Whispers From the Heather

Isle of Skye, 1963

The wind came first, curling like breath through the cracks in the stone cottage walls. Then came the knocking — not loud, but steady, like fingers too polite to force their way in.
Morag Cameron didn’t flinch. She sat in her worn armchair, the fire low and the kettle sighing, as if the night itself were weary. Her fingers, knotted with time and memory, paused over her embroidery. A sprig of heather, half-stitched.
“They’re here,” she said aloud, though no one else was there to hear her.
The journal lay beside her — the one she never let out of her sight. Its pages were filled with stories: some old, some true, some both. She reached for it now, her thumb brushing the frayed leather binding, as though it might anchor her to what was real.
Outside, the wind shifted. A lull. Then—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Not at the door this time. At the window.
She rose, slowly, her joints protesting. The light from the fire flickered against the glass, and for a moment, she saw only herself — an old woman wrapped in a shawl and shadows.
But then the reflection faded… and she saw the eyes.
Green as spring moss. Familiar. Impossible.
“Ruairidh,” she whispered.
And the heather outside trembled, though there was no wind at all.