no conscious thought, but seemed to act purely by instinct, reaching down and under, seeking the heart of his heat in the center of his being.

Then I was moving—or we were moving together. One hand reached down between us, up between his legs, my fingertips on the spot just behind his testicles. My other hand reached over, around, moving with the same rhythm that flexed my thighs and lifted my hips, thrusting against him from behind. I could have done it forever, and felt that perhaps I did. I had no sense of time passing, only of a dreamy peace, and that slow, steady rhythm as we moved together in the dark. Somewhere, sometime, I felt a steady pulsing, first in the one hand, then in both. It melded with the beat of his heart. He sighed, long and deep, and I felt the air rush from my own lungs. We lay silent and passed gently into unconsciousness, together.

Cap 93 choices ~ THE FIERY CROSS

[sassenach77yle]

“You thought you were dying when we brought you up here, didn’t you?” I asked. My voice sounded more bewildered than accusing. It took him a moment to answer, though he didn’t look hesitant. It was more as though he was looking for the proper words. “Well, I didna ken for sure, no,” he said slowly. “Though I did feel verra ill.” His eyes closed, slowly, as though he were too tired to keep them open. “I still do,” he added, in a detached sort of voice.

“Ye needna worry, though—I’ve made my choice.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?” I groped beneath the covers, and found his wrist. He was warm; hot again, in fact, and with a pulse that was too fast, too shallow. Still, it was so different from the deathly chill I had felt in him the night before that my first reaction was relief. He took a couple of deep breaths, then turned his head and opened his eyes to look at me. “I mean I could have died last night.” He could, certainly—and yet that wasn’t what he meant. He made it sound like a conscious— “What do you mean you’ve made your choice? You’ve decided not to die, after all?” I tried to speak lightly, but it wasn’t working very well. I remembered all too well that odd sense of timeless stillness that had surrounded us. “It was verra strange,” he said. “And yet it wasna strange at all.” He sounded faintly surprised.

“I think,” I said carefully, keeping a thumb on his pulse, “you’d better tell me just what happened.” He actually smiled at that, though the smile was more in his eyes than his lips. Those were dry, and painfully cracked in the corners. I touched his lips with a finger, wanting to go and fetch some soothing ointment for him, some water, some tea—but I put aside the impulse, steeling myself to stay and hear. “I dinna really know, Sassenach—or rather, I do, but I canna think quite how to say it.” He still looked tired, but his eyes stayed open. They lingered on my face, a vivid blue in the morning light, with an expression almost of curiosity, as though he hadn’t seen me before.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, softly. “So verra beautiful, mo chridhe.”

My hands were covered with fading blue blotches and overlooked smears of buffalo blood, I could feel my hair clinging in unwashed tangles to my neck, and I could smell everything from the stale-urine odor of dye to the reek of fear-sweat on my body. And yet whatever he saw lit his face as though he were looking at the full moon on a summer night, pure and lovely. His eyes stayed fixed on my face as he talked, absorbed, moving slightly as they seemed to trace my features. “I felt verra badly indeed when Arch and Roger Mac brought me up,” he said. “Terribly sick, and my leg and my head both throbbing with each heartbeat, so much that I began to dread the next. And so I would listen to the spaces between. Ye wouldna think it,” he said, sounded vaguely surprised, “but there is a great deal of time between the beats of a heart.” He had, he said, begun to hope, in those spaces, that the next beat would not come. And slowly, he realized that his heart was indeed slowing—and that the pain was growing remote, something separate from himself. His skin had grown colder, the fever fading from both body and mind, leaving the latter oddly clear. “And this is where I canna really say, Sassenach.” He pulled his wrist from my grip in the intensity of his story, and curled his fingers over mine. “But I . . . saw.” “Saw what?” And yet I already knew that he couldn’t tell me. Like any doctor, I had seen sick people make up their minds to die—and I knew that look they sometimes had; eyes wide-fixed on something in the distance. He hesitated, struggling to find words. I thought of something, and jumped in to try to help. “There was an elderly woman,” I said. “She died in the hospital where I was on staff—all her grown children with her, it was very peaceful.” I looked down, my own eyes fixed on his fingers, still red and slightly swollen, interlaced with my own stained and bloody digits. “She died—she was dead, I could see her pulse had stopped, she wasn’t breathing. All her children were by her bedside, weeping. And then, quite suddenly, her eyes opened. She wasn’t looking at any of them, but she was seeing something. And she said, quite clearly, ‘Oooh!’ Just like that—thrilled, like a little girl who’s just seen something wonderful. And then she closed her eyes again.” I looked up at him, blinking back tears. “Was it—like that?” He nodded, speechless, and his hand tightened on mine. “Something like,” he said, very softly. He had felt oddly suspended, in a place he could by no means describe, feeling completely at peace—and seeing very clearly. “It was as if there was a—it wasna a door, exactly, but a passageway of some kind—before me. And I could go through it, if I wanted. And I did want to,” he said, giving me a sideways glance and a shy smile. He had known what lay behind him, too, and realized that for that moment, he could choose. Go forward—or turn back. “And that’s when you asked me to touch you?” “I knew ye were the only thing that could bring me back,” he said simply. “I didna have the strength, myself.” There was a huge lump in my throat; I couldn’t speak, but squeezed his hand very tight. “Why?” I asked at last. “Why did you . . . choose to stay?” My throat was still tight, and my voice was hoarse. He heard it, and his hand tightened on mine; a ghost of his usual firm grip, and yet with the memory of strength within it. “Because ye need me,” he said, very softly. “Not because you love me?” He looked up then, with a shadow of a smile.

“Sassenach . . . I love ye now, and I will love ye always. Whether I am dead—or you—whether we are together or apart. You know it is true,” he said quietly, and touched my face. “I know it of you, and ye know it of me as well.”

He bent his head then, the bright hair swinging down across his cheek. “I didna mean only you, Sassenach. I have work still to do. I thought—for a bit—that perhaps it wasna so; that ye all might manage, with Roger Mac and auld Arch, Joseph and the Beardsleys. But there is war coming, and—for my sins—” he grimaced slightly, “I am a chief.” He shook his head slightly, in resignation. “God has made me what I am. He has given me the duty—and I must do it, whatever the cost.”

“The cost,” I echoed uneasily, hearing something harsher than resignation in his voice. He looked at me, then glanced, almost off-handed, toward the foot of the bed. “My leg’s no much worse,” he said, matter-of-factly, “but it’s no better. I think ye’ll have to take it off.”

The fiery cross

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I WOKE DRENCHED in sweat. The thin chemise in which I slept clung to me, transparent with wet; the darkness of my flesh showed in patches through the cloth, even in the dim light from the unshuttered window. I had kicked away sheet and quilt in my disordered sleep, and lay sprawled with the linen shift rucked up above my thighs—but still my skin pulsed with heat, waves of smothering warmth that flowed over me like melted candle wax. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stood up, feeling dizzy and disembodied. My hair was soaked and my neck was slick with perspiration; a trickle of sweat ran down between my breasts and disappeared.

Jamie was still asleep; I could see the humped mound of his upturned shoulder, and the spill of his hair, dark across the pillow. He shifted slightly and mumbled something, but then lapsed into the regular deep breaths of sleep. I needed air, but didn’t want to wake him. I pushed away the gauze netting, stepped softly across to the door, and into the small box-room across the hall. It was a small room, but it had a large window, in order to balance the one in our bedroom. This one had no glass as yet; it was covered only by wooden shutters, and I could feel drafts of night air drifting through the slats, swirling across the floor, caressing my bare legs. Urgent for the coolness of it, I stripped off my wet shift and sighed in relief as the draft skimmed upward over hips and breasts and arms.

The heat was still there, though, hot waves pulsing over my skin with each heartbeat. Fumbling in the dark, I unfastened the shutters and pushed them open, gasping for the great draughts of cool night that flooded in upon me. From here, I could see above the trees that screened the house, down the slope of the ridge, almost to the faint black line of the river far away. The wind stirred in the treetops, murmuring, and wafted over me with blessed coolness and the pungent green smell of leaves and summer sap. I closed my eyes and stood still; within a minute or two, the heat was gone, vanished like a quenched coal, leaving me damp but peaceful. I didn’t want to go back to bed yet; my hair was damp, and the sheets where I had lain would still be clammy. I leaned naked on the sill, the down-hairs of my body prickling pleasantly as my skin cooled.[...]

Then I saw Jamie, standing still. He made no noise, but I felt him at once; a warmth, a thickening, in the cool air of the room.

“Are ye well, Sassenach?” he asked softly from the doorway. “Yes, fine.” I spoke in a whisper, not to wake Lizzie and her father, who slept in the back bedroom. “Just needed a breath of air; I didn’t mean to wake you.” He came closer, a tall naked ghost, smelling of sleep.

“I always wake when you do, Sassenach; I sleep ill without ye by my side.” He touched my forehead briefly. “I thought ye were maybe fevered; the bed was damp where ye’d lain. You’re sure you’re all right?” “I was hot; I couldn’t sleep. But yes, I’m all right. And you?” I touched his face; his skin was warm with sleep. He came to stand beside me at the window, looking out into the late summer night. The moon was full, and the birds were restless; from near at hand, I heard the faint chirp of a late-nesting warbler, and farther off, the squeak of a hunting saw-whet owl. “You recall Laurence Sterne?” Jamie asked, evidently reminded of the naturalist by the sounds. “I doubt anyone who’s met him would forget him,” I said dryly. “The bag of dried spiders makes rather an impression. To say nothing of the smell.” Sterne carried with him a distinctive aroma, composed in equal parts of natural body odor, an expensive cologne that he favored—which was sufficiently strong to compete with—though not to conquerconquer—the pungencies of various preservatives such as camphor and alcohol—and a faint reek of decay from the specimens he collected. He chuckled softly. “That’s true. He stinks worse than you do.” “I do not stink!” I said indignantly. “Mmphm.” He took my hand and lifted it to his nose, sniffing delicately. “Onions,” he said, “and garlic. Something hot . . . peppercorns. Aye, and clove. Squirrel-blood and meat-juice.” His tongue flicked out like a snake’s, touching my knuckles. “Starch—potatoes—and something woody. Toadstools.” “Not fair at all,” I said, trying to get my hand back. “You know perfectly well what we had for dinner. And they weren’t toadstools, they were woodears.” “Mm?” He turned my hand over and sniffed at my palm, then my wrist and up my forearm. “Vinegar and dill; ye’ve been making cucumber pickles, aye? Good, I like those. Mm, oh, and soured milk here in the fine hairs on your arm—were ye splashed churning butter, or skimming cream?” “You guess, since you’re so good at it.” “Butter.” “Damn.” I was still trying to pull away, but only because the stubble on his face tickled the sensitive skin of my upper arm. He smelled his way up my arm into the hollow of my shoulder, making me squeak as the strands of his hair drifted across my skin. He lifted my arm a bit, touched the damp silky hair there, and ran his fingers under his nose.

“Eau de femme,” he murmured, and I heard the laughter in his voice. “Ma petite fleur.”

“And I bathed, too,” I said ruefully. “Aye, with the sunflower soap,” he said, a slight tone of surprise in his voice as he sniffed at the hollow of my collarbone. I gave a small, high-pitched yelp, and he reached up to lay a large, warm hand across my mouth. He smelt of gunpowder, hay, and manure, but I couldn’t say so, what with him muffling me. He straightened a little, and leaned close, so the roughness of his whiskers brushed my cheek. His hand fell away, and I felt the softness of his lips against my temple, the butterfly touch of his tongue on my skin. “And salt,” he said, very softly, his breath warm on my face. “There is salt on your face, and your lashes are wet. D’ye weep, Sassenach?” “No,” I said, though I had a sudden, irrational urge to do just that. “No, I sweat. I was . . . hot.” I wasn’t any longer; my skin was cool; cold where the night-draft from the window chilled my backside.

“Ah, but here . . . mm.” He was on his knees now, one arm about my waist to hold me still, his nose buried in the hollow between my breasts. “Oh,” he said, and his voice had changed again. I didn’t normally wear perfume, but I had a special oil, sent from the Indies, made with orange flowers, jasmine, vanilla beans, and cinnamon. I had only a tiny vial, and wore a small dab infrequently—for occasions that I thought might perhaps be special.

“Ye wanted me,” he said ruefully. “And I fell asleep without even touching you. I’m sorry, Sassenach. Ye should have said.”

“You were tired.” His hand had left my mouth; I stroked his hair, smoothing the long dark strands behind his ear. He laughed, and I felt the warmth of his breath on my bare stomach.

“Ye could raise me from the dead for that, Sassenach, and I wouldna mind it.”

He stood up then, facing me, and even in the dim light I could see that no such desperate measures on my part would be required. “It’s hot,” I said. “I’m sweating.” “Ye think I’m not?” His hands closed on my waist and he lifted me suddenly, setting me down on the broad windowsill. I gasped at contact with the cool wood, reflexively grasping the window frame on either side. “What on earth are you doing?” He didn’t bother answering; it was an entirely rhetorical question, in any case.

“Eau de femme,” he murmured, his soft hair brushing across my thighs as he knelt. The floorboards creaked under his weight. “Parfum d’amor, mm?”

The cool breeze lifted my hair, drew it tickling across my back like the lightest of lover’s touches. Jamie’s hands were firm on the curve of my hips; I was in no danger of falling, and yet I felt the dizzy drop behind me, the clear and endless night, with its star-strewn empty sky into which I might fall and go on falling, a tiny speck, blazing hotter and hotter with the friction of my passage, bursting finally into the incandescence of a shooting . . . star. “Ssh,” Jamie murmured, far off. He was standing now, his hands on my waist, and the moaning noise might have been the wind, or me. His fingers brushed my lips. They might have been matches, striking flames against my skin. Heat danced over me, belly and breast, neck and face, burning in front, cool behind, like St. Lawrence on his gridiron. I wrapped my legs around him, one heel settled in the cleft of his buttocks, the solid strength of his hips between my legs my only anchor.

“Let go,” he said in my ear. “I’ll hold you.” I did let go, and leaned back on the air, safe in his hands.

The fiery cross cap 107 ZUGUNRUHE

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“You won’t leave me?” I asked at last. “You won’t die?” He shook his head, and squeezed my hand tight.

“You are my courage, as I am your conscience,” he whispered. “You are my heart—and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?”

“I do know that,” I said, and my voice shook. “That’s why I’m so afraid. I don’t want to be half a person again, I can’t bear it.” He thumbed a lock of hair off my wet cheek, and pulled me into his arms, so close that I could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He was so solid, so alive, ruddy hair curling gold against bare skin. And yet I had held him so before—and lost him.His hand touched my cheek, warm despite the dampness of my skin. “But do ye not see how verra small a thing is the notion of death, between us two, Claire?” he whispered. My hands curled into fists against his chest. No, I didn’t think it a small thing at all. “All the time after ye left me, after Culloden—I was dead then, was I not?” “I thought you were. That’s why I—oh.” I took a deep, tremulous breath, and he nodded. “Two hundred years from now, I shall most certainly be dead, Sassenach,” he said. He smiled crookedly. “Be it Indians, wild beasts, a plague, the hangman’s rope, or only the blessing of auld age—I will be dead.” “Yes.” “And while ye were there—in your own time—I was dead, no?” I nodded, wordless. Even now, I could look back and see the abyss of despair into which that parting had dropped me, and from which I had climbed, one painful inch at a time.Now I stood with him again upon the summit of life, and could not contemplate descent. He reached down and plucked a stalk of grass, spreading the soft green beards between his fingers. “ ‘Man is like the grass of the field,’ ” he quoted softly, brushing the slender stem over my knuckles, where they rested against his chest. “ ‘Today it blooms; tomorrow it withers and is cast into the oven.’ ” He lifted the silky green tuft to his lips and kissed it, then touched it gently to my mouth.

“I was dead, my Sassenach—and yet all that time, I loved you.”

I closed my eyes, feeling the tickle of the grass on my lips, light as the touch of sun and air. “I loved you, too,” I whispered. “I always will.” The grass fell away. Eyes still closed, I felt him lean toward me, and his mouth on mine, warm as sun, light as air.

“So long as my body lives, and yours—we are one flesh,” he whispered. His fingers touched me, hair and chin and neck and breast, and I breathed his breath and felt him solid under my hand. Then I lay with my head on his shoulder, the strength of him supporting me, the words deep and soft in his chest. “And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.”

The wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut trees nearby, and the scents of late summer rose up rich around us; pine and grass and strawberries, sun-warmed stone and cool water, and the sharp, musky smell of his body next to mine.

“Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed.”

“That’s the first law of thermodynamics,” I said, wiping my nose.

“No,” he said. “That’s faith.”

Cap 16 THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS~ DRUMS OF AUTUMN

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Then let amorous kisses dwell

On our lips, begin and tell

A Thousand, and a Hundred, score

an Hundred, and a Thousand more 💗

[sassenach77yle]

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Guess who's back for #Outlander Season 8???

Posted 1 April 2024

[sassenach77yle]

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Tonight is the Vigil of Easter, a service where we hear readings from the Bible regarding God's deliverance of His people (e.g., the flight from Egypt and the path through the Red Sea), the reading of the Passion (the description of Jesus's condemnation and crucifixion), and the Resurrection. Catechumens (the people who wish to become Catholics and have been taking instruction) will be baptized, and others confirmed. It's a time of mingled sorrow, hope and joy--the coming of Easter.

For the moment, I thought I'd post the following snip from BEES (the chapter titled "Metanoia"), as it's rather apropos. (Tomorrow, I'll post a new excerpt as an Easter egg. <g>)

[Excerpt from GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, Copyright 2021 Diana Gabaldon]

A stack of these broadsides had been left on the breakfast table; he’d caught a glimpse of one headline as Germain had gathered them up and tapped the pages tidily into order before putting them in his bag:

THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HENRY HUGHES Who Suffered Death on the Twelfth of June, Anno Domini 1779 ...

No stranger to the excesses of the daily press—the things Fergus printed were in fact not that different in character or intent from the tabloid papers of his own time—he had been struck by one factor peculiar to this time: to wit, the fact that the condemned men (and the occasional woman) were always accompanied by a clergyman on their journey toward the gallows. Not just a private pre-execution visit to give prayers and comfort, but to climb Calvary alongside the condemned.

_What would I say to him_, he wondered, _if I should find myself called to accompany a man to his execution?_ He’d seen men killed, seen people die, certainly; much too often. But these were natural—if sometimes sudden and catastrophic—deaths. Surely it was different, a healthy man, sound of body, filled with life, and facing the imminent prospect of being deprived of that life by the decree of the state. Worse, having one’s death presented as a morally elevating public spectacle.

It struck Roger suddenly that he’d _been_ publicly executed, and the milk and French toast shifted at the sudden memory.

_Aye, well…so was Jesus, wasn’t He?_ He didn’t know where that thought had come from—it felt like something Jamie would say, logical and reasonable—but it flooded him at once with unexpected feeling.

It was one thing to know Christ as God and Savior and all the other capital-letter things that went with that. It was another to realize with shocking clarity that, bar the nails, he knew exactly how Jesus of Nazareth had felt. Alone. Betrayed, terrified, wrenched away from those he loved, and wanting with every atom of one’s being to stay alive.

_Well, now you know what you’d say to a condemned man on his way to the gallows, don’t you?_

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