From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 10:07:01 -0600 Subject: Inclemency of Sky (1/2) by KatyBlue by KatyBlue Source: direct Reply To: katy2blue@aol.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TITLE : Inclemency of Sky (1/2) AUTHOR : KatyBlue CLASSIFICATION: MSR, Angst SPOILERS: Within/Without RATING: PG-13 E-MAIL: katy2blue@aol.com WEBSITE: http://members.nbci.com/katybluemoon DISCLAIMER: I'll admit that these characters are owned by CC and 1013 productions if he'll admit that everything beyond his limited view of them here is all mine. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The fragments of poetry used in this story are from a poem called 'Birth of Love' by Robert Penn Warren. Reading it inspired this story. Author's notes at end. ARCHIVE: Feel free to archive my stories. All I ask is that you let me know where so that I can visit. I need a few new places to read now that the amazing Chronicle X is gone :( ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The woman, Face yet raised, wraps, With a motion as though standing in sleep, The towel about her body, under the breasts, and, Holding it there, hieratic as lost Egypt and erect, Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds Into the clamber and tangle of growth. Beyond The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone. ~Robert Penn Warren~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part (1/1) The deck chairs sprawl in the moonlight. In turn, moonlight creeps beneath them to take a turn playing over smooth wood, polished by sand and wind. The chairs are exposing ghostly white, flat, plastic arms to the kiss of the night. By day they are hidden by humans, catching rays of strong sun despite all dire warnings of skin cancer and holes in the ozone. But the night belongs to the chairs. Scully pauses for a moment on the deck. It is peaceful here. Her feet appreciate the smoothness of the worn wood. She looks behind her at the light spilling out the living room of this familiar beach house. The tungsten glow glances across white clapboard siding and graces the pink fuchsia growing in dark green, hanging pots on either side of the sliding glass door. Her mother is sitting inside by the unlit fireplace, her legs pulled up and covered with an afghan. She's reading 'She's come Undone' by Wally Lamb and pretending not to notice what Scully is doing. Beyond the deck, in undisciplined counterpart, a path of boards barely manages to interrupt the tangle of wild primroses and sand to travel down to the beach, bearing the more natural light of the moon in patches. It's quiet now that Bill and Charlie and their families have gone. Whole families must coordinate responsibilities and vacations. One of Charlie's two boys is starting soccer camp in a day. And Bill has an appointment with a naval ship at sea, bright and early next week. So they all leave as one. Scully has no one to coordinate direction with. Actually, that isn't true, she thinks. She does have someone. It's just such an extension of her own body right now that she doesn't think too much about it. Compensating for the added weight and the rounded protuberance she's finally beginning to notice comes naturally for the most part, though she is lacking much of her former grace of movement. And there are moments when her body points out the differences with a loud protest. Though her siblings have left, Scully is here for the duration, choosing to keep her mother company for the entire three weeks of her vacation. If there is one thing that single living affords, it is the decadent liberty of doing exactly as one pleases in all situations. Besides career obligations, which have been reduced to a single task right now, she has few responsibilities. Career obligations, she muses. Is that the corner she has relegated Mulder to? He's more than that, she knows. Is she happier now not to have to make the compromises their unique partnership demanded? She tries to imagine what it would have been like having him here with her. It would have been hell, she thinks, with a small smile. At least while Bill was still here anyway. And nice, she thinks, to imagine him sitting on the moonlit beach beside her right now. Stop, she tells herself. Stop thinking about him. Stop. Now. Think about nothing. So she thinks of nothing instead. A wall. A blank wall. White. No...black. A blank, black wall looming in front of her. Bearing nothing. Mulder goes away for a minute. She steps off the boards and onto the sand. The night is cool on her feet. The sand has lost the heat of the day and the grains are cool and sandpaper rough against even the toughest layers of skin on her soles. It feels good, scratching itches she didn't even know she had between her toes. She takes a moment to curl them into the dunes, digging and moving the sand aside. Making a little hole and then molding what she's lifted out of it into a tiny mountain. She sighs, staring down at it, and with one press of her foot flattens her amorphous creation and moves on toward the sea. It's a strangely calm night. The ocean is never silent, but this night, the whisper of the waves lapping at the shore is about as soothing as it gets. She spreads the blanket she's carrying out into the windless night with a flick and snap of her wrists. It floats downward and settles onto the sand almost perfectly. She only needs a few small adjustments at each corner to pull out the wrinkles she's created. And then she lowers her growing bulk down onto it and just sits there for a minute, allowing herself to adjust to the moonlight. To absorb the mesmerizing ebb and flow of the waves lapping in and out against the sand -- so close. She pulls her knees up because she still can, and rests her elbows on them. And then she sets her chin into her cupped hands and stares forward at the horizon. On a cloudy night, the ocean would appear almost black, the delineation between water and sky obscured. But when the moon is full like tonight, the surface of the water reflects it in a silver-whitened shimmer of movement. She watches this for a bit, the rippling of the almost nonexistent waves. The wash of their foaming quiet as they slide into shore and retreat. Advance and retreat. But this starts to make her sleepy. And she came down here for a reason. She needs to swim. When Scully was a little girl, her father taught her how to swim. He taught all of the Scully clan how to swim. If a Scully couldn't swim by five years of age, look out -- they'd be ridiculed unmercifully by the siblings who could and frowned upon by Ahab, who set great store by this achievement. He said that any sailor who couldn't swim wasn't worth his salt. She'd been a little afraid of the waves and was, admittedly, the slowest Scully on the learning curve as far as this aquatic accomplishment went. In fact, she just barely made it under the age limit in mastering this particular water-based skill. But if she were honest with herself, Ahab's teaching method hadn't exactly made it easy. The lesson started with instructions, sitting on the beach much as she was now. This might even be the very same spot she'd sat in way back then, but time's passage and fading memories couldn't confirm that. Strange how one can return to the places of childhood, be caught by a tease of the familiar, and yet still have it all seem so completely different. He'd informed her how to move her arms and legs while "crawling" and to "Listen up, Dana, when I'm talking to you". But Bill, who'd already learned, was hopping around on one foot behind Ahab's back, making faces at her. And down the beach, Melissa was showing Charlie something interesting in a tidepool and dancing like a ballerina across the sand. Scully had a new bathing suit with a skirt attached to it and she wanted to twirl hard and see if it spun out like Melissa's. There are a lot of distractions in a family. When Ahab brought her down to the water, she knew that arms and legs were supposed to move when she swam and that was about all she'd absorbed. And with a great and gentle heave, her father had picked her up and hurled her out into the deep. A harsh test of her mettle to see if she could swim. Of course she couldn't. Of course she flailed with arms and legs but sank like a stone, terrified and swallowing water, having missed the finer points of exactly how arms and legs were actually supposed to move. When her father lifted her out, she was gasping for air and clinging onto his arm like a burr. The terror then inspired her to climb up him like a monkey, teeth chattering at the cold of the ocean as she choked out what salty brine she'd already swallowed. She finally figured out through her blinding fear that he was lecturing her. Angry with her performance. This sobered her because she wanted to make him proud of her. So she quieted down as he pried her loose and tried to control her panic as he told her in no uncertain terms to listen this time to what he was saying. When Ahab wanted you to listen, you listened. Out there in the scary deep of the water, there were no distractions to this 'do or die' method of teaching one how to swim. When he told her to "Buck up, sailor," she stopped clinging and allowed him to buoy her up in the water with one hand, despite her fear. She wanted to please him, as any child wants to please a parent. And amazingly, she figured out that her body mostly floated in the water, even when he wasn't holding on. Then she learned how to move her arms and legs the way he told her to. Until at some point in all of this, she forgot to be afraid anymore. And when he moved his hand away, she didn't even notice. She just swam. Afterward, he'd brought her into the house and gave her the only green popsicle left, proudly calling her "His little blue dolphin," all evening. Waxing on about the rapid development of her swimming skills until Bill stuck his tongue out at her and pinched her hard when no one else was looking. In the altered moonlight of the present day, Scully lifts the oversized t-shirt from her body, shaking off the misty memories. She slides a pair of stretchy shorts off. Underneath, she is wearing a swimsuit, but her body is so changed that she stares at it for a minute, knowing she looks ridiculous in the suit but uncaring with no one around to see it. This amazing transformation seems unbelievable every time she notices herself. A small miracle she's more than grateful for. The white of her skin, where visible, is almost translucent in the moonlight. She's tried to heed the dire warnings of doctors and avoid the more damaging rays of sun, although if her skin had the ability to turn a lovely golden brown she might be tempted to ignore them. Instead, it burns to an angry pink and later, freckles emerge in appalling droves to protect her from the sun with her own disheartening version of melanin. So she's stuck with the ghostly white look and her soapbox of sun avoidance. She stands with some difficulty. She is not even huge yet, but she feels heavy. Leaden. She needs to swim. Odd. She'd always imagined pregnancy would be a joyous time. That gestating a life must be a feeling both wonderful and mysterious. But instead, she finds herself categorizing each physiological change for exactly what it is. She's very clinical about these changes. She tracks each symptom as if she's her own detached and objective doctor, monitoring her progress. No matter how hard she tries, she can't seem to make the process magical. Every minuscule transformation is completely anatomically explainable and documented. She feels heavy with life. Weighed down. Fully prepared for any complication that could occur with memorized details of each possible malady's symptomatology. Stop thinking about the baby, she thinks. Stop. She doesn't want to be morose. Conversely, she doesn't want to get too excited. She feels as if it will jinx her. Just keep a handle on it, she tells herself. Think of nothing. No...think of swimming. She walks toward the ocean, mesmerized by the metallic sheen of its moving surface. It is never smart to swim alone. But she knows that her mother is watching with an eagle eye from the house. And Scully is an excellent swimmer. The ocean tonight, as if to accommodate her, is calm. Scully steps into the water. Surprisingly, it is not as cold as she expects it to be. It's late August and the liquid holds onto more heat than the sand. She walks out step by careful step, suddenly noticing her own awkwardness and the extra effort it forces her to take. There is too much truth to the beached whale analogy. In the increment of steps, she is finally submerged in the water. Past the interruption of the tiny breakers violating the shoreline. Feet, calves, knees, thighs, pelvis, torso, breasts and shoulders finally enter into submersion. She becomes lighter and lighter. Buoyant and free in the water. She lets herself fall gently backward, floating for a second. The ocean is almost unbearably peaceful tonight. This weightlessness has become a strange craving for her. She often misses the fact that she is not in full control of her body anymore. She is alarmed by how thick and slow she is becoming. At a time when she needs to push herself harder than ever, it sometimes seems as if she can barely move. She launches herself upward with a kick and begins to swim. Scully's crawl was perfected during hours of swimming practice -- a daughter who always worried about being worth her salt. Her strokes are sure and cut the water at just the right angle. She turns her face in and out with precision, taking each breath with rhythmic accuracy. Her legs flutter behind her in perfect little kicks and act as rudders. Her awkwardness vanishes. Under the water, her eyes open and catch the dim shimmer of moonlight coming through the mirror-like surface, blurring her vision. The baby is weightless within her. She is weightless within the ocean. There is something almost disturbing about this need. Something unexplainable in her craving for this feeling. For some reason, she even finds herself dreaming at night about floating. She feels as if she could float for an eternity. But now that she's out here, she doesn't spend much time in the floating stage. She swims. Always moving forward, moving forward. Even if it is only in a circle, a precise relentless crawl to nowhere. She swims on. Finally, she exhausts herself and stops where she can see the beach house and her mother, standing on the deck watching over her. She lifts her arm up in a brief wave and treads water lightly. Her mother waves back. Turning her back to the light pollution of the house, she tilts her head back and looks up at the midnight-velvet of a sky, full of stars. She sighs and, for a second, feels connected. Earth to sky to stars. Weightless. Limitless. Her mother will be getting worried about now so she moves in toward shore and regrets each lumbering step out of water and back onto land. When she gets to the blanket, she sits down on it and watches her mother turn and walk back into the house, clutching her book. When Scully gets inside, Maggie Scully will ask how her swim was and not look up so as to hide the concern that rests in her eyes. And Scully will answer, "fine", as is her habit and go to bed. Scully wraps a towel around herself, lazily drying her hair. Lying slowly back on the blanket, she stares up at the stars again, but no longer feels any connection to them. She tries to believe that Mulder is up there somewhere. Despite everything she's seen, her beliefs are still sometimes quite stubbornly earthbound. It is far more plausible that Mulder is being held against his will somewhere by all too human captors. She would know if he were gone from this earth, she tells herself. She doesn't believe in much that defies explanation, but she does believe in this one connection. She still feels him. The connection seems unbounded by earth or ocean, sky or stars. Weightless. Limitless... He's out there somewhere. Stop, she tells herself. Stop thinking about him. Stop. Now. Think about nothing. So she thinks of nothing, instead. A wall. A blank, black wall looming in front of her, insurmountable. Bearing no messages. Nothing. Sighing, she lifts herself from the blanket and grinds her feet into the sand. She wads the blanket up into her arms along with her discarded clothing. She wraps the towel around her disappearing waist and has a sudden urge to twirl and see if it fans out. She does not follow this frivolous impulse. Step by careful step, she heads back up to the house, feeling the careful weight of gravity pulling on her. There's a grove of spruce trees behind the house. The fresh smell of their pitch reminds her sharply of the woods where Mulder was abducted and she frowns. The towel falls and she grabs at it half-heartedly and then gives up and lets it trail behind her in the sand as she steps up onto the deck. She allows herself to pause in her thoughts for a moment, staring at the empty plastic arms of one of the white chairs. She doesn't want to forget him. She closes her eyes and imagines him sitting there. If she could, she would float in the water all night. Weightless... But the swimming, which is more compulsion than exercise, has exhausted her. She's tired. She will sleep heavily now. She hopes to dream of Mulder. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The body, Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light In the sky yet lingers or, from The metallic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body, With the towel now trailing loose from one hand, is A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high sky. This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits Of no definition, for it Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which Definition might be possible. ~Robert Penn Warren~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ end part (1/2) continued in part (2/2) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TITLE: Inclemency of Sky (2/2) AUTHOR: KatyBlue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And the man, Suspended in his darkling medium, stares Upward where, though not visible, he knows She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only He had such strength, he would put his hand forth And maintain it over her to guard, in all Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather Might ever be. In his heart He cries out. ~Robert Penn Warren~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part (2/2) He has no voice. He stares at nothing. A wall. A blank wall. A blank, black wall looming in front of him. A blank, black, viscous teeming wall. Staring at it is like looking through an opaque, syrupy film at movement that he can't make out. This is not air, but some congealed substance. A torpid suspension of his body. He floats within it. Weightless. Horrified. In his arrogance, he expected to be treated better. He expected, with his knowledge of the abduction process and his years of dedication to the work of the x-files, to be put on some equal and level plane with the aliens. Not treated as one of the nameless, faceless masses that have gone before him, no more than another anonymous body to experiment upon. This is only a flash of insight. His mind can't hold a thought long. They pass through and are gone. Disconnected, non-sequential moments. This one goes the way of the rest. He needs to tell Scully. What he needs to tell her, he does not know. Congealed and concentrated, his heartbeat has slowed to a sluggish but tenacious turnover. The lub and dub of its valves snapping closed is a leaden, dragging accompaniment to his dull-witted stupor. His brain misfires in real time, or possibly it is flashing forward at the speed of light and he just can't tell. Memories fire off and fade away as he grasps at them. A lucid, dreamlike state that he can't awaken from or hold onto. Breathing is the worst. Coagulated, viscid, liquid moving in and out instead of air, filling his mouth with a metallic tang. The unpleasant taste is accompanied by a helpless sensation as his lungs collect the heavy fluid. He has never gotten used to this. If he thinks about it, he panics. Flailing in bovine, graceless impotence within his suspended state. He stares ahead at the blank, black wall of nothingness. Struggling to stay calm. Flashes of brainwaves. Synapses firing. Firing. Firing. Always firing. Useless mental agony. Suspended nightmare. Scully... He pictures her vividly. Standing at the edge of an ocean somewhere. He doesn't know why he pictures this, for he's never watched her standing at the edge of an ocean at night. She looks different. She looks misshapen. Altered. Pregnant. No. No. No. Oh god, no. He doesn't understand this vision. All too often, he is treated to the darker musings of some unintelligible nightmare. The misfiring of dismal and somber brainwaves. The horrors that have been visited upon him or the horrors he feels he's visited on others, magnified tenfold by an imagination gone haywire. Don't think about this. He can't decide if this vision of Scully is a dream or a nightmare. But he can't stop the visions. They come and go. Come and go. Out of his control. Elusive. Terrifying. Comforting. He watches her, mesmerized. Scully moves into the ocean, and the moon is painting her a ghostly white. She seems ethereal. Transparent. Barely there, despite her more substantial state. He watches her disappear step by step under the metallic, moving surface with a foreboding he can't shake. The ocean is a dark, absorbing mass underneath its serenly silver moonlight surface. Cold and menacing. The liquid coagulates in his lungs as he envisages her, moving on its slow passage in and out. In and out. His breathing is no longer under his control, but seemingly someone else's assignment. If he could, he would stop it. Drown in this gelatinous pool of confusion and pain. He wants very badly for this to end, even should it mean his death. Scully is moving through the water. Her strokes are strong. Assured. Cutting a wake behind her. The nameless dread does not leave him. It clings to this altered consciousness with sinewy tentacles. He feels a sharp, piercing ache start behind the sightless orbs of his eyeballs. Moving through his head as if his brain is no more than a network of fibrous connections, just there to pass the pain along. The agony intensifies. Scully swims away from him in the gaping sea. Growing obscure and indistinct from the background of his discomfort. He doesn't want to lose her. He only wishes to lose himself. He is weightless in his disorientation. Floating. Scully parts the water with her body. Moving forward. He follows her in his mind. Trying to keep up. She seems to be going too fast for his dulled mental capacity. Slow motion agony. And then, lightning quick, he's ahead of her, missing a flash of time, trying to slow her down with his thought processes alone. Her movement is agonizing. He knows his hand is still connected to his brain. He attempts to manipulate it. He wants to use it stop her almost frenetic forward motion. He wants to touch her. He feels each nerve synapse as he forces the impulse to travel downward. It seems impossible but, at times, he's aware of his body at an infinitesimally molecular level, enlightened to the billions of cells coming together to define what he is, and where he begins and ends in this universe. There is a surreal beauty to this knowledge, and a searing anguish he is paralyzed by. At other times, he's completely numb to his own substance or existence. This time, he wills his hand to reach out as her image is escaping him. The ebb and flow of the waves against the shoreline distract him, tugging at visceral membranes, and obscuring her in the wash of water. But he doesn't want to let her go. He forces himself to concentrate. His fingers stretch forward. He suffers the distress immediately brought forth by this attempt to touch the indistinct fog of his hallucination. Despite it, he fights and pushes through his reduced world, choking on the condensed medium that fills his mouth. A tingle travels down his arm and into his fingers, bringing both welcome and incapacitating sensations. He hears a sharp shrieking wail, tinny and paralyzing in his ears. A muffled, recognizable reminder that these sensory organs still exist as working appendages. A shrill alarm from somewhere outside his incomprehensible prison betrays him. For a moment, in his bloated and violent agony, he thinks his captors might finally be killing him. But then, a slow, lethargic peace begins to crawl through his limbs and sedate his pain and his panic with a familiarity he's coming to recognize and hate. A cloudy haze floats in to deliver him into an insensate apathy. Something has identified his awareness and is deadening it. The slicing glimpse of comprehension is now fading to a blunted, all-encompassing, dull ache in his head. But in the glutinous gel of this numbed terror, he can still see his hand. Somehow, he's moved it. It floats there in his indistinct view like an accomplishment. The ropy tendons and bones are visible even with his unclear vision. The fingers extend forward in supplication. Searching uneasily for contact. Restless in their benumbed splendor. He can feel it. Each delicate bone structure. Every nerve firing and blood vessel pumping, covered with a thin blanket of muscle and skin. A ruthless, throbbing ache of awareness. An accomplishment, approaching nothing. But it is, nonetheless, his hand, shouting of life. He wants to cry out with horror or relief but he's lost this capacity. He needs to tell Scully. What he needs to tell her, he can no longer grasp. His hand begins to frighten him with its inert suspension and lack of any further sign of life, fragile and still before his paralytic vision. He closes his eyes through a more massive effort than running a marathon. The lids slide through syrupy adhesive, over unfocused lens and aqueous humor. The lashes crash against each other with a tremendous impact and lock together in the gloom. He stares at nothing. A wall. A blank wall. A blank, black wall looming in front of him. It would remind him of the night sky but for the creeping lines of red blood vessels tracing across it. He ignores the red and imagines a blanket of midnight blue. He pictures stars. A sky full of stars. Pinpricks of white light. A universe full of possibilities, not prisoner to the frailty of this human condition. Unmoved by the small and terrifying world he exists within, overseen by undefined alien forms and the unknown, incomprehensible set of rules he is subjected to -- blinded by helpless fear and rage at the unfair subjugation, but trapped within the limits of human perception and unreal physical pain. Stop. Don't think of the body. Don't think of the pain. Think of stars. A brilliant firing against the blue velvet sky of his mind. He senses her -- one delicate connection. Human to human. One mind reaching out to one other mind. He feels the joining as if she were an extension of the nerves that travel through his body. But these fibers are traveling through space and time to link to another body entirely. A gossamer web of life connecting to life. Scully is lying on a blanket, staring at the stars. He feels her emotions wash over him. Hopelessness, for a moment so complete and utter it makes him wish for the capacity to weep through his dammed up eyes. He feels fear. And despair. But there are other emotions welling up within her -- an impossible, clinging confidence. A confused trust in good. A belief that he is out there. It's comforting. Scully, for a few moments, is at peace, an island floating in her own sea of restlessness. He wishes he could reach her. He wants to touch her with the hand he knows is suspended out there in this space. He wants to protect her. From what, he doesn't know. He feels the movement of his fingers, reaching toward her. This is only a flash of insight. It passes and is gone. He is once again losing control over his body and his mind. Disconnected, non-sequential moments come and go in the confusion of his fast-fading consciousness until this one, too, has gone the way of the rest. The tendrils are unfurling. Snapping back into his head. He needs to tell Scully. What he needs to tell her, he no longer knows. He sees her walking away, trailing a towel, leaving despite his efforts to hold on to her. The smell of spruce suddenly assails his nostrils. He remembers trees as she looks up at a sky full of stars. Impossible comprehension blooms and withers. The connection fades off even as he attempts to concentrate on it. Until he can no longer grasp it, ensconced in an ambiguous, dreamlike state he can't awaken from or hold onto. He does not know what is real anymore. This is not air, but some congealed substance. A torpid suspension of his body. He floats within it. Horrified. Weightless... His hand curls back in against his body, fetal and lost. In one last bright flash of lucidity, he hopes to dream of Scully. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Above Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, He sees The first star pulse into being. It gleams there. I do not know what promise it makes to him. ~Robert Penn Warren~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE END AUTHOR'S NOTES: A mighty thanks as always to my good friend and tireless beta, Meredith, and to another most wonderful editor and friend, Toniann -- forgive me for being so quiet for so long!!! And a big thanks to FabMon, Laine, Kestabrook, Clarissa, Laura and all my crystal-shipmates who let me think I have something to say. Lately, it's been mostly just 'I miss Mulder!' Hearty hellos to Lenore, JLB, Erly, and Lena -- I'm dedicating this to all of you until I can get my butt in gear and e-mail you. And to anyone else who's so kindly written and not heard from me yet -- I promise your thank you is coming! Real life is a nasty and unforgiving time-suck! But I write these stories for those who read them, and I thank you for making it this far on the journey with me... "Whatever occurs can be regarded as the path and all things, not just some things, are workable." ~Pema Chodron~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I HAVE A NEW ADDY !!!!!!!! VISIT MY FANFIC: Please bookmark my new home !!!!!!!!!! It's very lonely out there in my NEW little corner of cyberspace! http://members.nbci.com/katybluemoon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ HAVE A VOICE! Save the Mulder/Scully dynamic Preserve the Partnership -- and make the world a better place at the same time :) YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! http://idealists.simplenet.com/ptp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~