#its really hard to find references for what physicians wore so hes a kind of aesthetic mix between a plague doctor and an apothecary

[togo--mimori]

Me, drawing Hiori in a floor length skirt: "i-its historically accurate... I swear......"

[nowwhateinstein]

Land of Endless Sky: ch 5

Intro & Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 ++++++ Chapter 5

She had forgotten how hard saddles could be; her lower back and backside ached within the first few hours of setting out. At least her mount proved to be an calm and obliging beast - perhaps he was thankful to finally have a rider who didn’t whip or beat him.

They rode side-by-side so that neither of them had to choke on the other’s dust. The rising heat of day soon had her sweating profusely beneath her hat and dress. Neither spoke much as the morning wore on. But presently - for want of something to focus on other than how hot and sore she was - she spoke.

“So, tell me a little about yourself, Captain.”

“Please, call me Mulder. My Army days are behind me.”

“All right then, Mister Mulder...”

“Just Mulder will do,” he interrupted. “Never cared much for honorifics, least as far as they pertained to me.”

“You do not use your given name?” she asked, mildly astonished at this peculiar admission of casualness from him.

“You wouldn’t either, with a name like Fox,” he said, turning his head and giving her an ironic look.

She smiled. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t,” she replied, and wondered what had possessed his parents to confer such an unusual name. “Please continue, Mulder.”

“Not to much to say, really,” he said. He squinted in the midday glare and shifted in the saddle. “I grew up on the outskirts of New York City. Graduated from West Point just as the war with Mexico was winding down. I spent my first years with the Army down in Texas, patrolling the frontier and protecting homesteaders from Comanche hostiles.”

“And what brought you to Nebraska Territory?”

He didn’t immediately answer, and she wondered if he’d heard the question. Presently, though, he said, “The War Department sent us up here to make sure the Sioux didn’t cause any trouble to the settlers heading west.” Then his voice dropped, and his words took on a somber tone. “In truth, it was the other way ‘round.”

She looked over. His face, partially shaded by his hat brim, was stony, his eyes narrow as he stared straight ahead at the trail. She wondered if there was a connection between his enigmatic words and the reason he was no longer in the Army. But he offered no further explanation, and she sensed it was best to leave the subject alone for the present. Still water runs deep, she recalled her father saying. Trouble them at your own peril.

“And where are you headed now?” she asked, in an attempt to change the conversation.

“Not sure yet. Heard there’s plenty of opportunity in California for a man to make his fortune. I suppose it’s a good a place as anywhere to make a new start.” He paused, then said softly, as if to himself, “that’s what I’m looking for.” He fell silent, and she asked no further questions.

++++++

They stopped late in the afternoon and made camp among a stand of cottonwoods beside the Platte River. Mulder strung a picket line for the horses between two of the trees while she set to cooking supper. It was meager fare - beans and bacon - but there was enough for both of them to eat their fill; despite the bone-weariness that came from spending most of the daylight hours in the saddle, she found herself unexpectedly ravenous.

The sun went down and night sounds crept in among the crackling pops of the campfire. Crickets chirped from unseen refuges in the grass. An owl hooted from a nearby tree. The dancing, erratic flames, coupled with the quiet murmuring of the river as it flowed by on its long journey eastward, had a mesmerizing effect.

As sore as she was, as traumatic as the events of the past day and a half had been, she felt herself start to relax back into the familiar rhythm of the trail: long periods of toil and monotony, punctured by short, almost blissful moments of peace and rest.

“It’s the best kind of night.” Mulder’s voice broke the silence, but not the spell of the evening. If anything, his words added a magic of their own to the prairie twilight.

She looked up at him across the leaping flames. Despite the shadows cast by the fire, she could make out a smile playing out across his face.

“The sky is clear, the wind is slight, and the fire is warm.”

“It is peaceful,” she agreed, craning her head to look up at the star-studded sky.

He stretched out on ground, resting his head on his saddle. “There’s enough stars up there to keep a man wondering for a lifetime,” he said, staring upward.

“Wondering about what?” she asked, leaning back on her arms for a better view of the sky.

“Wondering what - who - is out there, among the heavens.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at this outlandish statement. “I find it difficult to believe that an educated man such as yourself would espouse such nonsense.”

This earned a chuckle from him, then he responded: “ ‘To the terrestrial Moon to be as a star, Enlightening her by day, as she by night This Earth-reciprocal, if land be there, Could not there be fields and inhabitants?’ “

“True,” she answered, “but Raphael went on to warn Adam: ‘Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there live, in what state, condition or degree… Think only what concerns thee and thy being.’ Some things are beyond our knowing, Mulder.”

The pause that followed her reply was all the indication she needed that she’d surprised him; she allowed herself an inward smile of satisfaction at rendering him momentarily speechless.

“My father loved Milton, and would often read him to us on long winter evenings,” she said by way of explanation.

Mulder shifted so that he faced her. His words took on a humble tone. “I see now that I am in the company of not only a physician, but a woman of learning as well. Your point is well made - and well taken, Miss - or I should say - Doctor Scully.”

She was grateful that the light of the fire was dim enough to hide her blushing. Most men she’d encountered treated her with courtesy by virtue of her sex, bordering on the point of deference, and in this regard Mulder was no different. Yet in her experience, such regard was superficial, mere flattery; dig a little deeper, and what was ultimately revealed was the attitude that women were fragile, inferior creatures - both physically and intellectually - good only for the bearing and raising of children. They were objects to be coveted and possessed.

It was a familiar attitude that had played out numerous times in her adult life, and one of the reasons she’d never married. Her training as a physician, even in the informal manner of assisting her father, was viewed as queer by many people back in Maryland, and some had raised questions regarding her feminine modesty and respectability because of it.

Her father had dismissed the naysayers as hidebound fools. “They may not assent to a woman doctor when they’re firmly set in the land of the living,” he had once told her, “but when injury or illness takes them within sight of the Valley of the Shadow, any person - man or woman - with the skill to recall them is viewed as the instrument of Divine Providence.” His words had proved true in Independence, when she was the only doctor willing to go among the cholera-stricken camp to provide what help she could. Many had died, yes, but she had to believe that her efforts did save some.

Mulder was certainly not a hidebound fool. She could detect no trace of condescension in him, neither in his manner nor in his words. He had not tried to coddle her after her assault, and had trusted her enough to attend to his wound. He also had the decency to show surprise and admit his own shortcomings - a rare thing in a man. Even rarer was his presumption True, they had met just yesterday, but she felt a certain ease in his company, as if she’d known him for years.

“Please, call me Scully,” she replied. “This land doesn’t lend itself to the civil manners and pleasantries one is accustomed to back East, and if you prefer to be referred to by just your surname, then I suppose I will adhere to the convention, as well. At least while we travel together.” She found herself surprised by her own words; what on Earth had possessed her to insist that he call her by her surname?

“Scully it is, then,” he affirmed.

Their eyes met across the dancing flames, and for a brief moment, she was convinced that his eyes expressed a similar familiarity - of knowing, of recognition - towards her. A sensation came over her that they had shared this look, this conversation, this very moment, countless times before. Like the ripples made when a stone is dropped into a pool of water, the present seemed to reverberate endlessly outward across time and Heaven. It was at once both disorienting and comforting; disorienting in that she had no reference point on which to anchor this feeling, and comforting due to its seeming insistence that this moment had happened before, and would happen again.

“Goodnight, Scully.”

“Goodnight, Mulder.”

She laid out her dust-laden bedroll beside the fire and stared up at the stars, letting the sound of the river carry her off to the Land of Nod.