Outlander A Marriage Takes P

"The new love drives out the old”
Anonymous

I’m not sure if this is totally true.
Not for all the cases.
I heard The Beatles for the first time when I was twelve years old and became instantly a beatlemaniac.
After them, a hundred new ones, new passions came and I still love them.
I got married with my first great love and we had three kids.
I only felt that, through the years, my heart was getting bigger and bigger with plenty space for everybody.
It happens here, all the time!
Friends that are here with me since the beginning and I know will also be after the new ones that are always coming.
Old friends like Monica, one of my oldest friends at LiveJournal who is celebrating her birthday on July 6th and to whom this picture is dedicated.
We discovered together this new love for Jamie and Claire from Diana Gabaldon’s series "Outlander", but we both know we’ll never give up from our old and great love, Ron and Hermione.

To make a fanart for “Outlander” was a different experience. I came to Ron and Hermione after the movies, so it was easy to picture them, as you know I do, when I’m reading their stories or making fanarts.
Now, with Jamie and Claire, their images are not so clear and definitive to me, it’s like I’m looking for references every time I’m reading them and for me, being a portraitist, this could be a good or a bad thing.
I’m trying my best to have this in my favor, so, I have for this one “very famous” references, and I decided not to confirm them (but would be funny if you give your opinion), because, although this is the most closer I have in mind when I’m reading the books, you know, they can change a little in the future.
Yes, I’m planning to do few more for these books that is my great new love.
To make fanarts for this story is even harder than to do for the Harry Potter series because of the millions of details, that you face while reading them, that aren’t only fruits of a great author’s imagination, but also historical facts.
I still have so much to study and research but this is the great challenge in to work for them.
And if you never read them, please don’t wait more!
Hurry up and do so!
I know your heart will also have space for this new love!

Passage from chapter 14, "A Marriage Takes Place" from Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander":

"...It was a "warm" Scottish day, meaning that the mist wasn't quite heavy enough to qualify as a drizzle, but not far off, either. Suddenly the inn door opened, and the sun came out, in the person of James. If I was a radiant bride, the groom was positively resplendent. My mouth fell open and stayed that way.

A Highlander in full regalia is an impressive sight—any Highlander, no matter how old, ill-favored, or crabbed in appearance. A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored young Highlander at close range is breath-taking.

The thick red-gold hair had been brushed to a smooth gleam that swept the collar of a fine lawn shirt with tucked front, belled sleeves, and lace-trimmed wrist frills that matched the cascade of the starched jabot at the throat, decorated with a ruby stickpin.

His tartan was a brilliant crimson and black that blazed among the more sedate MacKenzies in their green and white. The flaming wool, fastened by a circular silver brooch, fell from his right shoulder in a graceful drape, caught by a silver-studded sword belt before continuing its sweep past neat calves clothed in woolen hose and stopping just short of the silver-buckled black leather boots. Sword, dirk, and badger-skin sporran completed the ensemble.

Well over six feet tall, broad in proportion, and striking of feature, he was a far cry from the grubby horse-handler I was accustomed to—and he knew it. Making a leg in courtly fashion, he swept me a bow of impeccable grace, murmuring "Your servant, ma'am," eyes glinting with mischief.

"Oh," I said faintly.

I had seldom seen the taciturn Dougal at a loss for words before. Thick brows knotted over a suffused face, he seemed in his way as taken aback by this apparition as I was.

"Are ye mad, man?" he said at last. "What if someone's to see ye!"

Jamie cocked a sardonic eyebrow at the older man. "Why, uncle," he said. "Insults? And on my wedding day too. You wouldna have me shame my wife, now, would ye? Besides," he added, with a malicious gleam, "I hardly think it would be legal, did I not marry in my own name. And you do want it legal, now, don't you?"

With an apparent effort, Dougal recovered his self-possession. "If ye're quite finished, Jamie, we'll get on wi' it," he said.

But Jamie was not quite finished, it seemed. Ignoring Dougal's fuming, he drew a short string of white beads from his sporran. He stepped forward and fastened the necklace around my neck. Looking down, I could see it was a string of small baroque pearls, those irregularly shaped productions of freshwater mussels, interspersed with tiny pierced-work gold roundels. Smaller pearls dangled from the gold beads.

"They're only Scotch pearls," he said, apologetically, "but they look bonny on you." His fingers lingered a moment on my neck.

"Those were your mother's pearls!" said Dougal, glowering at the necklace.

"Aye," said Jamie calmly, "and now they're my wife's. Shall we go?"...

...More mumbling from the priest, and Jamie bent to kiss me. It was clear that he intended only a brief and ceremonial touching of lips, but his mouth was soft and warm and I moved instinctively toward him. I was vaguely conscious of noises, Scottish whoops of enthusiasm and encouragement from the spectators, but really noticed nothing beyond the enfolding warm solidness. Sanctuary.

We drew apart, both a little steadier, and smiled nervously. I saw Dougal draw Jamie's dirk from its sheath and wondered why. Still looking at me, Jamie held out his right hand, palm up. I gasped as the point of the dirk scored deeply across his wrist, leaving a dark line of welling blood. There was not time to jerk away before my own hand was seized and I felt the burning slice of the blade. Swiftly, Dougal pressed my wrist to Jamie's and bound the two together with a strip of white linen.

I must have swayed a bit, because Jamie gripped my elbow with his free left hand.

"Bear up, lass," he urged softly. "It's not long now. Say the words after me." It was a short bit of Gaelic, two or three sentences. The words meant nothing to me, but I obediently repeated them after Jamie, stumbling on the slippery vowels. The linen was untied, the wounds blotted clean, and we were married.

There was a general air of relief and exhilaration on the way back down the footpath. It might have been any merry wedding party, albeit a small one, and one composed entirely of men, save the bride.

We were nearly at the bottom when lack of food, the rem­nants of a hangover, and the general stresses of the day caught up with me. I came to lying on damp leaves, my head in my new husband's lap. He put down the wet cloth with which he had been wiping my face.

"That bad, was it?" He grinned down at me, but his eyes held an uncertain expression that rather touched me, in spite of everything. I smiled shakily back.

"It's not you," I assured him. "It's just… I don't think I've had anything at all to eat since breakfast yesterday—and rather a lot to drink, I'm afraid."

His mouth twitched. "So I heard. Well, that I can remedy. I've not a lot to offer a wife, as I said, but I do promise I'll keep ye fed." He smiled and shyly pushed a stray curl off my face with a forefinger.

I started to sit up and grimaced at a slight burning in one wrist. I had forgotten that last bit of the ceremony. The cut had come open, no doubt as a result of the fall I had taken. I took the cloth from Jamie and wrapped it awkwardly around the wrist.

"I thought it might have been that that made ye faint," he said, watching. "I should have thought to warn ye about it; I didna realize you weren't expecting it until I saw your face."

"What was it, exactly?" I asked, trying to tuck in the ends of the cloth.

"It's a bit pagan, but it's customary hereabouts to have a blood vow, along with the regular marriage service. Some priests won't have it, but I don't suppose this one was likely to object to anything. He looked almost as scared as I felt," he said, smiling.

"A blood vow? What do the words mean?"

Jamie took my right hand and gently tucked in the last end of the makeshift bandage.

"It rhymes, more or less, when ye say it in English. It says:

'Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,
I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.
I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.' "

He shrugged. "About the same as the regular vows, just a bit more… ah, primitive."

I gazed down at my bound wrist. "Yes, you could say that."

I glanced about; we were alone on the path, under an aspen tree. The round dead leaves lay on the ground, gleaming in the wet like rusted coins. It was very quiet, save for the occasional splat of water droplets falling from the trees.

"Where are the others? Did they go back to the inn?"

Jamie grimaced. "No. I made them go away so I could tend ye, but they'll be waitin' for us just over there." He gestured with his chin, in the countryman's manner. "They're no going to trust us alone 'til everything's official."

"Isn't it?" I said blankly. "We're married, aren't we?"

He seemed embarrassed, turning away and elaborately brushing dead leaves from his kilts.

"Mmmphm. Aye, we're married, right enough. But it's no legally binding, ye know, until it's been consummated." A slow, fierce blush burned its way up from the lacy jabot.

"Mmmphm," I said. "Let's go and find something to eat."