Prompt 6 (Mysterious Mail): The mail is always bad this time of year, but it seems like something's gone a little extra wrong. You’ve received something that’s not quite right. Maybe it’s a box that looks like it’s from a completely different era, wrapped in brown paper and tied with dark twine. The box has scuffs and scrapes and a yellowed name tag--with your name and address on it. There is no return address and no indication where it came from. If you open it up you will find some sort of timeless item that feels as though it is easily decades old. It may not be particularly valuable, but this item seems to have been lost to time--and somehow ended up in your possession. Any time you look at it you are filled with the same sensation of timelessness.

Maybe it’s an old letter with no return address, no name on it; it's impossible to tell who it is from or how it got there, given that it might have arrived in your mailbox, your front door, or maybe it even just showed up inside your house. If you open it, the letter is dated from decades ago and contains some surprising information; it is a letter lost to time and contains some secret. The content of the letter is up to the player; it might contain a confession of love, an admission of guilt, the secret of some crime--no matter what the letter contains, it leaves you with news to reflect on. Do you try to seek out anyone mentioned in the letter? Do you investigate or try to hand the letter over to someone else? Does the content of the letter reflect your life in some way? ...Do you have to worry about someone breaking into your house to leave strangely coded messages?

Maybe you’ve gotten both and really need to phone up the post office to see what’s going on.

Gremlin loitered in spaces he would always call deplorable. Little human box-houses were ugly, smelly, full of trash, forced coexistence with the worst sort of creature in the galaxy. Regardless of whether he stayed with his general in the house he shared with the Mirror rat or the senshi still stuck with his parents, Gremlin always felt burdened by how many humans he was forced to live with. But what was he supposed to do about it? His options were either stay inside, in the relatively climate-controlled space, or stay outside-

His two front paws perched at the edge of the windowsill, where he craned up on his back legs to peer out a pane of frosted glass and into the white abyss beyond. Gremlin's ears pinned back flat, lips pulling apart to reveal snaggly yellow teeth as he grimaced at the frozen hellscape beyond the sanctuary of the house. It was freezing out! His little paws would frostbite in a matter of moments. He couldn't go out there, no matter how much he loathed sharing filthy human spaces! Gremlin huffed derisively at the chilly, dreary gray day outside, settled back to the floor, turned, and trotted away from the window, long claws clicking against the wooden floor as he went.

It wasn't a huge deal to be stuck here. The humans (the general and the Mirror rat) were both at work, so it wasn't like they could harass him. He could hop up onto the counter, stick his muzzle directly into the bowl of fruit left out for snacking, and chomp into anything he wanted.

He could stick his paws into Basyl's fishtank, play with his shiny pets unabated.

He could put on whatever garbage show passed for entertainment these days (he'd never admit it, but the drama prison shows and 90 Day Fiancé were a riot, and just further proved his point about how humans were The Worst), and Nataniel wasn't there to crinkle his nose judgmentally at him. He could eat whatever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, turn the thermostat up as high as it would go, and no one could stop him. And as long as none of the doors were closed, he even had a decent amount of space.

But what if he wanted something that wasn't in the house? Bird chasing or dumpster diving, or a seasonal latte from that coffee shop a block away. He'd have to wait for a warm body to be able to escort him through the snow and see that he wasn't incapacitated in the cold.

When he'd lived as a feral, he'd had to be extra careful to spend nearly all of his time nested, and even then, there was always the chance he'd starve or freeze to death. Now he didn't have to be as concerned, since he could depend help, but his body was still crinkly and naked and very prone to the elements. There was no need to take risks, if he didn't absolutely have to.

Gremlin grumbled as he paced the back of the couch, the kitchen floor, the countertops. Stupid humans and their stupid planet. Even the sky opposed him. He'd made his fair share of trinkets to combat the weather, but none were perfect. It still wasn't a comfortable experience to be outside. He swatted a spoon off the edge of the sink in his agitation and stalked along the edge to sit at the end of the counter next to a peculiar brown parcel.

Unopened, obviously. Probably something from the myriad of human winter holidays, where everyone sent everyone else items to store under trees as some sort of... vestigial remnant from a time when hibernation was necessary? Unclear. Not his business. No one bought Gremlin presents.

Except, when he moved to swat the brown-wrapped package off the counter, he thought he saw a nearly illegible scrawling of his name. 'Gremlin.'

He landed heavily on the floor next to the parcel, pawing at it until he could find the chicken scratch again- And it was! A package with his name on it! It could be from either of the humans. Basyl would bring him gifts if he thought they'd make him more comfortable. Nataniel offered rewards when he successfully completed some task. This one, wrapped as it was, was probably meant to indoctrinate him into their holiday. Gremlin would have none of that. If it was his, he could open it at his leisure.

So, he did. He picked apart the brown paper (they definitely hadn't made it pretty), shredding it with teeth and claws until it revealed a dense wooly blanket. He picked at it, wedged his head between the folds. Heavy. He could barely support it.

But such a soft, heavy gift shouldn't go to waste. With a blanket like that, if he packed one of his mini heat orbs to wrap it in, he could sit outside and watch birds and lap up lattes as much as he wanted. He wouldn't have to sit inside. The worst part of it was that to get anywhere he wanted to be, he'd have to spend at least a little time in his stupid, ugly, crippled human guise...

Maybe it was worth it, if he could sit in the park and watch the birds and drink coffee.

Gremlin did just that. He packed himself a bag of two heat-orbs (he wouldn't need more than that, probably), the heavy blanket, and the tablet with Basyl's Apple-Pay on it (he wouldn't mind, Gremlin expected). And then it was just a matter of activating his keychain and walking (the worst) down to the coffee shop, paying for a hot drink, and then finding a bench in the park that he could dust the snow off of, situate his blanket so it would get as minimally wet as possible, nesting a few of his orbs in it, and, when no one was looking, morph back to cat, so he could nestle into a comfy spot.

So help them if someone even dared to come by and disrupt him.