Prompt
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.)


(WC: 670)



With the new year came new promises and new resolutions but it also came with the chore of putting up with the old so they could make room for the new. As the years moved on, her parents had grown older and with their age, so came the inability to do as much as they used to.

Every Christmas, her father would scale up the ladder into the attic and pull out all of the decorations that they family would come together and string up. The large fake tree with its ornaments and tinsel, the wreaths and garland for the stairway and banister, the stockings on the mantle and the various jolly Santa Clauses that popped up all over the house. The kitchen always smelled of cookies, the tree - despite being fake - always mysteriously held the scent of pine. It was a wonderful time and she loved staying days at a time with them... that is, of course, until it came time to box up all the holiday cheer and store it away until the next year.

While the tree was gorgeous lit up and decorated, it was a pain in the butt to dismantle and undecorate. Each ornament took time to remove, sliding the hook off of every branch and slipping it from the ornament before placing the hook in its designated box and the ornament in its.

As one particularly beautiful frosted piece was tugged from the branch, Sophie watched in horror as the smooth orb slipped from her fingers and fumbled down, down, until it came crashing onto the hardwood flooring of the Thomas's living room.

There was a holler from the other room, the older Mrs. Thomas inquiring after the sound.

"It was just an ornament, Mama, I'm alright!"

She felt herself grow sad at the loss of such a pretty bauble, fingers moving down to quickly try to scrape up the shattered remnants of the ornament. There was an odd powder that seemed to collect among the fragments and she pinched a bit before raising it up. How peculiar... powder? In a glass ornament?

Eyes narrowed as she peered at it, bringing her fingers up to her nose to give it a soft sniff. A mistake, it would appear, as the dust flew up and she let out a sneeze from the sudden inhalation of the powder.

"Bless you."

Amethyst eyes blinked as she turned around at the sound of the low voice behind her. Wait... what?

"You aren't getting sick on me now are you, Soph?"

She looked up at Austin Lynch, gangly and tall, staring down at her through familiar, large rimmed glasses. His grin was sweet and comforting, one hand reaching down in offering to the younger girl. "You're not allowed to leave me alone with the Christmas dinner crew - my parents are bad enough, but to deal with yours too? Don't think so, not allowed to call in sick today."

Sophie could feel the grin on her face as she accepted his hand, tugged up to her feet by the taller boy who she'd spent Christmas after Christmas with, from toddlers until high schoolers. They'd joked for years about being forced to deal with their parents in the joint-holiday celebration but she knew, deep down inside, that both of them loved the family time together. Their time together. "You know I've got your back, Lynch. I--"

Sophie blinked and the young man's face was gone.

Confused, she looked around, discovering she was still sitting alongside the half-dismantled tree, shattered Christmas ornament at her knees. The dust was gone - odd - but the glass shards were still there. The nerdy boy she'd known years ago was just as gone - had it really happened? Why was that particular memory resurfacing?

Shaking her head, the smile slipped from her face as she leaned down to finish scooping up the broken bauble. Maybe her mind was just playing tricks on her... it was probably best to just get everything packed up and stored away, memories included.