Lochlainneach

Druidic Visions

Day 45 on Hy-Brasil

JAMIE POV

For weeks, Cailean and Jamie trekked through the forest in hopes of running into the Viking village and finding Freyja, but they had no luck. They had failed to find any humanoid figures, save for the damned Unseelie Court that attacked them every other day. Sometimes, they came in large numbers, while others were smaller, but regardless of how many attacked them, Jamie couldn't even see them until they were dead. He could hear them, though, and in the several weeks since they had lost Catrìona, Jamie had trained himself to hear them and attack at the source of the sound.

Catrìona... He was still in disbelief that he'd lost her again, this time for real. It wasn't like he'd sent her back through the stones to her own time - he'd lost her, and he had no idea how he would explain that to his children, who had lost their mother. Poor Archie... He was so close to his mother, and so protective of her, same as Jamie had been to his own mother. When she died, Jamie didn't really fully understand. He'd gone to her casket and fixed her hair, as it looked unkempt and it was something his mother would never have allowed, had she been living. He'd thought she was sleeping there and thought she felt cold, so he'd brought her a blanket in hopes of warming her up again. He missed the warm, firm hugs of his mother so much... Archie would be devastated. Brèagha was young and would likely forget about the pain of loss, but not Archie. He was old enough and had experienced enough to understand loss, even at seven years old. Most children his age could barely comprehend the fact that they'd never see their mother again, but Archie did. He was born outside the walls of a prison, held his earliest memories in the Jacobite uprising, and thought his father dead for eight months following Culloden. No, he would know what it meant when told that his mother wouldn't be coming back, and that frightened Jamie to no end.

Cailean, when his parents were killed, was old enough to understand, and he'd mentioned to Jamie weeks ago how devastated he'd been when he'd lost his mother. He was so in shock that he couldn't process it for a while, only fully coming to terms with it when he'd woken up in 1741 and realised he'd lost his sister, as well. "She almost became like a mother te me," he'd said to Jamie by the fire one night. "Fifteen years old, she was, and forced te take care of her whiny wee brother. In our time, fifteen-year-olds are treated more like children, so it was unusual fer her te suddenly become an adult, but she did it." It was how he knew Catrìona would be an incredible mother to Brian and Archie, when they had been born. But now, she was gone, and Cailean and Jamie felt guilty for failing to save her. They hardly had the time to mourn, however, due to constant attacks by the Unseelie Court. Jamie supposed, at the time, that it was for the best, because it kept them focused on the mission at hand, which was finding Freyja and saving Archie, Brèagha, Cillian and Caoimhe.

The weather was hot and growing hotter as the day went on. It was unusual because for most of their time on Hy-Brasil, the weather had been comfortable, but now, it was getting hot. As they wandered through the forest, Cailean suddenly stopped and appeared to listen for a sound, and Jamie froze, ready to open his ears to the hellish giggled of the fae - but he heard nothing. "What is it?" Jamie whispered quietly to Cailean.

"I thought... I thought I heard giggling of some sort... but no' that demonic gigglin' the fae do. It sounded like... women ," Cailean told him, and Jamie's eyes widened.

"Women?" he asked him, and then he tuned his own ear into the sound. Sure enough, he could hear girlish giggling that sounded as if it belonged to multiple young women, and Cailean and Jamie exchanged a glance before quietly following the sound. Cailean moved aside some leaves when the giggling became clearer and saw, on the other side, the shore, and on that shoreline were several naked women with long jet black hair and glittering pearl-like skin. "Aye... Tha's women."