veraadxer - Tumblr blog

[veraadxer]

#Outlander #TheCompanyWeKeep #TheFieryCross

“I dinna want ye to bear another child. I wouldna risk your loss, Sassenach,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “Not for a dozen bairns. I’ve daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, grandchildren—weans enough.”

He looked at me directly then, and spoke softly.

“But I’ve no life but you, Claire.”

He swallowed audibly, and went on, eyes fixed on mine.

“I did think, though . . . if ye do want another child . . . perhaps I could still give ye one.”

Brief tears blurred my eyes. It was cold in the lean-to, and our fingers were stiff. I fumbled my hand into his, squeezing tight.

Even as we had spoken, my mind had been busy, envisioning possibilities, difficulties, blessings. I did not need to think further, for I knew the decision had made itself. A child was a temptation of the flesh, as well as of the spirit; I knew the bliss of that unbounded oneness, as I knew the bittersweet joy of seeing that oneness fade as the child learned itself and stood alone.

But I had crossed some subtle line. Whether it was that I was born myself with some secret quota embodied in my flesh, or only that I knew my sole allegiance must be given elsewhere now . . . I knew. As a mother, I had the lightness now of effort complete, honor satisfied. Mission accomplished.

I leaned my forehead against his chest and spoke into the shadowed cloth above his heart.

No,” I said softly. “But, Jamie . . . I so love you.”

#DianaGabaldon

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#Outlander #BetweenTwoFires

I didna ken it might be that way,” he said from behind me. “I thought an apoplexy would kill a man outright.”

“Sometimes that’s so,” I said, a little absently, frowning as I concentrated on the job at hand. “Most often that’s the way of it, in fact.”

“Aye? I never thought to ask Dougal, or Rupert. Or Jenny. Whether my father—” The sentence stopped abruptly, as though he had swallowed it.

Ah. I felt a small jolt of realization in my solar plexus. So that was it. I hadn’t remembered, but he had told me of it, years before, soon after we were married. His father had seen Jamie flogged at Fort William, and under the shock of it, had suffered an apoplexy and died. Jamie, wounded and ill, had been spirited away from the Fort and gone into exile. He had not been told of his father’s death until weeks later—had no chance of farewell, had been able neither to bury his father nor honor his grave.

“Jenny would have known,” I said gently. “She would have told you, if . . .” If Brian Fraser had suffered a death of such lingering ignominy as this, dwindled and shrunken, powerless before the eyes of the family he had striven to protect.

Would she? If she had nursed her father through incontinence and helplessness? If she had waited days or weeks, suddenly bereft of both father and brother, left alone to stare death in the face as it approached, moment by slow moment . . . and yet Jenny Fraser was a very strong woman, who had loved her brother dearly. Perhaps she would have sought to shield him, both from guilt and from knowledge.

I turned to face him. He was half-naked, but clean now, with a fresh shirt from his saddlebag in his hands. He was looking at me, but I saw his eyes slip beyond me, to fasten on the corpse with a troubled fascination.

“She would have told you,” I repeated, striving to infuse my voice with certainty.

Jamie drew a deep, painful breath.

“Perhaps.”

“She would,” I said more firmly.

He nodded, drew another deep breath, and let it out, more easily. I realized that the house was not the only thing haunted by Beardsley’s death. Jenny held the key of the only door that could be opened for Jamie, though.

I understood now why he had wept, and had taken such care with the digging of the grave. Not from either shock or charity, let alone from regard for the dead man—but for the sake of Brian Fraser; the father he had neither buried nor mourned.

I turned back and drew the edges of the blanket up, folded them snugly over the cleaned and decent remains, and tied it with twine at head and feet, making a tidy, anonymous package. Jamie was forty-nine; the same age at which his father had died. I stole a quick glance at him, as he finished dressing. If his father had been such a one as he was . . . I felt a sudden pang of sorrow, for the loss of so much. For strength cut off and love snuffed out, for the loss of a man I knew had been great, only from the reflection I saw of him in his son.

Dressed, Jamie circled round the table to help me lift the body. Instead of putting his hands under it, though, he reached across and took my hands in both of his.

“Swear to me, Claire,” he said. His voice was nearly gone with hoarseness; I had to lean close to hear it. “If it should one day fall to my lot as it did to my father . . . then swear ye will give me the same mercy I gave this wretched bugger here.”

There were fresh blisters on his palms from the digging; I felt the strange softness of them, fluid-filled and shifting as he gripped my hands.

“I’ll do what must be done,” I whispered back, at last. “Just as you did.” I squeezed his hands and let them go. “Come now and help me bury him. It’s over.”

#DianaGabaldon

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He stood tall and broad-shouldered in his best gray gentleman’s coat, kilted below in soft blue tartan, his hair loose and blazing on his shoulders, with a small warrior’s plait down one side, adorned with a single feather. Firelight glinted from the knurled gold hilt of his dirk and the brooch that held his looped plaid. He looked pleasant enough, but his manner overall was serious, intent. He made a good show—and knew it.

The crowd quieted within seconds, men elbowing their more garrulous neighbors to silence.

“Ye ken well enough what we’re about here, aye?” he asked without preamble. He raised his hand, in which he held the Governor’s crumpled summons, the red smear of its official seal visible in the leaping firelight. There was a rumble of agreement; the crowd was still cheerful, blood and whisky coursing freely through their veins.

“We are called in duty, and we come in honor to serve the cause of law—and the Governor.”

Roger saw old Gerhard Mueller, leaning to one side to hear the translation that one of his sons-in-law was murmuring in his ear. He nodded his approval, and shouted, “Ja! Lang lebe Governor!” There was a ripple of laughter, and echoing shouts in English and Gaelic.

Jamie smiled, waiting for the noise to die down. As it did, he turned slowly, nodding as he looked from one face to the next, acknowledging each man. Then he turned to the side and lifted a hand to the cross that stood stark and black behind him.

“In the Highlands of Scotland, when a chieftain would set himself for war,” he said, his tone casually conversational, but pitched to be heard throughout the dooryard, “he would burn the fiery cross, and send it for a sign through the lands of his clan. It was a signal to the men of his name, to gather their weapons and come to the gathering place, prepared for battle.”

There was a stir in the midst of the crowd, a brief nudging and more cries of approval, though these were more subdued. A few men had seen this, or at least knew what he was talking about. The rest raised their chins and craned their necks, mouths half-open in interest.

“But this is a new land, and while we are friends”—he smiled at Gerhard Mueller—“Ja, Freunde, neighbors, and countrymen”—a look at the Lindsay brothers—“and we will be companions in arms, we are not clan. While I am given command, I am not your chief.”

The hell you aren’t, Roger thought. Or well on your way to it, anyroad. He took a last deep swallow of cold beer and put down cup and plate. The food could wait a bit longer. Bree had taken back the baby and had his bodhran tucked under her arm; he reached for it, and she gave him a glancing smile, but most of her attention was fixed on her father.

Jamie bent and pulled a torch from the fire, stood with it in his hand, lighting the broad planes and sharp angles of his face.

“Let God witness here our willingness, and may God strengthen our arms—” He paused, to let the Germans catch up. “But let this fiery cross stand as testament to our honor, to invoke God’s protection for our families—until we come safe home again.”

He turned and touched the torch to the upright of the cross, holding it until the dry bark caught and a small flame grew and glimmered from the dark wood.

Everyone stood silent, watching. There was no sound but the shift and sigh of the crowd, echoing the sough of the wind in the wilderness around them. It was no more than a tiny tongue of fire, flickering in the breeze, on the verge of going out altogether. No petrol-soaked roar, no devouring conflagration. Roger felt Brianna sigh beside him, some of the tension leaving her.

The flame steadied and caught. The edges of the jigsaw-pieces of pine bark glowed crimson, then white, and vanished into ash as the flame began to spread upward. It was big and solid, and would burn slowly, this cross, halfway through the night, lighting the dooryard as the men gathered beneath it, talking, eating, drinking, beginning the process of becoming what Jamie Fraser meant them to be: friends, neighbors, companions in arms. Under his command.

Fraser stood for a moment, watching, to be sure the flame had caught. Then he turned back to the crowd of men and dropped his torch back into the fire.

“We cannot say what may befall us. God grant us courage,” he said, very simply. “God grant us wisdom. If it be His will, may He grant us peace. We ride in the morning.”

He turned then and left the fire, glancing to find Roger as he did so. Roger nodded back, swallowed to clear his throat, and began to sing softly from the darkness, the opening to the song Jamie had wanted to finish the proceedings—“The Flower of Scotland.”

“Oh, flower of Scotland,

When will we see your like again?

That fought and died for

Your wee bit hill and glen . . .”

#DianaGabaldon

[veraadxer]

Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man?”

There was the briefest of pauses, and I felt Jamie jerk slightly, taken by surprise. I squeezed his arm, and saw the firelight gleam on the gold ring on my hand.

“Oh. I do, to be sure!” he said. Brianna turned her head and smiled at him, her eyes dark with love. He gave her back the smile, then blinked, clearing his throat, and squeezed my hand hard.

I felt a slight tightening of the throat myself, as they spoke their vows, remembering both of my own weddings. And Jocasta? I wondered. She had been married three times; what echoes of the past did she hear in these words?

“I, Roger Jeremiah, take thee, Brianna Ellen, to be my wedded wife . . .”

The light of memory shone on most of the faces around the fire. The Bugs stood close together, looking at each other with identical gazes of soft devotion. Mr. Wemyss, standing by his daughter, bowed his head and closed his eyes, a look of mingled joy and sadness on his face, no doubt thinking of his own wife, dead these many years.

“In plenty and in want . . .”

“In joy and in sorrow . . .”

“In sickness and in health . . .”

Lizzie’s face was rapt, eyes wide at the mystery being carried out before her. How soon might it be her turn, to stand before witnesses and make such awesome promises?

Jamie reached across and took my right hand in his, his fingers linking with mine, and the silver of my ring shone red in the glow of the flames. I looked up into his face and saw the promise spoken in his eyes, as it was in mine.

“As long as we both shall live.”

[veraadxer]

"Your mother did tell me once that men meant to fly to the moon," he said abruptly. "They hadna done it yet, that she knew, but they meant to. Will ye know about that?"

She nodded, eyes fixed on the rising moon.

"They did. They will, I mean." She smiled faintly. "Apollo, they called it--the rocket ship that took them."

She could see his smile in answer; the moon was high enough to shed its radiance on the clearing. He tilted his face up, considering.

"Aye? And what did they say of it, the men who went?"

"They didn't need to say anything--they sent back pictures."

[veraadxer]

🎉⚔️⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️🎉⚔️

#HappyBirthdayJamieFraser #May1th #KingOfMen

“I am a chief. God has made me what I am. He has given me the duty—and I must do it, whatever the cost.” #JamesAlexanderMalcolmMacKenzieFraser

#DianaGabaldon

#TheFieryCross #Outlander

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Watch this! It's great. This young make-up artist has painted one of my GOT arts. She has kindly given me the credit (although you do not believe it, very few do). If you have IG follow her, she is simply wonderful

[veraadxer]

Slàinte!" he echoed them-then tipped the cup, so that a little of the brandy fell into the flames, where it hissed and burned blue for an instant's time.

He lowered the cup, and paused for a moment, head bent. He lifted his head then, and raised the cup toward Archie Hayes, who stood across the fire from

him, round face unreadable, fire sparking from his silver gorget and his father's brooch. "While we mourn the loss of those who died, we must also pay tribute to you who fought and suffered with equal valor-and survived."

"Slàinte!" came the salute, louder this time with the rumble of male voices. Jamie closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them, looking toward Brianna, who stood with Lizzie and Marsali, Jemmy in her arms. The rawness and strength of his features stood out by contrast with the round-faced innocence of the children, the gentleness of the young mothers-though even in their delicacy, I thought, the firelight showed the seams of Scottish granite in their bones.

"We pay tribute to our women," he said, lifting the cup in turn to Brianna, to Marsali, and then, turning, to me. A brief smile touched his lips. "For they are our strength. And our revenge upon our enemies will be at the last the revenge of the cradle. Sainte!"

Amid the shouts of the crowd, he drained the wooden cup, and threw it into the fire, where it lay dark and round for a moment, then burst all at once into brilliant flame.

Thig a seo!' he called, putting out his right hand to me, Thig a seo, a Shorcha, nighean Eanruig, neart mo chridhe. ` Come to me, he said. Come to me Claire, daughter of Henry, strength of my heart. Scarcely feeling my feet or those I stumbled over, I made my way to him, and clasped his hand, his grip cold but strong on my fingers.

I saw him turn his head; was he looking for Bree? But no-he stretched out his other hand toward Roger...

Diana Gabaldon

The Fiery Cross

[veraadxer]

He was gnawing his fist at the moment, with a ferocious scowl of concentration, and with his soft fuzz of red-gold plush, he looked like no one so much as Jamie himself. "Mm. So why all the insistence on having Roger vetted by a priest?"

"Well, they'll be married in any case," he said logically. "I want the wee lad baptized a Catholic, though." He laid a large hand gently on Jemmy's head, thumb smoothing the tiny red brows. "So if I made a bit of a fuss about MacKenzie, I thought they'd be pleased to agree about an gille ruadh here, aye? "

I laughed, and pulled a fold of blanket up around Jemmy's ears. "And I thought Brianna had you figured out! "

"So does she," he said, with a grin. He bent suddenly and kissed me.

His mouth was soft and very warm. He tasted of bread and butter, and he smelled strongly of fresh leaves and unwashed male, ivith just the faintest trace of effluvium of diaper.

"Oh, that's nice," I said with approval. "Do it again."

The wood around us was still, in the way of woods. No bird, no beast, just the sough of leaves above and the rush of water underfoot. Constant movement, constant sound-and at the center of it all, a perfect peace. There were a good many people on the mountain, and most of them not that far awayyet just here, just now, we might have been alone on Jupiter.

I opened my eyes and sighed, tasting honey. Jamie smiled at me, and brushed a fallen yellow leaf from my hair. The baby lay in my arms, a heavy, warm weight, the center of the universe.

Neither of us spoke, not wishing to disturb the stillness. It was like beiniz at the tip of a spinning top, I thought-a whirl of events and people going on all round, and a step in one direction or another would plunge us back into that spinning frenzy, but here at the very center-there was peace.

I reached up and brushed a scatter of maple seeds from his shoulder, He seized my hand, and brought it to his mouth with a sudden fierceness that startled me. And yet his lips were tender, the tip of his tongue warm on the fleshy mound at the base of my thumb-the mount of Venus, it's called, love's seat.

He raised his head, and I felt the sudden chill on my hand, where the ancient scar showed white as bone. A letter "J", cut in the skin, his mark on me.

The Fiery Cross

Diana Gabaldon

[veraadxer]

#Outlander #Bestmoments to remember

“...when I heard you cry out. I would have killed a dozen men to get to you, Claire.” His voice cracked.

“And when ye screamed, I went to you, armed wi’ nothing but an empty gun and my two hands.” Jamie was speaking a little more calmly now, but his eyes were still wild with pain and rage. I was silent. Unsettled by the horror of my encounter with Randall, I had not at all appreciated the desperate courage it had taken for him to come into the fort after me.

He turned away suddenly, shoulders slumping.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “Aye, you’re quite right.” Suddenly the rage was gone from his voice, replaced by a tone I had never heard in him before, even in the extremities of physical pain.

“My pride is hurt. And my pride is about all I’ve got left to me.” He leaned his forearms against a rough-barked pine and let his head drop onto, them, exhausted. His voice was so low I could barely hear him.

“You’re tearin’ my guts out, Claire.”

Something very similar was happening to my own. Tentatively, I came up behind him. He didn’t move, even when I slipped my arms around his waist. I rested my cheek on his bowed back.

“I’m sorry,” I said, simply. “Please forgive me.” He turned then, to hold me tightly. I felt his trembling ease bit by bit. “Forgiven, lass,” he murmured at last into my hair. Releasing me, he looked down at me, sober and formal.

“I’m sorry too,” he said. “I’ll ask your pardon for what I said; I was sore, and I said more nor I meant. Will ye forgive me too?” After his last speech, I hardly felt that there was anything for me to forgive, but I nodded and pressed his hands. “Forgiven.”

In an easier silence, we mounted again. The road was straight for a long way here, and far ahead I could see a small cloud of dust that must be Dougal and the other men.

Jamie was back with me again; he held me with one arm as we rode, and I felt safer. But there was still a vague sense of injury and constraint; things were not yet healed between us. We had forgiven each other, but our words still hung in memory, not to be forgotten.

Outlander

Diana Gabaldon

[veraadxer]

“He’s asleep,” she whispered. Moving as cautiously as one holding a vial of nitroglycerine, she scooted to the edge of the bed and stood up.

She might have meant to lay the child in its cradle, but Roger lifted his hands instinctively. She hesitated for no more than a second, then bent to lay the child in his arms. Her breasts hung full and heavy in the shadow of her open gown, and he smelled the deep musk of her body as she brushed him.

The baby was surprisingly heavy; dense, for the size of the bundle. He was amazingly warm, too; warmer even than his mother’s body.

Roger boosted the tiny body cautiously, cuddling it against him; the small, curved buttocks fit in the palm of his hand. It—he—wasn’t quite bald, after all. There was a soft red-blond fuzz all over the head. Tiny ears. Almost transparent; the one he could see was red and crumpled from being pressed against his mother’s arm.

“You can’t tell by looking.” Brianna’s voice jerked him out of his contemplation. “I’ve tried.” She was standing across the room, one drawer of the sideboard open. He thought it might be regret on her face, but the shadows were too deep to tell.

“That wasn’t what I was looking for.” He lowered the baby carefully to his lap. “It’s only—this is the first time I’ve had a proper look at my son.” The words sounded peculiar, stiff to his tongue. She relaxed a little, though.

“Oh. Well, he’s all there.” There was a small note of pride in her voice that caught at his heart, and made him look closer. The little fists were curled up tight as snail shells; he picked one up and gently stroked it with his thumb. Slowly as an octopus moving, the hand opened, enough for him to insert the tip of his index finger. The fist closed again in reflex, astonishing in the strength of its grip.

He could hear a rhythmic whish across the room, and realized that she was brushing her hair. He would have liked to watch her, but was too fascinated to look up.

The body had feet like a frog’s; wide at the toes, narrow at the heel. Roger stroked one with a fingertip, and smiled as

the tiny toes sprang wide apart. Not webbed, at least.

My son, he thought, and wasn’t sure what he felt at the thought. It would take time to get used to.

But he could be, came the next thought. Not just Brianna’s child, to be loved for her sake—but his own flesh and blood.

That thought was even more foreign. He tried to push it from his mind, but it kept coming back. That coupling in the dark, that bittersweet mix of pain and joy—had he started this, in the midst of that?

He hadn’t meant to—but he hoped like hell he had.

The child was wearing some long thing made of white gauzy stuff; he lifted it, looking at the sagging diaper and the perfect oval of the tiny navel just above. Moved by a curiosity he didn’t think to question, he hooked a finger in the edge of the clout and pulled it down.

“I told you he was all there.” Brianna was standing at his elbow.

“Well, it’s there,” Roger said dubiously. “But isn’t it a bit...small?”

She laughed.

“It’ll grow,” she assured him. “It’s not like he needs it for much yet.”

His own penis, gone flaccid between his thighs, gave a small twitch at that reminder.

“Shall I take him?” She reached for the baby, but he shook his head and picked up the child again.

“Not just yet.” It—he—smelled of milk and something sweetly putrid. Something else, his own indefinable smell, like

nothing else Roger had ever encountered.

“Eau de baby, Mama calls it.” She sat on the bed, a faint smile on her face. “She says it’s a natural protective device;

one of the things babies use to keep their parents from killing them.”

“Killing him? But he’s a sweet wee lad,” Roger protested.

One eyebrow quirked up in derision.

“You haven’t been living with the little fiend for the last month. This is the first night he hasn’t had colic in three weeks.

I would have exposed him on a hillside if he wasn’t mine.”

If he wasn’t mine. That certainty was a mother’s reward, he supposed. She’d always know—had always known. For a

brief, surprising moment, he envied her.

The baby stirred and made a small, faint yawp! noise against his neck. Before he could move, she was up and had the

child back in her arms, patting the rounded little back. There was a soft belch, and he subsided into limpness once more. Brianna set him on his stomach in the cradle, carefully, as if he were wired to a stick of dynamite. He could see the

faint outline of her body through the gauze, highlighted by the fire behind her. When she turned around, he was ready. “You could have gone back, once you knew. There would have been time.” He held her eyes, not letting her look away.

“So it’s my turn to ask, then, isn’t it? What made you wait for me? Love—or obligation?” “Both,” she said, her eyes nearly black. “Neither. I—just couldn’t go without you.”

He breathed deeply, feeling the last small doubt in the pit of his stomach melt away. “Then you do know.”

“Yes.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall, and the loose gown fell too, leaving her as naked as he was. It was red, by God. More than red; she was gold and amber, ivory and cinnabar, and he wanted her with a longing that went beyond flesh.

“You said that you loved me, by all you hold holy,” she whispered. “What is it that’s holy to you, Roger?”

He stood and reached for her, gently, carefully. Held her against his heart, and remembered the stinking hold of the Gloriana and a thin, ragged woman who smelled of milk and ordure. Of fire and drums and blood, and an orphan baptized with the name of the father who had sacrificed himself for fear of the power of love.

“You,” he said, against her hair. “Him. Us. There isn’t anything else, is there?”

[veraadxer]

_Strong, isn’t he?” I said, and realized that I was crying only when I tasted the salt of my tears running into the corners of my smile.

Sometime later, with mother and child cleaned up and made comfortable, food and drink brought for Brianna, and a last check assuring that all was well, I walked out into the deep shadows of the upper gallery. I felt pleasantly detached from reality, as though I were walking a foot or so off the ground.

Jamie had gone down to tell John; he was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. He drew me into his arms without a word and kissed me; as he let me go I saw the deep red crescents of Brianna’s nailmarks on his hands, not yet faded.

“Ye did brawly too,” he whispered to me. Then the joy in his eyes bloomed bright and flowered in a face-splitting grin. “Grannie!”

Diana Gabaldon

Drums Of Autumn

[veraadxer]

I—canna stay long, Uncle,” Ian said. He looked pale, under the lines of tattooing, but stood erect. “I said they must let

me come to say goodbye.”

Jamie had gone white to the lips.

“Jesus, Ian,” he whispered.

“The naming ceremony is tonight,” Ian said, trying not to look at us. “They say that after that I will be Indian, and I must

not speak any tongue but the Kahnyen’kehaka; I canna speak again in English, or the Gaelic.” He smiled painfully. “And I ken ye didna have much Mohawk.”

“Ian, ye canna be doing this!”

“I’ve done it, Uncle Jamie,” Ian said softly. He looked at me then.

“Auntie. Will ye say to my mother that I willna forget her? My Da will know, I think.”

“Oh, Ian!” I hugged him hard, and his arms went gently around me.

“Ye can leave in the morning,” he said to Jamie. “They willna prevent ye.”

I let him go, and he crossed the hut to where Roger stood, looking stunned. Ian offered him a hand.

“I am sorry for what we did to ye,” he said quietly. “Ye’ll take good care of my cousin and the bairn?”

Roger took his hand and shook it. He cleared his throat and found his voice.

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

Then Ian turned to Jamie.

“No, Ian,” he said. “God, no, lad. Let it be me!”

Ian smiled, though his eyes were full of tears. “Ye said to me once, that my life wasna meant to be wasted,” he said. “It

won’t be.” He held out his arms. “I willna forget you, either, Uncle Jamie.”

[veraadxer]

Daughter, I canna say if I shall see you again.

My hope is that it shall be so and that all will be mended between us.

I've been thinking about your question of whether revenge would

heal the wrong done to you. I advise you now that

you must not seek it."

"For the sake of your soul,

for the sake of your own life, you must find the grace

to forgive.

Freedom is hard-won,but it is not the fruit of murder.

Do not fear that he will escape vengeance."

"Such a man carries with him the seeds of his own destruction.

If he does not die by my hand, it'll be by another,

but it must not be by your hand.

Hear me, for the sake of the love I bear you.

Your loving father,

James Fraser."

[veraadxer]

Waiting for the new episode #Providence

I found this poem and it reminds me of Bree and Jamie

Life without She...

Life without Her was empty ...

it's so fragile, it's so slow and even cold,

a sigh that does not understand the end

or a desire that even hurts to remember.

It's that She was everything and He did not say

what the wind sweetly predicted

that without her I could not breathe

nor would her tears stop crying.

He no longer finds the muse of passions

nor in his soul treasures illusions

arrested in the past lives ...

It is that time nor life have been able

redeem from sadness what was lost

and the ephemeral is changed into immortal

when the soul has not been able to renounce.

Mariela Marianetti

[veraadxer]

_Auntie,” he said hesitantly. “Will ye not forgive him?”

“Forgive him?” I stared at him. “For what? For Roger?”

He grimaced.

“No. It was a grievous mistake, but we would do the same again, thinking matters as we did. No—for Bonnet.”

“For Stephen Bonnet? How can he possibly think I blame him for that? I’ve never said such a thing to him!” And I had been too busy thinking that he blamed me, to even consider it.

Ian scratched a hand through his hair.

“Well...do ye not see, Auntie? He blames himself for it. He has, ever since the man robbed us on the river; and now wi’ what he’s done to my cousin...” He shrugged, looking mildly embarrassed. “He’s fair eaten up with it, and knowing that you’re angry wi’ him—”

“But I’m not angry with him! I thought he was angry with me, because I didn’t tell him Bonnet’s name right away.”

“Och.” Ian looked as though he didn’t know whether to laugh or look distressed. “Well, I daresay it would ha’ saved us a bit of trouble if ye had, but no, I’m sure it’s not that, Auntie. After all, by the time Cousin Brianna told ye, we’d already met yon MacKenzie on the mountainside and done him a bit of no good.”

[veraadxer]

‪The horrible thing was that she knew herself it was foolish to wait. Of all the things she had been trying not to think of for weeks, this was the worst—and here it was, rising up in her mind like the shadow of a dead tree, stark against snow.‬

‪If. If they came back—if, if, IF. ‬

‪Or none of them would come back at all. I will bring him home to you—or I will not come home myself. And she would live here alone forever, drowned in the waves of her own guilt, her body bobbing in the swirl of good intentions, anchored by a rotting umbilical cord to the child whose dead weight had pulled her under.‬..