Back to the Future (Sequel to Outlander Reversed)

Six

“So, ye’re actually from Clan Logan, aye? What part of Scotland did ye live in, if any, and how long’ve ye lived in America?”

        As he knelt in the floor next to him to assist him with switching out his peg for that Modern prosthetic again, Jamie couldn’t say he was surprised by his best friend’s question. To be quite honest, he was curious about Dallas and his Ancestry–not to mention that of his older stepson–in his own right. Ian was just perhaps a lil more eloquent in posing such a question to either of them, even if he was just as bluntly curious.

        “Och, I’ma Lowlander, through and through,” Dallas chuckled from where he’d settled next to him, once again sporting his kilt. “My parents may’ve been some of the original Scotch immigrantsta settle in America, but they were from Edinburgh to start with.”

        “Aye?” The ginger man cocked a brow curiously, finally managing to detach the peg without hurting his best friend.

        “I vaguely recall being able to see the Sea from my window where we lived in what’s now the neighborhood of Leith as a wean,” he answered, nodding. “Or rather, I was seeing the Firth of Forth from my window–I didna learn till I was older that the North Sea was much further away.”

        “We’ve both been at least through Edinburgh,” Ian chuckled, now pulling up the special, spiked sleeve that’d protect his stump. “We did serve as mercenaries in France a Year or two before Jamie disappeared–and the rest of us joined him when he Returned to us just as suddenly.”

        “Then ye’re at least somewhat familiar with the terrain,” the younger Elf laughed. “Enough to ken what I mean when I say I could see all the way to Norway, if I looked hard enough.”

        “Och, aye!” he agreed with a laugh of his own.

        “I was but a wean–a verra young one, at that–when we immigrated over to what were till British colonies after Blàr Chùil Lodair, though,” Dallas sighed.

        “Blàr Chùil Lodair?” The handicapped man looked equal parts surprised and confused. “What happened at Culloden?”

        “He doesna ken already?” He turned his attention to the man who was essentially his father-in-law, too.

        Heaving a sigh of his own, Jamie shook his head and explained how the Year his sister and her small family’d Traveled from was 1742. According to what his wife’d printed out for him that he’d read as religiously as if it’d been the bible, the battle he was referencing hadn’t occurred till 1746. If that was actually true, there was no way his best friend or sister coulda known what he was talking about.

        Both Elves zeroed their attention in on Ian with what said wife woulda called a laser focus, their eyes almost as hard as colored Diamonds. They tried to be gentle as they filled him in, Jenny joining them outta Curiosity since she’d been half-listening from the kitchen when the battle was first mentioned.

        Malcolm’d been well old enough to fight in said battle, so his memory was more clear–of it, as well as the events that led up to it. He was able to better explain how the Jacobite Rising–the attempt by Prince Charles Edward Stuart to regain both the Scotch and British Thrones for his exiled House–had started on August sixteenth, 1745. The conflict–which was part of a religious civil War in primarily Britain–had lasted for the next nine months exactly. It was on the sixteenth of April the following Year–1746–that the Jacobite forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie’d been decisively beaten on the Field of Culloden. The Loyalist troops commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, had all but made sure of it, having killed between fifteen hundred and two thousand Jacobites in the hour-long battle.

        Within two Days of the battle, orders’d been given such that the majority of the remaining Jacobite Army’d been disbanded. The supporting French officers and their units’d made for Inverness, and just three Days after the bloodshed at Culloden, they’d surrendered as prisoners of War. All those who hadn’t surrendered thus–and weren’t Elves, to boot–had either headed back to their homes, or attempted to escape abroad. However, that didn’t stop many senior Jacobites who remained from doing the latter, which’d resulted in the final real battle of the Rising.