She looked from the fossil to the distant peak where the granite began. "So you see, Leo, this mountain isn't one thing. It's a library. The bottom floors are fire and strength. The middle floors are mud and time and ghosts of the deep. And the top…" She looked up at the jagged peak. "The top is the latest chapter, still being written."

Leo's eyes went wide. "A snail? On a mountain?"

"Okay," Leo said, his voice soft. He picked up the pebble he had kicked earlier and turned it over in his palm. It was a piece of the grey granite, veined with pink. "So this little rock… it’s been through everything ."

"Water?" Leo asked, watching a trickle of meltwater from a snowfield above run down the rock face.

Then she led him to a different spot, where the solid granite crumbled into gritty sand. "Now look. The enemy."

A hawk cried overhead. The wind picked up, carrying a few grains of sand from the granite peak towards the distant valley. The story was still moving.