5. A Stranger in the Quiet
1372 Words
Vicki — 1947, First Night
The walk to the cottage felt longer than it should have.
Not because of the distance.
Because of what it meant.
Every step away from the standing stones felt like stepping further from everything I understood.
No cell service.
No car.
No airport.
No way home.
The cottage came into full view as we descended the slope — small, stone-built, smoke curling lazily from the chimney. It was sturdy but worn. The windows were narrow. The roofline was uneven.
It wasn’t the cottage I’d been dropped off at in 2025.
It was older.
Simpler.
Alive in a different way.
Alec pushed open the wooden door and stepped aside for me to enter first.
The air inside was warm and faintly scented with peat and something herbal — dried thyme, perhaps. A small fire burned in the hearth. The furniture was sparse but well-kept. A wooden table. Two chairs. A narrow staircase climbing toward what must be a lofted sleeping space.
It was quiet.
Not the hollow quiet of Manhattan apartments at 2 a.m.
But the kind of quiet that pressed gently against the ears.
I stepped fully inside.
The door shut behind me with a solid thud.
And that was when it hit me.
Hard.
My breath shortened.
The walls felt too close.
Too old.
“I can’t…” I murmured, pacing once toward the small window. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”
Alec remained near the door, giving me space. Watching carefully.
“You said 2025,” he said evenly.
“Yes.”
“What does that look like?”
The question grounded me unexpectedly.
“Cars that don’t look like yours,” I said faintly. “Phones in our hands that connect us to anyone in the world. Buildings taller than mountains. Women running businesses. Owning them.”
His brow furrowed slightly at that last part — not in disapproval, but surprise.
“You own something?”
“A restaurant. In Manhattan.”
He blinked once.
“You’re no farmer’s daughter, then.”
“No,” I breathed shakily. “I’m not.”
My hands began to tremble.
“I left my dog,” I whispered suddenly.
He stiffened. “Your… dog?”
“My Scottish terrier. Scotty. He was with me when I got out of the car. He ran toward the stones.”
Alec glanced toward the door instinctively, as if expecting the animal to scratch at it.
“He’s not here,” I said, voice cracking.
The reality finally split me open.
I sank into one of the wooden chairs, burying my face in my hands.
“I don’t know how to exist here,” I admitted.
The confession was raw.
Unfiltered.
He crossed the room slowly and crouched in front of me.
“You don’t have to tonight,” he said quietly. “Tonight, you rest.”
I lowered my hands slightly and looked at him.
“You believe me,” I said.
It wasn’t a question.
His gaze didn’t waver.
“I saw you appear where there was nothing,” he replied. “And I’ve seen enough in this life not to dismiss what stands in front of me.”
The simplicity of it steadied me more than comfort would have.
He stood and added another log to the fire.
“You’ll take the bed upstairs,” he said. “I’ll sleep here.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do.”
I watched him move about the space — controlled, contained, deliberate.
A man who carried silence like armor.
And yet he had opened his door without hesitation.
Later, when I lay in the narrow bed beneath a thick wool blanket, sleep would not come.
The darkness felt different.
No distant traffic glow.
No hum of electricity.
Only wind brushing against stone.
And beneath that—
Memory of his eyes when he said he didn’t belong either.
Morning came sunlight filtered pale through the small window when I woke.
For one blissful second, I forgot.
Then I sat upright.
The wooden beams overhead reminded me immediately of where I was. No, when I was.
Not 2025.
Not Manhattan.
The scent of woodsmoke confirmed it.
I dressed in yesterday’s clothes and descended the stairs slowly.
Alec stood at the table, flipping through something with visible confusion.
He looked up when I entered.
“You’ll want to see this.”
I crossed the room.
On the table lay a leather-bound journal.
Worn.
Aged.
Older than the ones stacked neatly on a shelf nearby.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
“It was in the chest at the foot of my bed,” he said. “It wasn’t there before.”
My heart skipped.
“Open it.”
He had already.
The first page was dated 1893.
My breath caught.
The handwriting was elegant but urgent.
I do not know how I have done it, only that I have.
I leaned closer.
The stones answer only when the sky breaks open. The storm is the key. I crossed once by accident, and twice by will.
My pulse pounded in my ears.
“It’s another woman,” I whispered.
Alec turned a page.
The air must be thick with lightning. One must stand within the circle as the strike meets stone. The door does not stay long.
My eyes flew to his.
“It’s real.”
He swallowed slowly.
“She writes of returning,” he said quietly. “Of crossing back.”
Relief crashed through me so suddenly I nearly staggered.
“So I’m not trapped.”
He hesitated before answering.
“Not forever,” he said carefully.
The unspoken word lingered between us.
Storm.
We both knew the sky was clear.
Mid-morning brought a practical problem.
“You can’t walk into the village dressed like that,” Alec said, gesturing subtly to my jeans and jacket.
I glanced down.
“They’re just clothes.”
“In your time, perhaps.”
“In yours?”
“You look… foreign.”
“I am foreign.”
He almost smiled.
“Aye. But not in a way they’ll accept.”
I folded my arms. “So what do you suggest?”
He hesitated, then moved toward a wooden trunk tucked against the far wall.
“My sister left some things behind when she married,” he said. “They’ll fit close enough.”
He opened the trunk and withdrew a modest cotton dress, soft blue, with long sleeves and a fitted waist. A wool cardigan. Practical boots.
I stared at them.
“I haven’t worn a dress like that since I was twelve.”
“You’ll frighten half the parish otherwise,” he said evenly.
I studied his face.
He wasn’t teasing.
“Fine,” I sighed.
He turned his back respectfully as I changed behind a small privacy screen near the stairs.
The denim felt strange coming off.
The dress felt stranger going on.
But when I stepped out—
He went very still.
The blue softened me and my features.
Made me look less like Manhattan steel and more like Highland sky.
“You look…” he began.
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Like you belong less out of place.”
I didn’t know why that made my chest ache.
He handed me a small mirror.
I barely recognized myself.
Not because I looked different.
But because something in my eyes had shifted.
Less guarded.
More open.
“You’ll need a story,” he said quietly. “About where you’ve come from.”
“I fell out of the sky,” I replied dryly.
“Aye,” he said, almost smiling again. “Let’s keep that between us.”
I looked at him then — really looked.
At the man who had survived war.
Who slept on a wooden floor to give me comfort.
Who believed my impossible story without demanding proof.
“When the storm comes,” I said softly, “I’ll try to go back.”
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“Aye.”
But neither of us moved.
Neither of us said what lingered beneath it:
That something had already begun.
And storms, in the Highlands, always returned.
- Writer
