Chapter 2: The Historian's Dilemma
POV: Roger
Roger's study had been transformed into an impromptu laboratory, though no university would recognize the equipment. The wedding ring lay on black velvet under his desk lamp like an accusation against everything he thought he knew about physics and history. Beside it, his grandfather's jeweler's loupe, a digital scale borrowed from Fiona's kitchen, and a notebook filled with measurements that defied rational explanation.
"Material analysis suggests fabrication date consistent with 1740s," he wrote, his handwriting growing shakier with each impossible conclusion. "But preservation state suggests creation within the last five years. Impossible by all known metallurgical principles."
He set down his pen and rubbed his eyes, fighting the headache that had been building since they'd returned from Craigh na Dun three hours ago. The ring mocked him from its velvet bed, too perfect, too pristine, too warm to the touch for metal that should have corroded into fragments decades before his birth.
"Any luck making sense of it?" Claire asked from the doorway, carrying three cups of tea on a tray Fiona had pressed into service.
"None whatsoever." Roger accepted his cup gratefully, noting how Claire's hands had finally stopped shaking. "I've photographed it from every angle, measured every dimension, even scraped a microscopic sample for analysis. The composition is consistent with 18th-century Scottish goldsmithing, down to the trace minerals that would indicate Highland gold sources."
"But?" Brianna prompted, settling into the chair beside his desk with her own cup.
"But the preservation is impossible." Roger gestured at his notes, pages of careful documentation that proved the laws of science weren't nearly as reliable as he'd believed. "Gold doesn't tarnish, true, but it does show wear patterns, microscopic scratches from handling, environmental deposits. This ring shows none of those markers."
Claire turned the ring over in the lamplight, watching the inscription catch fire.
"It's exactly as it was the day Jamie gave it to me," she said softly. "Down to the tiny imperfection in the 'M' where the engraver's tool slipped."
"Because it was never buried," Roger thought with sudden clarity. "It was never lost at Culloden. Jamie kept it. Preserved it. And somehow sent it through time when he knew Claire would be here to receive it."
The implications made his historian's mind reel. Not just time travel—he'd accepted that possibility when Claire first told him her story—but temporal communication. The ability to send objects, messages, perhaps even knowledge across centuries.
"We need to test the hypothesis," he said abruptly.
Both women looked at him with sharp attention.
"Test what hypothesis?" Brianna asked.
POV: Brianna
"What if we try to send something back?"
The words came out before I fully realized I was going to speak them, but they felt right. If the stones could carry Jamie's ring forward through time to reach us, then logically—"logically, God, listen to me thinking logically about time travel"—they should be able to carry something from us backward to reach him.
Mama's reaction was immediate and fierce.
"Absolutely not." She set down her teacup with enough force to rattle the saucer. "Brianna, you have no idea how dangerous—"
"Neither do you," I interrupted, earning a sharp look that reminded me exactly whose daughter I was. "You said yourself that your time travel was accidental. You fell through, unprepared, with no understanding of what was happening. This would be different. Controlled. Scientific."
"Scientific time travel. Right. And next I'll be doing experimental magic."
But Roger was nodding slowly, his academic mind clearly caught by the same logical progression that had grabbed mine.
"She's right," he said. "Claire, your experiences were uncontrolled variables. No preparation, no understanding of the mechanism. If we approach this systematically..."
"Systematically?" Mama's voice climbed toward something dangerously close to hysteria. "Roger, we're talking about—about playing with forces that nearly killed me. That did kill other people. Geillis Duncan—"
"Went through physically," I said, keeping my voice steady despite the excitement building in my chest. "Don't let her see how much you want this. How desperately you need to try." "But we're not talking about physical travel. Just... communication. Like Jamie did with the ring."
Mama was quiet for a long moment, staring at the ring on her finger. When she finally looked up, her eyes held the weight of twenty-five years' worth of grief and hope warring against each other.
"Even if we accept that it's possible," she said slowly, "how would we know it worked? How would we know if anything we sent actually reached him?"
POV: Roger
Roger felt the thrill of academic discovery fighting with protective instinct as he watched the argument unfold between mother and daughter. Brianna's determination reminded him achingly of her father's stubborn Highland pride, while Claire's protective fear carried the authority of someone who'd survived the impossible once and knew the cost.
"But she's right," he thought reluctantly. "Brianna's absolutely right. If the stones can carry objects through time, then the logical next step is to test that capability systematically."
"We could establish a protocol," he said carefully, earning immediate attention from both women. "Something small, something that wouldn't be dangerous to send or receive. A letter, perhaps, wrapped in something that would preserve it."
"And if it doesn't work?" Claire asked. "If we're wrong about the mechanism, or the timing, or any of a dozen variables we don't understand?"
"Then we're out a letter and some wrapping material," Brianna said pragmatically. "But if it does work..."
She didn't need to finish. If it worked, they would be pioneers of temporal communication, the first people in recorded history to deliberately send messages across centuries.
"The first people we know of," Roger corrected mentally. "Who knows how many others throughout history have stumbled onto this capability and kept it secret?"
"There would have to be safeguards," he said, his historian's training taking over. "Multiple layers of protection for the message. Waterproof wrapping, something durable that could survive centuries if the temporal mechanism failed and it simply... fell through normal time."
Claire was quiet for several minutes, studying the ring on her finger as if it might provide answers to questions they hadn't yet learned to ask.
"You said the stones responded differently to Brianna's touch," she said finally. "What exactly did that feel like?"
POV: Brianna
I thought about how to describe what I'd experienced at Craigh na Dun—that sense of recognition, of coming home to a place I'd never been.
"Like the stone was waiting," I said. "Not trying to pull me through, the way you described your experience. More like... like it was listening. Like it wanted to help."
"That sounds completely insane. But then again, so does time travel, and we've got proof of that sitting under Roger's desk lamp."
"The humming changed pitch when I pressed my palm against it," I continued. "Became almost musical. And then it got warm—warmer than stone should be in October wind."
Mama and Roger exchanged a look I couldn't quite interpret.
"That's different from what I experienced," Mama said slowly. "For me, the stones were... violent. Demanding. They pulled me through whether I wanted to go or not."
"Maybe it's like tuning a radio," Roger suggested. "Finding the right frequency for the type of communication you want."
I liked that analogy. It made the whole thing feel more like engineering and less like magic—though "maybe there's no real difference between advanced engineering and what people call magic".
"So we try," I said. "Tonight. While the... frequency... or whatever it is might still be active."
"Brianna—"
"Mama." I turned to face her fully, seeing my own eyes reflected in hers—eyes I'd inherited from a man who'd given everything to protect his family. "You got to hold him, Mama. You got twenty years. All I have is stories. Let me try."
The silence that followed stretched between us like a bridge spanning not just generations but centuries. Finally, Mama sighed and looked at Roger.
"What would you need for this... test?"
POV: Roger
Roger felt the weight of academic responsibility settle on his shoulders as he began outlining what would either be the most important experimental protocol in human history or the most elaborate waste of time ever documented.
"Something waterproof," he said, his mind already cataloging materials. "Multiple layers of protection. I have chemical analysis envelopes that might work—designed to preserve samples for decades if necessary."
"And the message itself?" Claire asked.
"Simple," Brianna said before Roger could answer. "Basic information. Who I am, when I am, that I'm his daughter. Nothing complicated that could be misunderstood or misinterpreted."
"And wrapped in something that creates a personal connection," Roger added, remembering his grandfather's stories about Highland customs. "Highlanders believed in the power of personal objects to carry intentions across distances. Your silver bracelet, perhaps—something you've worn, something that carries your... essence, for lack of a better word."
Claire stood and walked to the window, staring out at the darkness beyond the glass. When she turned back, her expression held the same mixture of hope and terror Roger had seen in photographs of early aviators preparing for impossible flights.
"We'll need a gemstone," she said quietly. "Based on my experience, gemstones seem to amplify the temporal effect. I have a cairngorm I've kept since... since before. It should be sufficient for something this size."
"Then we're really doing this," Brianna said, and Roger heard wonder and determination in equal measure.
"We're really doing this," he thought, feeling history pivot around them like a door swinging open onto uncharted territory. "God help us all."
An hour later, they stood once again at Craigh na Dun under a star-filled sky that seemed to pulse with ancient possibility.
POV: - Brianna
The package we'd assembled looked impossibly small to carry the weight of twenty-five years of separation. My letter—three pages of careful handwriting explaining who I was, when I was, and that the woman who'd sent this loved him still—wrapped in multiple layers of Roger's preservation materials and tied with my silver bracelet. The cairngorm Mama had contributed sat in my palm like a piece of captured starlight.
"This is it," I thought, approaching the center stone with my heart hammering against my ribs. "Either we're about to make contact across centuries, or we're about to prove that grief can make intelligent people believe in fairy tales."
"Remember," Roger called from where he stood with his camera and notebook, documenting everything. "Don't try to force it. Let the stone respond to your touch naturally."
I placed my palm against the granite and felt that same immediate recognition I'd experienced earlier—the sense that the stone knew me, had been waiting for me. The humming started low and built gradually, a sound like crystal bells underwater.
"It's working," I whispered.
The stone grew warm under my palm, then hot, then something beyond temperature that didn't quite burn. I placed the package at the base of the stone, my other hand maintaining contact with the granite, and whispered the same words I'd written in the letter:
"For James Fraser, from his daughter. Find your way to him."
The world held its breath.
Then the package simply... wasn't there anymore. No flash of light, no dramatic disappearance. One moment it existed, the next it was gone, leaving only the faint scent of heather and wood smoke that seemed to be the calling card of successful temporal transit.
I jerked my hand back from the stone, which had returned to normal autumn coolness, and stared at the empty space where our message had been.
"Did it work?" I asked, though the answer seemed obvious.
"Something worked," Roger said, his voice tight with excitement and terror. "The package is definitely gone."
POV: - Claire
Claire stood in the shadow of the stones, watching her daughter experience the first flush of successful temporal manipulation, and felt time fold around her like origami. Twenty-five years collapsed into a single moment—she was simultaneously the young woman who'd stumbled through these stones into 18th-century Scotland and the mother watching her child reach across centuries to touch the hand of the father they'd both lost.
"What have we done?" she wondered, not with regret but with awe. "What door have we just opened?"
If Brianna's package had truly traveled back through time, if it reached Jamie in whatever year he was living, then they had achieved something unprecedented: deliberate, controlled temporal communication. The implications were staggering.
But more than that, they had potentially begun healing a wound that had bled in her heart for twenty-five years. The wound of incomplete goodbyes, of love interrupted by death, of raising Jamie's daughter alone while he remained forever frozen in her memory as the young warrior who'd pushed her toward the stones at Culloden.
"What happens now?" Brianna asked, her voice carrying the subdued excitement of someone who'd just witnessed a miracle.
"Now we wait," Roger said. "We document everything, establish a monitoring schedule for this location, and see if... if anyone writes back."
POV: - Roger
The drive back to the manse stretched long and silent, each of them lost in private contemplation of what they might have just accomplished. Roger's historian's mind was already working on the protocols they would need if this proved successful—how to verify authenticity of any responses, how to maintain security around something that could revolutionize human understanding of time itself, how to protect the Fraser family from the consequences of possessing such knowledge.
"If it worked," he thought, gripping the steering wheel tighter than necessary. "If Jamie Fraser receives that package sometime in the 18th century, if he understands what it means and finds a way to respond..."
They would be dealing with something unprecedented in human history. Not just communication with the past, but the possibility of ongoing relationship across centuries. The chance for Claire to reconnect with the love of her life, for Brianna to know the father she'd never met, for history itself to become fluid rather than fixed.
Beside him, Claire stared out at the Scottish countryside rolling past in darkness, one hand unconsciously turning the ring on her finger. In the back seat, Brianna was unusually quiet, processing the magnitude of what they'd attempted.
"Somewhere in the past," Roger thought, "assuming we haven't completely deluded ourselves, James Fraser might be about to receive a letter from the future. From the daughter he never knew existed."
The implications made his hands shake slightly as he turned into the manse driveway.
POV: Third Person - Brianna
As Roger's car pulled to a stop outside the manse, Brianna found herself staring up at the star-filled sky with new understanding. Those same stars had shone down on her father somewhere in the 18th century, and if their experiment had worked, he might at this very moment be reading words she'd written in the 20th.
"Time isn't linear," she realized with crystalline clarity. "It's not a river flowing in one direction. It's more like... like a web, with connection points where determined people can reach across decades or centuries to touch each other."
The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, it filled her with something she hadn't felt since learning the truth about her parentage: hope.
Not the passive hope of wishing things had been different, but the active hope of someone who'd just discovered that impossible problems might have unexpected solutions. That love really could transcend death, separation, and the cruel mathematics of linear time.
If James Fraser was truly out there in the past, if he received her letter and understood what it meant, then maybe—just maybe—they could build something new from the ashes of what they'd lost. Not the traditional father-daughter relationship that history had stolen from them, but something unprecedented and precious: a family connection that spanned centuries, maintained through will and love and the mysterious cooperation of ancient stones.
Tomorrow they would begin watching for signs of response. Tomorrow they would start building protocols for the most unusual correspondence in human history.
Tonight, she would fall asleep knowing that somewhere in the past, a Highland warrior might be learning that he had a daughter who loved him across time itself.
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