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Prompt 4 (Flurries and Flowers):Strange snow flurries have been blowing through town, frosting entire buildings. Sometimes they come out of nowhere--overnight, or in the timespan of just a few short hours. Sometimes, only minutes. Snow falls rapidly and ice coats doors and windows, sealing them shut. These snow flurries are knocking out power, and worse--trapping people in buildings and cars. Sheets of frosty ice build up quickly and have caused major inconveniences. But, it’s not all bad, if you can find a way to appreciate the small things. After these flurries, in addition to the fresh snow and ice, beautiful flowers in the shape of snowflakes have sprouted up, too. They grow in small patches and permeate a pleasant, sweet fragrance. They can grow on any surface, as long as it is covered in snow or ice. If the flowers are not kept in freezing temperatures, they melt, but for the duration of their lifespan they are beautiful, fragile things.
Winter meant cold weather, usually, unless Strix was spending it in a more Southern place where snow didn't reach; if they had a say in it, which - at this point in their life, thank god - they did, they always spent winter where there was snow. They really did like cold weather, was the thing! They enjoyed it much more than most people they knew. It revitalized them, even, to an extent other people often found irritating or inconceivable -- it made people irascible, even, and Strix liked the feel of that word on their tongue whenever they actually had an excuse to slip it into things without either sounding like an idiot or sounding incredibly pompous. They didn't get a chance to use it much.
Something they'd never been fond of, though, and doubted they ever would be, was Destiny City's freakish winter weather and all the tidings it liked to bring. There was only so many times one person could have strange, uncanny experiences without starting to get painfully superstitious, and even knowing about the Negaverse didn't clear anything up, actually?? Sure, yeah, it meant Strix knew what youma were and that magic was kind of real, but that really still didn't explain anything about the little faeries or the snow bunnies or the...freaky snowmen, which kept moving when Strix looked away.
They weren't a big fan of those. They were already a little paranoid day to day, and snowmen who doubled as weeping angels (was that what those were called? TV often caught their interest, leaving them to zone out and let their brain take a load off for a while, but that wasn't it -- they'd watched a lot of that show, once, but they'd been horribly ill at the time, and they'd watched too much of it then!) was not what they wanted or needed in their life, thanks!! So even though the weather was fantastic, Strix had been spending a lot of time inside to try and avoid whatever wild things were happening on the streets this year, give or take, and it was making them irritable.
Most things made them irritable, it was true, but this was in a more genuine way than usual: it was a hackles-up sort of irritable, the sort of irritable that made them genuinely snappy and tight-strung, and it was a state that not even the people who liked Strix best ever appreciated. Eventually they decided screw it and went out for a walk, fingers tapping against each other at their sides, headphones on with no music playing, just to insulate them from the world.
...it really was beautiful, out here, with all this fresh fallen snow. Even if the ice coating windows was unnatural, there were snowflakes - no, they were flowers - growing out of the snow, out of the ice, in tight little patches, with some faint vanilla scent. Maybe not vanilla? Maybe something else. It was nice, irregardless. Maybe it was worth going outside for this. It was always worth going outside, but -
Flowers were nice. Flowers were something Strix could understand, unlike all those other beasts and creatures. Flowers, even strange as these ones were, made sense.
[wc: 529]
