"Bella, Bella, Bella! Slow down, honey!"

With a wince, Isabella drastically slowed down the movement of her arm so that she was going in slow and steady circles rather than frantic and erratic ones. She was attempting to reel in what felt like a giant fish and the fish was trying its hardest to prevent her from bringing it into the boat.

It was too late, by the time she had slowed down, the tension in her line disappeared and there was no longer a fish hooked at the end.

With a wince, she turned to look at her grandfather, who was raising both of his graying eyebrows at her.

"Lost it?"

"Yep."

"Well let's make sure you have enough worm still on there for something even bigger," he said, nodding at her pole.

They were out in a bay on one of the local lakes, 15 miles away from their home. It was getting close to dinner time, but the summer sun was still warm against her freckled face. She had to tilt her head up to feel the sun, since her grandmother insisted on her wearing a visor to shield her face.

Isabella let out a big sigh.

"It was a big one too," she grumbled.

"You sure it wasn't just more salad?" he asked with a chuckle. She had been catching weed after weed, but she shook her head.

"It was a big one," she said stubbornly.

Her grandfather hid the grin on his face by scratching at his chin.

"You can't go through life at warp speed, Bella," he commented as she brought the rest of her line into the aluminum fishing boat.

"I know," she replied in a sort of both petulant and respectful 11-year-old.

Isabella reached over and grabbed a new worm out of the foam container filled with dirt and wiggling, fat worms. As she moved, she felt her grandfather's knowing eyes on her.

The report card they received two months ago from school had mentioned something along those lines as well. Her math teacher thought she would make less mistakes on tests if she would just slow down and check her work instead of rushing through.

Grannie had frowned at the feedback, but Grandad had chuckled knowingly.

"When you get to be my age, you learn a thing or two, honey," he said in a familiar tone.

He waited until she looked over at him and met her eyes before he continued.

"If you work hard and speed through life, you'll be very successful, Bella. I know you will. You've got a good head on your shoulders and you'll do just fine in whatever you want."

He paused and thought while the little girl waited.

"You will always have that choice. You will always have the choice to be successful in the way the world wants you to be. But don't always listen to the world, alright Bella? Being powerful and rich and working all of the time is not the way to make your soul happy, no matter what person or system tries to tell you it is. Will you promise me that you will listen to that beautiful soul of yours when you make that choice?"

Isabella recognized the serious tone in her grandfather's voice.

Little did she know that he was still coming off a heated argument with her father, an argument that had been occurring for over a decade.

She nodded solemnly in promise.

Grandad grinned at her.

"And make sure you slow down kiddo…if you don't, you'll miss things," he said, nodding at the water where she had just lost her fish. "And one day, you might realize those were the big things."

"Folks, yer looking at the Eilean Donan castle. On each side is a different loch: Loch Duich, Loch Long, and Loch Alsh. In the thirteenth century, it was a stronghold of the Clan Mackenzie and was until the early eighteenth century when the government destroyed the castle because of the Mackenzie's involvement in the first Jacobite Rebellion."

Isabella listened as the tour guide spouted more facts about the castle while the tourists half-heartedly listened, eagerly taking photos of the old building. His kilt was bright green, matching the green letters on the large passenger van that proclaimed this tour group run by "Rabbie's."

The group did not linger for more than ten minutes, enough time to take a few pictures and use the restrooms. After they departed, she breathed a slight sigh of relief, irrationally irritated by the tourists.

It was irrational.

The only reason she already knew what the tour guide was saying was because she had read it in Rick Steven's Guide to Scotland not 20 minutes before.

If she were in a more introspective mood, she might have considered that she been irritated by a number of different things in the past few weeks, each of them as irrational as the next. Children on flights had never really bothered her, but the baby crying over the Atlantic on the flight over had wound her up so tight it had taken hours before her shoulders had lost the coiled hunch.

With a sigh, she tightened her jacket around her, huddling in the warmth against the winter winds. She took one last glance at the beautiful castle before turning to the car she had been driving the past few days. She went to the left side of the car instinctually but caught herself and went to the right side.

As the car blew warm air at her face, she pulled out the map and studied it carefully.

The Isle of Skye was nearby. This had undoubtedly been the first stop of the Rabbie's trip to the isle. She squinted as she looked at the distance left that she had to travel. It looked like it would take roughly an hour or so, likely more given how slow she had been driving on the frightfully narrow roads. Normally a confident driver, she found herself timid and cowering whenever a larger vehicle whizzed past her on the tight roads.

She had been in Scotland for three days.

Her flight from Newark to Glasgow had been long but uneventful. They had landed with enough daylight for her to get a rental car, find her hotel in the West End, and walk through Kelvingrove Park before the daylight was gone. With jetlag being what it was, she promptly fell asleep at 6:00pm and had not had problems with the time change since.

She briefly explored Glasgow in the morning, wandering the halls of the university on the hill and shops and restaurants on Ashton Lane, but it was not a bustling or cheery place. The air in the shops was somber and very few patrons were shopping.

After checking out the Botanic Gardens, she took to the road.

Oban had been small but lovely harbor town. It had been a sunny day and she had spent most of the afternoon sitting on the cement peer and smelling the sea. It was similarly more solemn of an atmosphere, with less and less shoppers out and about, but that was much of the world. She could hardly blame Scotland for being any different.

In fact, some of the gloom seemed to suit her. It welcomed her and demanded nothing.

However, the deeper into the Highlands she got, the less somber everything seemed.

Glencoe and Fort William had been very near to heartwarming. The quiet and the rugged nature swallowed her up and for the first time in months, she felt some semblance of peace. She felt peace in looking at the same sights that they had seen. She felt them with her, she felt their hearts in the highlands with her and the roaming stags.

She would have loved to wander a few more days in the wilderness but she had a final destination to reach.

Her evening in Fort William was spent in a pub across from her hotel. It was relatively quiet as it was a Thursday in the off season. She sat down at the bar and politely waited for the bartender's attention.

"A wee glass of wine lassie?" he asked, friendly enough as he set a coaster down in front of her. "Perhaps a nice white?"

"A glass of the Sleat 14 year please."

The bartender let out a whistle. "Not a lot of lasses will drink that strong of a dram. 'specially not from yer part of the world," he added, correctly placing her America accent. "Would ye like some ginger beer with it?"

"Just the whisky please," she said politely.

"America then?" he asked as he poured.

She nodded, used to this after a few days in the country.

"Whereabouts?"

"I grew up in a town called Allentown."

"Aye?" he asked, obviously having zero indication.

"Pennsylvania," she supplied, choosing not to mention where she had lived the past half of a decade.

Once she had the glass of hard alcohol in front of her, she took a sip and let the liquid sting her month before sliding down her throat and immediately warming her belly. Drink in hand, she examined the establishment, finding just enough décor to make it appealing to tourists but not so much that the few local patrons seemed to mind. There was one TV nearest the bar and where she expected to find a soccer match, she instead found the BBC news. They were discussing the government bailout of the banks that were very near collapsing.

The bartender noticed her brief flicker of attention to the TV and commented, "Bloody wankers."

Isabella looked over at him and whatever he saw in her gaze prompted him to continue.

"The whole lot of those bankers are cowards. They ken whit they were dain all these years. They should all be thrown in jail for stealing all our money like that."

Isabella took a sip of her drink.

"Never have met a banker who I liked. Never have met an honest banker…come to think on it."

A patron approached the bar to pay his tab and thus distracted the bartender from Isabella. She overhead him continue the conversation with the man paying for his drinks, the two agreeing that the bailout was nothing short of thief.

Isabella finished her glass in a gulp.

The year is 2008 and the global financial crisis is in full-swing effect.

This story will have shorter chapters but frequent updates.

Thank you for your generous love and support for the beginning of this wee tale.