On Angel Wings
by Leslie Sholly

DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, with my name and address attached. And please let me know!
SPOILER WARNING: Emily
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: VA
SUMMARY: Scully thinks about her daughter.
DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox own the character of Dana Scully. I mean no infringement or disrespect.
FEEDBACK: Would be very much appreciated at PennySyc@aol.com (Leslie). This is my first Vignette. How did I do?

It's a perfect day--or it could be, if I keep my eyes on the grass or the sky or the weathered grey bark of the tree. It's a perfect day--as long as I don't lift my face and look ahead of me.

But I must--it's why I've come to this place, after all. So I lift my eyes and stare at the small grey stone, a bitter reminder of a life cut short.

Emily Christine Sim, the stone reads, along with the dates which mark the beginning and ending of my daughter's brief sojourn upon this earth. I didn't get to carry Emily inside my body, or decide what name she would have, or even hold her in my arms many times, but I got to pick out her tombstone.

I went with Mulder to choose it in the hectic, nightmarish blur between Emily's death and Matthew's birth and our departure for D.C. I picked one with a rose carved at the top and at the bottom a verse: "Budded on earth to bloom in Heaven."

I want to believe. I need to believe. And, in the end, I do. In this, as in so much, I choose to have faith. Whatever twisted process gave Emily life, it was God who gave her a soul. Although the men who blended my DNA with that of an alien race created her as an experiment, God's intercession allowed Emily to feel, to laugh, to love.

Emily isn't here, of course. The vessel that housed her spirit was taken from me before I could lay it to rest. That treacherous body built for an obscene purpose, that caused her lifelong illness and suffering, is dead and gone.

But I know the truth. Her soul, liberated from its prison, flew up to Heaven on angel wings, and when my time on this earth is through, she will be waiting for me.

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."

From Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth

THE END

Feedback, please, to PennySyc@aol.com (Leslie)