Disclaimer: The X-Files and its characters are the property of Chris
Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and Fox Broadcasting. I'm using them
without permission and without profit. This may be reposted, providing
that the story is unaltered, and the disclaimer and byline remain
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Author's note: This is my first fan-fic. It's a little strange; make of
it what you will. The title is shamelessly borrowed from Charles de
Lint's book of the same name. It seemed appropriate for this short, but
strange, piece. Adulation craved, constructive criticism welcomed,
flames cheerfully ignored. 

Summary: A dying Mulder discovers what lies in the moments between
seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder.

Svaha
by Spooky
Copyright 1997

Svaha -- Amerindian; the time between seeing the lightning and hearing
the thunder; a waiting for promises to be fulfilled.  -- Charles de Lint


At first he heard everything; but the sound was distorted, as if he were
hearing it filtered through water. His body felt heavy and sluggish, as
if it, too, were immersed deep beneath some dark sea, mired in sargasso.

He heard voices and sirens and the low hum of traffic. The buzz of a fly
as it kissed his ear. He thought he should swat it away, but the thought
was half-formed and vague and quickly forgotten. His thoughts were
murky; drowned in the labyrinthine recesses of his mind. 
	
The sounds began fading away, as if they were being absorbed -- deprived
of the ability to penetrate the rippling effects of the distortion. He
heard only one sound now, one voice, urgent and persistent -- a lovely
trilling of sound. The lilting cadences caressed him, held his soul
gently in the dark.
	
An image came to him of hair of burnished copper, afire in the sunlight.
Vivid blue eyes, wide with mirth. The image fluttered elusively out of
his impotent grasp. Had the voice a name? It seemed it must have been
so, long ago. But Memory had run laughing through the empty halls of
Mind, scattering his thoughts like sea-foam.
	
Was that his name being called so compassionately? He strained to hear,
to make sense of the word, to wrest some glimmer of self from his
somnolent mind. But the word failed to find significance.
	
There was no sense of touching, or being touched, no sense of sight in
this place. No feeling of pain (pain? why should he feel pain?). It was
nothingness. It was freedom. He had been emptied, made hollow -- a
vessel to be filled.
	
His universe constricted to the sound of a voice, lulling and
comforting. It was speaking nonsense though; the words slipped past his
comprehension like water through open fingers. The soothing voice began
to fade and he nearly wept for the loss.
	
Soon he could no longer distinguish the separate sounds the voice spoke;
everything ran together in a crooning swell of song, the ebb and flow of
which mated with the tides of his heart. Other harmonies joined it now,
as if darkness itself was a chorus singing especially to him. The music
engulfed him, gently cradling him on a raft of song in the dark.
Protecting him.
	
Whereas before he had been heavy and weighed down, now his body was
buoyed by the currents caressing it. He floated gently, feeling the easy
rock of the waves. Comfortable. At peace. 	
	
Home.
	
The singing seemed to come from all around him. It stroked him lovingly,
wove its strands through his soul, all the while promising surcease. It
seemed to coalesce upon itself, becoming visible. The essence of the
music itself was becoming something seen -- a bright white light
creating a tunnel out of the darkness. He felt its invitation -- the
promise of the annealing of all pain, the erasure of all sin. He craved
the haven the light offered.
	
Memory twitched, and a flicker of fear swam up from the depths. The
light was cold. The light hurt. The light brought pain.
	
His yearning was a knife-edge in his heart; surely it had not been this
light that had caused his pain? Something had been taken from him,
swallowed by cold light. The instinct was too ingrained to ignore:
safety lay in darkness.
	
With effort he closed himself to the light and with relief and sorrow he
watched it fold in on itself. Leaving him floating in the thick miasma
of the dark sea. Even the song became distant, as if, in turning from
the light, he had caused it some affront. Betrayed, it moved farther and
farther towards some distant shore, until its limpid tones could no
longer reach him. He was left alone, bereft -- and filled with vague
longing.
	
Other sounds made themselves known, now that the chorus was silent. He
was aware of the slow thumping of his own heart and the faint rasp of
his own breath. Time seemed to stretch; each moment an eternity as he
listened to that beat which seemed to remind him of pounding surf. Never
had he been so aware of the slow rhythm; never known a heartbeat could
be so thunderous, so overwhelming. All life, all existence, came down to
this. To the tide of life; the inexorable pulse of time measured by the
body.
	
He could see Time curled around him -- no past, no future -- only an
unending present. Time was. He was. The moment stretched forever. He
would never pass, never move beyond this. There was nothing more than
this. 
	
There would never be anything more.
	
Gradually, even the sounds of breath and heart faded into the dark and
he was left in a silence so still, so profound, it made his heart ache.
It permeated his flesh, his soul. Even the universe held its breath. The
centre, the still-point, the nexus. The moment between seeing the
lightning and hearing the thunder. 
	
The heart of being where possibilities beg to be born.

Finis