It's Jackie's day off, so instead of driving up the mountain, she's weeding out the back of her house. Lost track of time a bit, everything's getting cool and evening blue, but it's nice out, a little more won't hurt. It's relaxing.
Until she reaches out for the last of her bad-habit drink on the rock to her left, anyway. The can's gone. She frowns, didn't hear it fall, didn't feel any wind that might have knocked it off; maybe she brushed against it. She rises on her knees to peer at the far side of the rock; no sign of it.
But on top of the rock, where it had been, there's a small stone. And when she slowly, gingerly picks it up, she finds it's a fossil, an ammonite.
Consciously, deliberately, she breathes.
"Old Fred," she says. "He said he didn't rightly know what you'd do, if someone crossed you. Suggested that anyone who thought they might have should — move. To the city. Pray. But he said he'd never heard tell of you coming away from the mountain, and we're a little way off. Did I—" and she hesitates. "Did I do something?"
"No," the voice says, and Jackie freezes as something touches her, in the small of her back. Cold, through her soft cotton shirt; a finger, chilled from the outdoors, maybe. And then there's a second touch, and — fingers, yeah, walking up her spine in a leisurely way.
"Anything I should — make amends for?" Jackie says. Her eyes fall on the ground in front of her, the last gold of the falling sun painting long streaks pointing away from the foot of everything. Her own shadow reaches almost to the house — her own, mixed with that of someone behind and slightly to the side —
She shuts her eyes tight, and shivers; the fingers pause, and then are gone.
"This doesn't taste good."
"Sorry. It's — the no-sugar ones are pretty bad," Jackie admits, feeling like she's floating in a surreal, liminal space where the thing on the mountain wants to discuss energy drinks. "My mom always got on my case about drinks with sugar. You'll get fat and unhealthy, Jackie—"
"Your body's fine," it says. Cold fingertips splay across her sides for a second. "You could run from something, if you had to," it says, in an unreassuringly matter-of-fact way. "Have things that taste good."
"Okay," she says. What else can she do, really. "Okay, I'll — bear that in mind."
It's dark when she dares move. Next morning, she finds the crushed and empty can in the driver's door compartment of her truck, where she tucks any loose litter she picks up on the mountain on her way up to work.