Quote:
The holidays are close to ending and it’s time to start packing away your decorations. In a stroke of bad luck, you drop an ornament (or other small bauble) and it shatters. Inside was a strange, glistening dust that you accidentally inhale. You are immediately met with a strong hallucination of a previous holiday memory. It only lasts for a few moments, but it feels like you are back in the memory, reliving it. It seems so real but when it ends, you are back in the present with no trace of the dust left in sight. Which holiday memory did you relive, and how do you react to being torn from it?

(You can only relive a memory from a holiday in December and it must be from this lifetime. Characters who have lost civilian memories, such as in a side swap, will have a much vaguer memory. Locations and faces will be blurred and unrecognizable, and the memory will not reveal anything about their previous life. These characters may be left feeling a little hollow after the memory.


Taking down Christmas decorations was something that usually didn't happen until after New Year's, but this year Zora and Lucas wanted to help take everything down and they didn't know if they would be around at the usual take-down time. So here the family was, a couple of days after Christmas, pulling the delicate ornaments off the tree and packing them away in their bubbled wrappings for another year. Tinsel and garlands pulled off of the trees, from the balconies, ribbons pulled down and tucked away to be donated, or... whatever happened to the decorations that they weren't going to use again. Giulia honestly had no clue as to how decorations went away after the important ones were tucked away.

The young girl was lifting a flass-and-gold filigreed ornament from the tree, admiring it as she went. She stepped backwards, humming happily- and squeaked, as one of her small feet made contact with a thin feline tail. Castor howled accusingly, and Giulia managed to make another noise- hopefully apology- before she and the ornament fell forward as one. The ornament hit the table, and her head hitting the carpeted floor next to it. The glass ornament shattered, the sparkles frighteningly close to her face, and- Oh-! She inhaled, wondering if the sparkling dust she thought that she could see was a sign she might have bumped her whole head against the table too, or just pieces of the filigree, and the sound of her family's shock-burst of noise faded away into...

O holy night the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth

The song was sedate and traditional, and around her, everything was bland. Her siblings were nearby, she could see them- Jada, dressed in a gold dress, probably with pretty shoes to match, her hair done up. Zora, sedate in black with a holiday sash. A pretty blonde with many curls, a navy blue dress and emeralds. Lucas, strangely young, dressed in a suit and tie. Everyone so silent, and while it was Christmas, there was no cheer. There was no laughter, no warmth. Her shoes hurt, and her toes wriggled, and she caught herself squirming. There was a wetness in her diaper (and why was she wearing a diaper?), but she already knew she shouldn't complain about it. Next to her, Aidan was using strangely small, chubby fingers to squish at his potatoes, giving a loud little giggle as gravy flew somewhere, and then-

At the end of the table, a woman who looked like Jada, but with lime eyes, lifted a bell. “Amélie, sors-les d'ici." her voice was cold, almost bored, and when she looked at Giulia, there wasn't any more love in her eyes than when someone looked at a... disappointing pet. None of the siblings looked up from their soup, except for the blonde, who peered at their mother, then at them, something sly in her gaze and a curl to her lip. As she was lifted from her chair, she could hear crying, but there was no pity in the lime gaze that met her own, only irritation. And then the gaze was gone, and there was nothing but the music moving on to the next song.

Her body was rolling, and she was peering up at Jada's worried face, Zora's bright eyes, Lucas' face between the black and red heads of his older siblings. "C'mere, princess trouble," Lucas said, and Giulia held up her arms to her brother, letting him lift her from the ground. "There we are. Does your head feel okay?" she nodded, and buried her face in his shoulder, in the t-shirt he was wearing, contrasting the fading memory with the laughter they'd had just a few days before, Jada in blue jeans, Lucas in his sweatpants and looking rumpled as he helped Aidan dig through presents, Zora in her neon exercise shirt. A heavy sigh came from her small frame, and she could feel Lucas half-shrug.

"I want a cookie," she said, and thought she heard a laugh, before someone wiggled one of her bare feet. "A chocolate one."

"We'll see what we can do," Lucas said with amusement, and they headed out... but Giulia was still carrying that old, sad memory with her.