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~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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~

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