"Hazelnuts, Scully." "What about them?" "They're the traditional source of wisdom and poetry in Celtic legend." "Irish and Scottish, anyway. Don't lump my people in with a bunch of Germans and Welsh." He smirked. "Potato, potahto. So what if the legends were right? What if the trees actually had some rudimentary intelligence? Better yet, what if all hazel trees were part of a larger group mind?" "What is THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST, by Ursula K. LeGuin?" "Ding! Correct." "I'll take Weird Partners for a thousand, Alex." He pressed on. "But think about it, Scully? Why else would hazels be associated with wisdom? And what about witch hazel?" "I never liked that comic strip." "Okay, if you don't like that tack, consider Karin's powers. How else could the trees respond to her en masse and from a distance? The effort required to command individual trees to perform single tasks...." "....Is almost equal to that required to resist your talking and try to get some sleep. I don't know about you, Mulder, but I'm tired." "Oh." "And don't 'oh' me. I'm just tired, not griefstricken or traumatized or whatever you think I should be after the last month or so." He sighed. "I'm not trying to tell you how you should feel. I know that you have your own ways of doing things. But no matter how you deal with your feelings, you need to acknowledge that they're present. Rage unconfronted...." She touches his hand. "Confronting it isn't the problem, Mulder. Controlling it is." "Then maybe you shouldn't try. Let it out." "If I do, I suspect I will do someone serious harm." Scully fell silent. Mulder let the silence stretch out. She felt no compunction to fill it.