Epilogue: In the Bee-Loud Glade, Ch 1
A/N: Since I'm me, the epilogue I've written for Outlander (showverse) will be posted in three parts.
Part 1 of In the Bee-Loud Glade is available now for your reading pleasure, and a bit of consolation - but also a bit of angst, because, again, it's me. 🐝
I heard her, somewhere far away — feral and tear-choked, her cries reverberating in the stone beneath my feet.
I wasn’t sure myself, for one landscape bled eternally into another. I moved without pain and without effort, stepping sometimes with intention, other times compelled by forces far greater than myself. With my last stride away from Craigh Na Dun, I plunged, unbreathing, into the cerulean blue of the Caribbean Sea, and swam down until I reached the door to Lallybroch. The giggling taunts of children chased one another down a distant corridor, and I smiled, turning left to the Great Hall at Leoch. My uncles were there, hale and strong; they nodded at me in acknowledgment just as Mrs. Fitz bustled in from the kitchen, pink-cheeked and tutting all the while.
“Hurry along, lad, ‘fore she wakes the whole castle!”
Round the corner and down the stairwell, I pushed open the door to Davie Beaton’s surgery and stepped into Claire’s instead — the custom maple shelves laden with tinctures, the sage green paint she’d chosen herself when we built the Big House.
I halted, looked about, frowned. The room was empty, sheets still made on the bed.
Her guttural wailing had gone quiet.
Where are you?! I called back to her.
Out the side door and through the breezeway, down to the river where she loved to forage for her wee herbs. The midday sun glittered on the water, and I faltered, trying to find her there in the light.
For a single, sinking moment, I thought perhaps she’d chosen differently. Perhaps I had finally asked too much of her; perhaps she’d heard my call at the stones and turned away.
No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I heard buzzing, so faint beneath the babble of the burn that I almost missed it. Glancing down, I saw a soft round bumblebee bobbing midair, homing in to the bullet hole in my chest as though it were the center of a—
With welling tears and a breath of relief, I wheeled around and ran, knowing exactly where I’d find her.
