Scholar Li had been studying in his mountain cottage for three months when she first appeared.

She came at dusk, when the lamp oil burned low. A girl of perhaps sixteen, with eyes that caught the firelight like amber.

"I live nearby," she said. "The nights are cold. Your fire is warm."

She came every night after that. Sometimes she brought berries, impossibly sweet and red. Sometimes she told stories — tales of fox spirits who cultivated for a thousand years to attain human form. Li listened, enchanted.

One night, she touched his hand. "You should leave this mountain. Before the snow comes."

"I will leave when I pass the examinations," Li said.

"The examinations are in spring. The snow comes next week."

That night, Li dreamed of a fox — the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, with nine tails that shimmered like silk in moonlight. It circled his cottage three times, then sat at his door and wept.

When he woke, she was gone. On his reading mat, a single white hair — impossibly fine, shimmering faintly in the dawn light.

Li packed his books and descended the mountain that day. The first snow fell before he reached the village gate.

He never saw her again. But every winter, when the first snow falls, he places a bowl of the sweetest berries he can find outside his window. And sometimes, in the morning, the bowl is empty.

The mountain remembers what the world forgets.