The pebble went tumbling down the road, first in the way she had intended it to go: straight and narrow, an extension of the line her leg had traced swinging towards it, then off the side of the sloped road and onto the shoulder as it was drawn off by the persuasions of gravity.
The tracks led out past the wood line and right to the shoulder of the road, where the pavement became hard enough that tracking was no longer a possibility. Apart from these tracks, he had hoped to find some sign of the deer’s life, at the very least.
Onward the pebble rolled and bounced, landing softly partway down with a quiet clang. She sighed and made the trek down to retrieve it, unwilling to find a new source of entertainment as she walked roadside.
He traced the last visible track with his shoe mournfully, stooped under the weight of the minutes wasted tracking the creature. The tip of the hoof mark was blemished, disrupted by a groove running from the side of the road off into the grass behind him.
The small stone lay against a dusty, blue emblem: a Ford logo long detached from the grille of its parent car. Wiping away the silt settled upon it, the metal returned to its gleaming lapis hue, and she smiled in satisfaction. She wondered how it had landed here—knocked off by a stray deer, perhaps?
Following the furrow in the muddy earth, he was appeased by the sight of an antler, crumpling the dry grass around it. Hefting it into the air, he pictured how it might have fallen off—with some force, given the gouge it had left behind. Maybe a car had hit it. He grimaced at the thought.
She could do something with this scrap: weld it to one of her other Frankenstein contraptions gathering dust in her garage, or affix it to an old license plate from a past collection along this stretch of road.
This was the largest antler he had found in a while; foraging often returned meager results. He would do it justice, he decided: mount it on a wall in his home, or break it into pieces and sand them down into spearheads, arrowheads, or the like.
She felt the ornament’s weight in her hand: perfect to examine with her fingers idly as she continued her trek, though its oval edge dug uncomfortably into the meat of her palm. She picked the pebble up as well, to continue kicking, and made her way up the slope once more.
Determining the least awkward way to carry the antler home—over his shoulder—he made his way up the slope of the road to walk home along the highway. With his search concluded, and the sun soon to set, it was not worth it to venture back into the forest.
As she crested the shoulder, she spotted a lone figure on the other side of the highway. He sported an oversized, insulated bomber jacket and a warm-looking, albeit unfashionable, hat. A deer antler was slung over his shoulder.
Turning back towards the road, he spotted a girl on the other side, clutching a glinting, blue piece of metal. She was underdressed for the weather: wearing a thin-looking leather jacket and cargo shorts. She seemed unbothered by the cold as she watched him from afar.
As he turned from whatever had occupied him, his eyes met hers: startled, curious, uncomfortable, as if the very act of being perceived made him realer than he wanted to be; a wraith now held on this plane by her gaze.
He rarely saw people nowadays; he had almost been convinced he was the only one left on this planet. He couldn’t say he was particularly glad to see her, but at least she had broken his monotonous pattern of living alone.
She turned away just as he did, scrap in her hand and scrap in his, and the two continued on their ways.