When you live alone, and you don't have a roommate or clever pet in house, it's really strange when something happens that doesn't have an easy explanation.

I heard a clink yesterday during the early hours of morning. Just a tiny clink, on the outside wall of the largest bedroom where I fortify myself against the air quality.

When I got up a few minutes later in need of coffee hours early, I opened the blinds to check the snow levels, and so forth. And saw a screw laying on top of my baseboard. A Phillips head screw, maybe 1 1/8 thread length, small raised head.

I have no idea where this came from, and have no idea what it could possibly have fallen out of.

This is where SFFH writers get material.

It could be a ghost--the house has one. It's mostly a quiet ghost, and helpful--it is very protective when I use the stairs, leading me to believe that either he, or someone he cared about, fell down them once.

It could be house spirits. (I write fantasy--stay with me.) Things live out here in the woods, and they also like the little log cabin house I am in. They have decided they like me. This could be either a warning--something needs attention--or a gift, like a crow bringing a bottle cap.

It could be quantum. The screw may have traded places somewhere along the space time continuum, or perhaps I did. This is a different reality, and another Kat somewhere knows what this screw means. It doesn't feel threatening. But when quantum hits, it's always very weird.

I don't know. But I now have this screw. And I need to figure out where to put it so I have it when I find out where it relocated from. . . .