CHAPTER TWO

Mulder hadn't slept a wink. And it had been a helluva long 
night. Ass aching, he shifted a bit on his tree branch in an 
unsuccessful effort to find a more comfortable position 
without waking Scully. Miraculously, she was asleep, wedged 
between him and the trunk of the tree, her head resting on his 
shoulder. The sun was still hidden behind the mountains, but 
the eastern sky was beginning to lighten above the craggy 
peaks, and a blond strip of clouds had developed along the 
horizon.

The saber-toothed tiger was gone. It had abandoned its night-
long vigil more than an hour ago when a herd of small horses 
passed close by, skirting the edge of the woods, heading 
toward the river. The cat followed the ponies. Several minutes 
later, Mulder was startled by the pitiful bleat of an animal 
in its death throes. The noise woke Scully from her sleep, and 
Mulder reassured her, convincing her to settle back against 
his shoulder. Apparently exhausted, she laid her head on him 
without argument and dozed off again. 

The cat was probably up on the hill right now, filling its 
belly with fresh meat. Mulder's stomach growled. He hadn't had 
a bite to eat since the day before yesterday when he'd downed 
two bacon double-cheeseburgers, a pistachio flavored milkshake 
-- extra large -- and a side order of jumbo onion rings. 
Shoulda super-sized it, he thought. Damn, he was hungry; the 
bark on this tree was beginning to look good enough to eat. 

He was thirsty again, too.

And he had to pee. 

Badly.

Looking down at the ground, he estimated they were sitting 
about twenty feet up. Hmm. If he peed from here, he might be 
able to hit that pinecone on the second branch from the 
bottom. He tried to gauge the necessary trajectory. The lack 
of wind would help his aim, but he wasn't altogether sure he 
could piss sitting down. And suppose Scully woke up before he 
was finished. How embarrassing would that be?

On the other hand, his bladder felt ready to bust. He had to 
do *something* -- now.

"Scully?" He reached over and traced her jaw from earlobe to 
chin with his index finger. 

She stirred and slowly opened her eyes. "Time z'it?" she 
asked, stifling a yawn.

"Sunrise. Almost."

She blinked sleepily at the still-dark sky. "No it isn't."

"Yeah...well...I gotta whiz, so good morning, sunshine." He 
slid off the branch and lowered his feet to the limb below 
him.

"No chance you could wait until it's actually light out? The 
tiger--"

"Scully, when a man says he's gotta go, he's gotta go." He 
pivoted so that he could help her down. "Besides, the tiger 
left." 

She gripped his shoulders while he guided her hips off her 
perch. After setting her feet on the branch beside his, he 
acted as a spotter while she got herself turned around.

"You want me to climb down first?" he asked.  

"No, I'll go...if you're sure the tiger is gone." 

"You can see for yourself it's not there."

"Yes, but where is it?"

Telling her it killed and ate a horse seemed counterproductive 
to getting her out of the tree, so he dodged the truth by 
saying, "It's probably peeing." 

She rolled her eyes, then began to slowly inch her way down to 
the next branch. Then the next. He stood above her, rocking 
from foot to foot, his bladder aching. 

"Any chance you could speed things up a little, Scully?" 

"I'm going as fast as I can."

"Well, you're gonna need an umbrella if you don't pick up the 
pace," he warned, looking down at the top of her head. 
"Raindrops keep fallin' on your head--"

"All right already." She began to descend more quickly, either 
out of sympathy or because she was now closing in on terra 
firma. He followed her down, just a step or two above her 
head. When she reached the bottom branch, she jumped to the 
ground. 

"Little girls' room is around back," she said, circling the 
tree. "Don't even think about peeking."

"I've got something else on my mind, Scully." He jumped the 
last few feet to the ground, too. "And it has nothing to do 
with looking at you." He spun to face the trunk, and unzipped 
his pants...just in the nick of time. Ahhh! Holy Jesus, Joseph 
and Mary. 

His head began to clear as his bladder emptied. 

When he finished, he called to her, "You done?"

"Yes."

Zipping his fly, he waited another moment or two, just in 
case. Didn't want to catch her with her pants down -- 
literally. When he did finally step around the tree, he found 
that she was standing several paces away, her back to him, 
pants up, shirt tucked in. She was looking out through the 
drape of evergreen branches at the distant mountain peaks, 
where clouds the color of nickel split the morning sun into 
finger-like rays.

Without taking her eyes from the prehistoric dawn, she began 
to recite a poem: "Way back in the days when the grass was 
still green, and the pond was still wet and the clouds were 
still clean..."

The verse sounded familiar. Edna St. Vincent Millay?

She continued the verse, "And the song of the Swomee-Swans 
rang out in space, one morning, I came to this glorious 
place." 

Not Millay. Dr. Seuss.

Honestly, he had expected her to be...well, less than 
enthusiastic about their circumstances. Yet here she was 
quoting Dr. Seuss, extolling the beauty of the landscape. 

A gentle wind wafted through the branches. It carried the 
scent of pine and it fluttered her hair. He sidled up next to 
her. 

God, she was beautiful.

Kiss her, his body urged. And although he'd experienced the 
impulse many times in the past, familiarity didn't keep his 
desire from sucker-punching the breath from his lungs or 
turning the bones of his legs to Jell-o. Without even touching 
her, he could feel their imaginary kiss. Her lips, soft 
beneath his. Her breath, hot on his mouth. The wetness of her 
tongue.  

Stop it! If she suspected what was on his mind, she would knee 
him in the nugs. Five years as partners, he knew she didn't 
think of him in a sexual way. Never had and probably never 
would. No sense fantasizing about things that weren't going to 
happen. Besides, he owed her more respect than that. 

To prevent himself from acting on his impulse, he lowered his 
head, and whispered the last line of Seuss' verse into her 
ear: "The bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees, mile 
after mile in the fresh morning breeze." 

She turned to smile up at him. God, her lips were so close. If 
he leaned in juuust a little more... 

"Pleistocene air seems to agree with you, Scully," he 
whispered. 

"Not at all. I've simply come to the conclusion that this is 
all a figment of my imagination, a hallucination caused by the 
blow to my head. I'm going to wake up any minute at Hill Air 
Force Base."

"Scully, we're in the Ice Age." 

"So you say. But until I see proof, I'm sticking to my 
hallucination theory. It's more plausible than your time 
travel idea."

"What does it take, Scully? A saber-toothed tiger to bite you 
on the ass?" Please, not this old song and dance, their 
perpetual pas de deux. "You saw the cat. We both saw it." 

"I was tired and dizzy and it was dark. I'm not sure what I 
saw--"

Groaning with frustration, he closed his eyes and threw back 
his head. 

It wasn't that he minded debating theories with her. As a 
matter of fact, he rather enjoyed the way she challenged him. 
She kept him on his toes, honed his investigative skills, 
prevented him from becoming analytically lazy. However, it 
irritated him to hear her refute what she'd seen with her own 
eyes, or rationalize irrational events by forcing them into 
more commonly held perspectives. Being rigorous was one thing, 
but denying the truth was unacceptable. 

He knew the only way to sway her, however, was to do it 
logically, and that would take some time.

Scully squinted at the sunrise. "I admit I don't know where we 
are or how we got here, but I can't accept that we're not 
still in the 20th Century."

It was true the landscape looked nothing like modern day Utah.

He bent and plucked a flower from a scraggly patch at his 
feet. "Something happened on that Air Base. Something that 
sent us back tens of thousands of years."     

"People can't travel through time," she maintained.

As usual she was going to make him work to prove his point.

"Physicists like Stephen Hawking have hypothesized the 
existence of wormholes and closed time loops -- actual portals 
through which matter can travel backward through time."

"Mulder, phenomena like extreme heat and gravity would make 
the trip lethal for any organism." 

"Maybe not. Three years ago, Jason Nichols was working on a 
catalyst for a self-sustaining endothermic reaction that would 
render those factors inconsequential." He held the flower 
under her nose.

She sniffed it. "Sweet," she said, before continuing her 
argument. "Jason died before he actually created his rapid 
freezing agent." 

"We saw it, Scully. And Lisa Ianelli saw it, too. Suppose she 
finished Jason's work?" Mulder tucked the flower behind his 
ear. 

"Let me repeat what I said yesterday: We were never frozen." 

"Suppose Lisa discovered another way..."

She raised a questioning eyebrow. "To withstand a trip through 
a wormhole?" 

"Yes, making time travel possible." 

"Mulder, Lisa never administered any compound."

"Yeah, but suppose the catalyst isn't a compound, but a set of 
circumstances."

"Caused by...?"

"Something mechanical, not biological."

"That kind of technology doesn't exist."

"Unless it's extraterrestrial."

She smiled. "You sound like Max Fenig, you know." 

He supposed he did sound like Max. 

"I mean it, Mulder. I can see your future crystal clear, and 
unfortunately, I see myself right there with you." Her 
expression changed to one of concern. "Mark my words: we're 
going to end up as two card-carrying MUFON members, wearing 
matching tinfoil caps to protect our minds from the imaginary 
rays of extraterrestrial thought-control devices, while we 
travel from one UFO hotspot to the next shouting to anyone 
who'll listen 'they're here, they're here,' ad infinitum."

"Imaginary rays?"

"Don't you ever worry about driving everyone away, all of your 
friends, your family, winding up old and lonely because you 
were -- you *are* -- obsessed with things that the rest of the 
world considers...well, insane, frankly?"

"I'll always have you. Won't I?" He nudged her arm until she 
nodded in agreement. "Scully, I don't care what the rest of 
the world thinks. Most people have their heads up their 
asses."

She glanced at him. "You really believe that?"

"Seeing is believing, isn't it?"  He placed his hand on the 
small of her back, turned her around and steered her out from 
under the tree branches, intending to head back to the river 
for a drink. "If it's right in front of your eyes, it must be-
-"

The river wound like a silver ribbon through the valley below. 
Animals crowded its banks. Lots of animals. Lots and lots of 
animals.

"Oh, my God," Scully gasped. Her voice rose in pitch. "Are 
those...?"

Yes indeedy. Mastodons. At least two dozen of them. And a herd 
of small horses. And bison, and something that looked like 
camels, and a few unrecognizable things. The landscape was a 
scene out of an African documentary, only these animals 
weren't zebras or elephants or water buffalo. They were...

"Mastodons."

*   *   *    

"My God," Scully repeated, unable to believe her eyes. 

The behemoths certainly looked like illustrations she'd seen 
of mastodons. She'd taken enough anthropology courses at the 
University of Maryland to recognize the difference between Ice 
Age proboscideans and their modern day cousins, and these were 
definitely not elephants escaped from a zoo.

Whatever they were, at least two-dozen of them had gathered in 
the valley along the riverbanks. The mature ones stood about 
ten feet tall -- somewhat shorter than modern day African and 
Asian elephants. Their ears were relatively small, and their 
tusks were straight and parallel to the ground. 

Scully tried to recall more details from Dr. Diamond's 
classes. He'd described a wide variety of Pleistocene 
megafauna, including mastodons, which had ranged across North 
America from Alaska to central Mexico. Archeologists had 
discovered mastodon bones alongside prehistoric spear points 
and stone cutting tools, leading to the assumption that early 
humans -- Clovis and Folsom cultures, the Paleo-Indians of 
ancient North America -- had hunted and eaten the giant 
mammals.

If memory served, all genera of megafaunal mammals, like the 
musk oxen, giant bison, and camels she could see drinking 
alongside the mastodons at the river below, had died out 
sometime prior to 11,000 B.P.

Which could only mean... 

Impossible. This had to be a hallucination. She and Mulder 
were *not* in the Ice Age.

She needed to sit. Sinking onto her heels in the grass at the 
edge of the meadow, she continued to stare at the prehistoric 
scene in the valley below.

Mulder sat, too, and scanned the riverbanks through his 
binoculars. "Looks like you gotta get up pretty early in the 
morning to beat the breakfast crowd. Shall we cut the line?"

Was he insane? "N-no. We're staying right here until they're 
gone."

"That could be quite a wait." He offered her the binoculars, 
but she shook her head. She didn't think she was ready to look 
at the gargantuans up close...not yet. 

Ten minutes later, the mastodons began migrating slowly 
downstream toward the forest. A group of camels moved in to 
take their place. Camels...in northwestern Utah? It boggled 
the mind. Oversized bison stood shoulder-deep in the river. A 
variety of unfamiliar birds dotted both banks of the river, 
looking like crumpled Kleenex from this distance. Horses, 
deer, and some kind of big-horned sheep shared the watering 
hole in cautious harmony.  

Mulder plucked a blade of grass from the field and stuck it in 
his mouth. He chewed on it for a minute or two before asking, 
"Is there any significant difference between a mastodon and a 
mammoth?"

"Their teeth," she answered numbly, wondering why he cared.

"Their teeth?"

"Yes...the word 'mastodon' is derived from the Greek 'mastos,' 
meaning breast, and 'odont,' meaning tooth. It translates 
literally to 'breast tooth.'"

"Breast...?" A smile nudged his cheek. "That's interesting."

"Yes, well...mastodons fed on spruce, primarily. So their 
teeth had crowns consisting of distinct rounded cusps, which 
helped them chew tough foliage. Mammoths, on the other hand, 
grazed on grasses, so their teeth are...uh, *were* dissimilar. 
Mammoths were also generally bigger than mastodons, with wider 
heads, and curving tusks. Those..." -- she nodded at the 
retreating behemoths -- "look like mastodons." 

God, was she seriously considering the possibility that they 
had traveled ten or twelve thousand years back in time? Her 
hope that this was all a hallucination began to dwindle with 
each new Pleistocene animal she spotted along the riverbank. 
Faced with such a preponderance of evidence, she felt 
compelled to acknowledge Mulder's theory of time travel as a 
possible explanation for their present predicament.

"I guess I owe you an apology, Mulder."

He nodded his acceptance.

That was one of the things she liked most about Mulder. He 
wasn't an I-told-you-so kind of guy. He didn't gloat. 

"We've got to find a way back," she said.

He chewed his blade of grass with as much zeal as he crunched 
sunflower seeds. "That might be a problem." 

If they couldn't find a way back, they were in serious 
trouble. 20th Century city slickers lost in an Ice Age 
landscape, with no survival skills to speak of. They were FBI 
trained, and could catch your average murderer or mutant 
easily enough, but what good were handcuffs on saber-toothed 
tigers? The Pleistocene world was full of larger-than-life 
threats. And they carried only three guns between them. Ten 
rounds per automatic plus the six rounds in Mulder's .38. That 
wasn't going to last long here. Every single bullet would be 
essential for protection *and* food. 

Food. She was hungry right now. Mulder must be, too. It'd been 
almost two days since their last meal. 

She looked again at the excess of wildlife lining the shore. 
Tons of protein on the hoof and no way to butcher or cook it. 

They were without knives, matches, or anything that could hold 
water. For that matter, they had no shelter, no sunscreen, no 
insect repellent. No compass, either, or first aid kit. Not 
even an aspirin. And already she missed the more commonplace 
comforts of modern life -- like toilet paper. 

They weren't prepared to last two days let alone...

Jesus, how long would they be here? Her heart began to hammer 
at the thought of a week, a month, a--

"Empty your pockets, Mulder."

"Excuse me?"

"Inventory. I want to know what we've got to work with." 

He shoved a fist into his right jacket pocket and pulled out 
his flashlight and car and house keys, which he laid on the 
ground beside the binoculars.

"And in here..." He pawed through his left coat pocket and 
produced handcuffs, cell phone, a pair of latex gloves--

Wait! Her cell phone.

She snatched her own phone from her pocket, and dialed the 
local FBI field office. "Why didn't I think of this sooner?" 

"That's not gonna work."

"We'll see--"

The display window was lit, but blank.

She turned off the phone and tossed it onto the growing pile 
of useless modern day junk.

"Anything else?" she asked, hopeful.

A newspaper clipping about UFO sightings at Hill Air Force 
Base. FBI badge. Pack of sunflower seeds -- empty. That seemed 
to disappoint Mulder more than anything so far. Dry cleaning 
receipt. Car rental agreement. A pocketknife. The knife was 
small, but serviceable. 

"Wait." He held up a finger and dug into his pants pocket. 
Handkerchief. Wallet. Comb. "Except for my gun, that's it," he 
announced. 

"Don't you mean *guns*?"

"No, I brought only one."

"But you always carry two guns."

"Well...not this trip."

Of all the times -- "Twenty rounds. That's all the protection 
we've got."

"I'm pretty sure I have two condoms in my wallet." He grinned 
at her.

"Oh, that's helpful."

"Not really. I think they expired in '95." He leaned back on 
his elbows. "How about you, Scully? You packin' anything 
useful?"

She emptied her pockets. Handcuffs. Latex gloves. Small pad of 
paper and pen. House keys. Badge. Wallet. Oh! Breath mints! 
She unwrapped the foil roll, popped one into her mouth and 
then offered the rest to Mulder. She continued to pull items 
from her jacket. Emery board. Freebie hotel sewing kit. 
Compact. Lipstick. Was lipstick edible? 

"That's all I have," she said, disappointed.

"Know what I'm wishing?" Mulder asked. He removed the flower 
from behind his ear and tossed it to the ground.

"For a time machine?"

"No, but that's not a bad idea." He gave her a wry smile. "I 
was wishing I'd been a bigger MacGyver fan." He began to 
pocket his possessions. "That way I could build a time machine 
out of our cell phones and my empty packet of sunflower 
seeds." He waved the cellophane bag at her.

"You think MacGyver would need both phones?" She returned her 
belongings to her pockets, too, and then rose to her feet.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Back to the field where we first arrived. If there's a way to 
get home, it has to be there."

Mulder stood, too, concern creasing his brow. "Not 
necessarily. We have no idea how we got here -- a wormhole, 
time loop, something else. The portal may be closed, or 
located elsewhere, or it may not exist at all."

"We came through it once, we have to assume we can go back the 
same way." She began hiking upland, determined to get away 
from the river with all its strange creatures and frightening 
implications. There had to be a portal of some kind back in 
the field. There just had to be.

They hiked for about ten minutes, heading east, when Scully 
suddenly slowed her pace. She realized she didn't know the way 
since she'd been unconscious when Mulder carried her to the 
river last night. 

"Straight ahead," he said, in response to her confused look. 
"It's not much further."

She pushed on, moving upland into the wind, which was picking 
up. Clouds were gathering and the air felt considerably cooler 
than it had yesterday.

They hadn't gone far when Mulder pointed to an area of 
trampled grass thirty yards ahead.

Scully jogged to it. "Here?"

"This is the place." He joined her at its center.

The spot looked entirely unremarkable. No obvious portals, no 
distortions in space and time, no shimmering doorways to the 
future. This couldn't be it. 

"You're sure?" she asked. 

He pointed to a stain of dried blood in the grass. "That's 
where you were laying."

Okay...the portal must be here then. They just needed to look 
harder. She walked a tight circle around him, searching the 
ground for any anomalous signs, waving her arms in front of 
her, hoping to feel an inconsistent air current or an abnormal 
gravitational pull. When she found nothing out of the 
ordinary, she frantically widened her search. 

There had to be a way out. They would find it; they had to. 
Just keep looking. She circled him again. And again. Her head 
throbbed where she'd been injured, and the pain made her 
stomach queasy. 

Mulder remained standing over the bloodstain, watching her 
spiral outward around him. She thoroughly searched the ground, 
the sky and everything in between.

"Scully..."

"It's here, Mulder." 

"Scul--"

"It's here, I know it!" 

It had to be...it had to be! They weren't equipped for the 
Pleistocene. She didn't want to be stuck tens of thousands of 
years in the past. Her family and her life were in 1998. She 
liked living there. She wanted to go home. She didn't belong 
here. Neither of them belonged here. Why wasn't Mulder 
looking? Why was he just standing there? 

"Help me, Mulder!"

Three strides and he was in front of her, blocking her search. 
He took hold of her arms just as she collapsed against him. 
She felt angry and frightened, and her head hurt so damn much. 
When she buried her face against his chest, it was all she 
could do to hold in her tears. 

He stroked her back and said nothing. His soothing caress and 
the soft kisses he pressed against the crown of her head 
helped calm her pounding heart. He felt solid and real beneath 
her fingers. She breathed him in. Felt his pulse drum beneath 
her cheek. 

When he cocooned her in his arms, she began to cry in earnest, 
because she knew his embrace offered only an illusion of 
safety.    

He sank to his knees, taking her with him, cradling her 
against his chest. 

"Shhh," he whispered into her hair, and let her cry herself 
out.

*   *   *

For several minutes after Scully's tears stopped, Mulder kept 
his arms looped around her and smoothed her wind-whipped hair.   

"Sorry," she sniffled.

He shrugged off her apology. 

"No, really," she insisted. "I'm embarrassed."

He wiped tears from her flushed cheeks. The jagged slash at 
her hairline looked inflamed and painful. Her skin felt fiery 
beneath his hand.  "You're sick, Scully." 

She stiffened in his arms. "I'm fine." 

Yeah, right. He'd heard that damn phrase more times than he 
cared to count. 

Fuck fine. No one knew better than he did how hard Scully 
worked to hide her vulnerability -- from the good ol' boys at 
the Bureau, from her family, from him. 

Especially from him. 

The word vulnerable was an insult to her. Yet despite her 
tough-as-nails demeanor, he'd seen her crack on occasion, 
allowing him the rare opportunity to play hero. It was a role 
he simultaneously loathed and aspired to. Loathed because it 
necessarily meant she was in harm's way. Aspired to because he 
wanted to be brave when it counted most, stopping at nothing 
to protect her, trading his life for hers without a moment's 
hesitation.

Truth was she almost never needed his help. She was able to 
take care of herself and him, too. 

He made no further comment about her injuries because he knew 
it would make her uncomfortable, but he planned to keep a 
close eye on her, whether she liked it or not.

A roll of thunder battered the surrounding hills. Storm clouds 
packed the sky to the east.

"Looks like we're in for some bad weather," he said. "We need 
to find cover."

And food. Christ, he felt as hungry as a liver-eating mutant 
coming off a 30-year hibernation. 

Another clap of thunder vibrated the air. Closer this time. 
His decision was made. Shelter first, then food. Rising to his 
feet, he hauled Scully up after him. All the color drained 
from her face as she tried to balance on unsteady legs.

"Can you walk?" he asked, securing her in the crook of his 
arm.

"Yeah. I'm just a little shaky." 

Food momentarily vied for the top spot on their To Do list. 
Scully's condition wasn't going to improve if she didn't get 
some nourishment into her. 

"Come on." He steered her toward the forest, which he hoped 
would provide both food and shelter.

Slate-gray clouds blotted out the daylight. Thunder crept 
closer each time it resounded. Mulder quickened his pace when 
the first fat raindrop slapped his cheek. He towed Scully 
across the wind-flogged meadow toward a gnarled evergreen that 
protruded high above the surrounding pines. Its upper trunk 
was corkscrewed in an odd s-shape, which he took as a good 
sign. The deformity was testimony to its stamina and survival. 
It had endured hardship, but in the end stood tall.

A lightning bolt sizzled through the dark sky, followed 
immediately by a heart-stopping crack of thunder. The storm 
was upon them and it was going to be a whopper.
 
"You okay?" he shouted, keeping his course. Her answer was 
lost in the next explosion of thunder. With less than twenty 
feet to go before they reached the tree, the sky opened, 
deluging them with cold rain. 

By the time they ducked beneath the branches, they were soaked 
to the skin. 

"Jesus!" she said, shivering.

A fork of lightning brightened the sky behind them, and 
thunder crashed on the heels of the strike. Wind and rain 
penetrated the boughs. They would need to move deeper into the 
forest to find adequate cover.

"Mulder, look." She pointed overhead, up the trunk of the 
tree. 

Near the top was an ancient scorch mark just below the s-
shaped trunk.

"Lightning?"

"Maybe."

"Let's get out of here."

He snagged her hand and tugged her away from the tree, heading 
for lower ground and denser cover. Lightning flared again and 
the sharp odor of ozone fell with the rain. 

The trees were enormous here, with broad old-growth trunks. 
Giant ferns filled the understory. When a blowdown the size of 
a tanker truck blocked their path, they detoured along the 
rocky edge of a ravine.

"Watch your step," he warned. Hopping from one wet, moss-
covered stone to the next, he tried to avoid tripping on tree 
roots that were as thick as his upper thigh. Off to his left, 
a swift-moving stream ran north-south in a gully thirty feet 
down. The banks were steep. Slippery pine needles and a layer 
of last year's rotting leaves made walking hazardous. A fall 
would be long and painful.

"You doing okay?" He glanced back at Scully. Rain had 
plastered her hair to her head and her teeth were chattering 
nonstop. Her chalky pallor shocked him. She stared back at him 
with dull, red-rimmed eyes, the left one entirely surrounded 
by the ugly bruise on her temple. 

"I think I need to sit for a minute," she admitted.

"Just a little further," he urged, pulling her forward. Her 
hands were ice cold. Her lips blue. He had to get her out of 
the rain.

A densely needled evergreen up ahead looked like it might 
provide some cover. It wasn't tall enough to attract 
lightning, but might be thick enough to keep out most of the 
rain. He stepped forward, heading for it, when the stones 
beneath his feet rolled and gave way.

"Shit!" He struggled to keep his balance, but the ground 
dropped out from under him and he stumbled over the edge into 
the ravine, hitting his hip and shoulder hard as he fell. 

Rolling and skidding, he grasped frantically for a handhold. 
Gravity hauled him toward the stream. The wind was knocked 
from his lungs when his ribs hit an outcropping of stone. He 
somersaulted several more yards through mud and leaves, until 
he landed with a splash in the water-filled gully. 

God damn, the water was cold.

Gasping for a breath of air, he struggled to his knees and 
scanned the trees on the upper embankment for Scully.

Fuck. Where the hell was she? 

"Mulder!" 

He followed the sound of her voice, and spotted her scrambling 
down to him. She half-jogged, half-slid between boulders and 
fallen branches. 

Getting his feet under him, he staggered from the water. Now 
his teeth were chattering, too, and he imagined his lips were 
as blue as hers.

"Mulder...?" She made it safely down the embankment and rushed 
to steady him. Eyes rounded with fear, she patted his arms and 
legs, presumably checking for broken bones. Then she combed 
through his rain-soaked hair, no doubt trying to rule out head 
injury.

"I'm fine, Scully. Really." He looked down at his mud-
streaked, waterlogged clothes. "Just...wet."

His words didn't reassure her; she continued to feel him, 
squeeze his arms, stroke his cheeks. Her hands were shaking, 
he realized. Apparently his fall had scared her more than it 
had him.

"I'm okay," he said again, capturing her nervous hands between 
his palms. He brought her trembling fingertips to his lips and 
kissed them. "Honest."

Tears filled her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but 
nothing came out, so she simply nodded, letting him know she 
believed him.

"Let's find a dry place to sit...relatively speaking." He 
scanned the ravine, looking for any sort of shelter where they 
might rest and catch their breath. 

An outcropping caught his eye about a third of the way up the 
embankment. Tucked beneath its overhang was a shallow notch 
that looked big enough to hold them both and provide a modicum 
of protection from the rain. 

Gathering Scully beneath one wet arm, he helped her climb. The 
notch turned out to be wider and deeper than he'd first 
thought, roomy enough for the two of them to sit side by side. 
With their knees drawn up, they would be completely out of the 
rain.

Water sluiced over the outcropping above it, but the floor of 
the little cave was bone dry. Moss softened the hard edges of 
the stone floor and walls. He climbed in first, then offered a 
hand to her. She allowed him to tug her in beside him, and 
once they were seated, they backed as far into the cleft as 
they could.

"Comfy?" he asked.

"Mm-hm." She slumped against the wall.  

Lightning continued to flash outside, while thunder vibrated 
through the ravine. Rain pounded the forest floor, cutting 
visibility to no more than twenty or thirty feet. He could 
barely see the stream from where they sat.

"Thirsty?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He leaned forward and cupped his hands beneath the spout of 
water that was pouring from the rocks above. He managed to 
hold onto a small amount, which he offered to her. She drank 
eagerly from the well of his hands. "More?" he asked.

"Please."

He reached again for the waterfall.

"Mulder! Don't move!"

He froze, arms outstretched.

"What is it?"

"Snake."

"Bad snake?"

"Is there a good kind?"

He heard something slither above his head to his left. Then he 
caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye. Jesus, it was 
enormous. 

It oozed out of a hole in the rocks, dropping its head to his 
eye level. He held his breath while it dangled there, flicking 
its tongue at him. Christ, the thing's head was as big as a 
housecat's and its body was as thick as his arm. 

Shit, when it rains, it fucking pours. 


CONTINUED IN 3/22...