Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
7th Mar 2014 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #OutJUNE10th #bloodmemories
And five minutes later, grasped the thrashing stubby antlers of a yearling buck with one hand as he slit the deer’s throat with the other, the sound of his shot still echoing off the rocky escarpment above him.
It had happened so fast, it scarcely seemed real, despite the warm-cold feel of the blood soaking into his stockings and the thick smell of it. There was a tick hanging just under the deer’s glazing eye, round as a muscat grape. Would it let go at once, he wondered? Or would there be enough blood left for it to go on feeding for some time?
The deer shuddered violently, shoving its antlers hard into his chest, bunched its legs convulsively as though about to make one final leap, and died.
He held it for a few moments, the shredded velvet still on the antlers like rough suede under his sweating palm, the weight of the coarse-haired shoulders suddenly heavy on his knee.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and let go. He remembered that it had been Mac the groom who’d told him that you always thanked a creature who gave you its life—and that it had been James Fraser, some years later, who had killed a huge wapiti in front of him and spoken what he said was a “gralloch prayer” in Gaelic before butchering the beast. But with the deer’s blood on his skin and the breeze moving in the wood around him, for once he didn’t push those memories away.