Subject: Svaha 1/1
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998
From: ddwake1@netcom.ca

Title: Svaha
Author: Spooky
Rating: PG
Classification: V
Spoilers: none
Keywords: Character death
Summary: A dying Mulder discovers what lies in the moments between
seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder.

Disclaimer: I'll put them back when I'm done, Ma. Honest!

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