From GHill52695@aol.com Mon Mar 03 12:47:33 1997 Subject: [XFF] "Horse"/"Just Friends" by Danielle Culverson From: GHill52695@aol.com Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 13:47:33 -0500 (EST) -------- This story titled "Horse" was written by Danielle Culverson to accompany my story "Just Friends," which I posted to the XF fanfic list minutes ago. Hope you enjoy it - I did. Gerry This is a fiction story based on the characters created by Chris Carter. No infringement of copyrights held by 10/13 Productions, Twentieth Century Productions, or Fox Broadcasting is intended. All unrecognised characters and plot-lines belong to me. Names, characters, and places exist solely within my imagination, or are used fictitiously. No connection to any person, living or dead, is intended, and any resemblance is entirely coincidental. Feel free to distribute, but please keep me as the author. Rating - PG. Classification - X (Short). This story is an accompaniment to Gerry Hill's "Just Friends" which inspired it, just as Gerry's stories so often inspire my work. Summary - A horse saves Mulder's life after he is dumped in the desert by a faction of the "shadow government". No spoilers. Danielle Culverson. Horse. Sudden heat filled the air around me, and I felt the heat of the young yellow sun on my back. My back. I turned my head around and looked down with large black eyes at the long hair-covered body that was now mine. I gave a quiet snort of approval, and took a step forward, testing my new balance, learning how my body worked. It was like learning to walk all over again, only this time I'd been told how do to it in advance. With a few minutes of patient practice, I got the hang of using my four long legs together, and bending the back legs in the opposite direction to the front ones. I certainly had become an odd creature, but according to our research, the most appropriate for what I had to do, and probably the most acceptable. Humans called these animals horses, and I was a fine one, - which was hardly surprising. Out of the centre corners of my large eyes, I could see part of the white blaze which ran down my nose. Turning my head to the side, I could see the glossy coat of a healthy animal. Long eyelashes protected my eyes from the sandy desert I was now in, and hairs over my nostrils stopped me breathing too much of it in. I looked around at the area I had arrived at. There was little to see, but I knew that somewhere not too far away was the man I had come to find. He needed help, and I had come to give him that help. The man's name was Fox Mulder. He worked with some sort of government agency, tracking down humans who had gone wrong. He also had an uncommon interest in my people, which was hardly surprising, and was also the reason I wanted to help him. This particular human seemed more sensitive than most, and also more foolhardy. Since the incident twenty-four Earth years ago, he had been constantly getting into dangerous situations through his eternal pursuit of us, and what he felt we had taken from him. I had come to the understanding that he blamed himself for the incident, but the exact nature of the emotions he was capable of I was uncertain of. I set off across the sand, towards where the man was. I used the sun's position to guide me to him, and it wasn't long before I saw him stumbling along. He was naked, which was unusual for humans, and his skin was red. He limped slightly as he walked, and I saw that he had been damaged by one of the desert plants. He held a gun in one hand. - I knew what that was. I hadn't had first hand contact with one, fortunately, but when the Syndicate turned on us, those who were left behind had been killed by guns. - We all knew the brutal, primitive weapons these men used. But this man was different. In all the time we had been watching him, he had never used his gun except when he had to, sometimes getting himself into difficult and dangerous situations because of his determination to find the truth. - And where was the truth when it's keeper was dead? It lived only as long as someone remembered it. The man didn't even seem to like the gun he was carrying. His posture indicated that he carried it because he felt he might need it, but that he didn't want to need it. The man looked up and saw me. He stopped walking, and looked at me, hope appearing in his eyes. I stood still and waited for him to come to me, my long ears twitching as they followed every sound in the vast expanse of desert. He approached me slowly, apparently afraid I would move away. When he reached me, he gently placed his hand on my mane, studying me. A faint rattle drew my attention, and I saw a diamond-back rattlesnake on the sandy ground six feet away. If it struck the man, he would in serious trouble. I side-stepped, trying to convey my urgency to the man, who appeared to be debating how to get onto my back. Then he saw the snake too, and froze. He lifted his gun slowly, as though hoping he would be able to shoot the snake, but I think we both knew it was impossible. The snake reared back, and then struck. The man made a leap for my back, dragging himself up with a handful of my mane in his grip. The snake had fallen short of him, it's body not quite long enough to reach him. Anyway, he was on my back now, and I decided we had both had enough of the situation. I turned and set off at an easy canter across the desert. The sun-baked ground was hard, and hurt my feet. I slowed to a walk, heading in a north-westerly direction, the direction I suspected help would be most likely to come from. The man was drifting into unconsciousness, and finally he slumped down against my neck, too weary and dehydrated too remain consciouss any longer. I realised that too carry him much further would kill him anyway if he didn't get a drink soon. I continued walking until I came upon a small tree which would offer both of us shelter from the blazing sun, and where a small creek passed by, where we would be able to drink. I paused under the tree, and carefully bent my front knees a little so that the man slid forward and off to the side. He landed on the dusty ground with a thump. I moved to the creek to take a drink, and decided to wait through the night so we could both get some rest. * * * The sun was low in the sky when the man awoke again. He seemed a little disorientated, and I was anxious to get him to drink as soon as possible. I turned my head to glance at the falling sun, and gave a whinny. The man pushed himself up onto his elbows, and spoke to me for the first time. "What is it, boy?" he asked. I knew he didn't expect an answer, but it still seemed strange that he should ask me a question. I lowered my head to the sparse grass growing on the ground, to point out the availability of nourishment. The man looked around, and then his eyes brightened as he saw the creek. He got up with difficulty, and went over to it, using his hands to lift the small amount of water there to his mouth. Moving away from the creek again, the man did a short exploration of the place I had chosen to stop the night at. He found the remains of a camp-fire which I had noticed when I stopped. - We were both hoping that it meant humans might come to this place. - Then he cleared an area of the small stones and thorns which littered the ground, and sat down. He pulled his legs up to his chin, apparently afraid of what might be living nearby in the desert. Then he looked up at the stars, evidently searching the skies, as always. "Oh, Scully, I miss you." he murmured. I twitched one ear forward. The man sounded hurt. He appeared to be concerned about someone or something, and I didn't know what I could do to help him. I stood patiently nearby, watching for any signs that the water he had drunk had made him ill. I suspected it had been contaminated, but my constitution could stand it. - I wasn't so sure about his, especially not in his current condition. As the night went on my suspicions were confirmed. The man started to suffer from stomach cramps. Then he was seized by fits of vomiting and diarrhoea, which did nothing to improve his dehydration. He slept only fitfully, waking as the cramps racked him, and moaning in his sleep. By morning he was feverish, and when he woke up properly he rolled over into the creek, and lay in the water there, weakly splashing it over his burning body in an attempt to gain some relief. But I couldn't allow him to stay there all day. We had to get moving again, because we were still too far into the desert for any humans who were looking for him to find us. I went over to him, and looked down on him where he lay in the creek. "Still here, eh, buddy?" he whispered hoarsely. Then a cramp struck him, and he bent double in pain. A low moan escaped his lips. I bent down and touched my nose to his shoulder, urging him on. He gave a short cry, my action had apparently startled him, but then started to try and get up. He looked at me curiously for a moment. I looked back in concern. "OK, Mulder, you've gone over the edge for sure." he muttered, apparently to himself. Then he caught hold of my mane, and dragged himself to his feet. I stepped forward into the creek so that he could reach my back easier, while he scrambled out of it, so that he didn't have to jump as high. He tried to throw himself onto me, but was so weak that he ended up pulling himself up with handfuls of my mane. "Go." he muttered, his voice rasping, it was so dry. I turned my head to look at him in concern, and then decided it was best to get him back to civilisation as fast as possible. I stepped out of the creek, and set off in a north-westerly direction again. The man was barely consciouss most of the time. Violent cramps went though him, and I could feel them in my back as he shuddered on me, moaned, and sometimes screamed with the pain. Through all this he still clutched the gun he had been carrying, and it had become tangled up in my mane. Finally, during a period when he was fairly coherent, he started trying to remove the gun. I had an unpleasant notion of what he was going to use it for, and hurried my pace. Another spasm went through him, and he collapsed forward against my neck, slipping slightly to one side. My ears twitched around, tracking a noise they had picked up. I could hear one of the low-flying machines the humans sometimes traveled in, and it was coming closer. I turned about, and soon spotted the machine descending to the ground. A huge rotor on the top of it was spinning, and apparently this was what kept it off the ground. - But I wasn't sure if the people inside it would be the same ones who had originally left the man in the desert, or people who would help him. I backed away a little, and watched as the helicopter landed, alert for any signs of danger to myself or my burden. The rotor stopped spinning, and two men got out of the back of the machine, carrying a stretcher and what appeared to be emergency medical equipment. I stepped back as they approached, still uncertain, but my action dislodged the man, who had already been sliding off, and he fell to the ground. The two men hurried over, and I moved back a little to watch as they set up fluids to drain into the man's body, and moved him onto the stretcher. A car drove up in a hurry, and stopped near to the helicopter. A woman got out, and I recognised her. - The auburn-haired woman who worked with the man. She had a half-empty water bottle in one hand, although how she thought that would help, I wasn't sure. She took the fluid bag from one of the men, and started firing rapid questions at him about the condition of the man. Then the two men picked up the stretcher, and the woman walked with it to the helicopter. After a moment's discussion, the woman and one of the men got back into the helicopter with the stretcher, while the other man went to the car the woman had come from. The helicopter's rotor started up again. I stood my ground as the machine rose into the sky on it's spiral of air. The man would be alright now. His partner was with him, and the men would repair him. - My work was done. As the helicopter disappeared from sight, and the car drove away over the rolling desert, I turned and trotted back out into the centre of the desert. Once there, I said goodbye to the uncomfortable heat, and hard ground of the desert, and dissipated into a cloud of thin white smoke which spiraled upwards and into the clouds, moving with a purpose, and going home. The End. I'd greatly appreciate any comments or constructive criticism from fellow X-Philes. Email me at . Danielle Culverson.