There is a proper and right way to do Christmas, and the festive magic that's bedecked Destiny City for what seems like a decade is simply not the right way to do it.

Or, at least, this is what Ashton's parents say. This is what her parents have been saying for every single December, for ages and ages, and it's become so wildly route to roll his eyes at them over the phone where they won't see. Ruining the spirit of the season with beasties and spirits and utter strangeness - yes, mom, yes, dad, I know, yes I'm receiving appropriate grades in my classes, no I'm not demeaning myself, yes, yes. It was route and routine. He did it every year like clockwork. It had been worse, when she still lived with her parents and couldn't avoid the tongue-clicking and irritated whispers; nowadays, with his own place, she could do as she pleased for the holiday season. If that meant 'doing all schoolwork at the beginning of break and spending the entire rest of the month clubbing', well, that was her own damn business, wasn't it?

Life had fallen into an awkward balance eventually. Her parents did not ask, and she did not tell. In that way, all of them pretended without any struggle that they enjoyed each other's company all of the time both in public and at extended family situations, and he wore skirts other days.

The holidays seemed more irritating this year than they were the year prior. Or maybe they were just busier, more fraught with scene and substance? Today it was only a few days prior to the new year, but it'd been snowing in this area all day so badly Ashton hadn't been able to get outside yet, and it didn't look to be letting up any time soon. So here she was: alone, in her apartment, nursing coffee that'd gotten lukewarm, with a rough case of bedhead and a slasher movie on TV.

To add insult to injury, it wasn't even a good movie. It was gory, but god, was it not good - wait. She squinted at the lip of the dresser. Had he seen a shadow move, or was it just snowforms through the window, halflight cast through the curtains?

No. Her eyes weren't deceiving her. That was, indeed, a ******** mouse.

"I mount your brothers' bones on sticks," Ashton said, casually, leaning further back against the couch as he propped his feet up on the arm of the thing, "and I'd wring your scrawny little rat neck if you decided to get into my clothes or my food, so think wisely." It really was a very cute little thing, perfectly mousely proportioned to make her find it adorable, and that would earn it some respite from immediate handling and being thrown out a window into the snowstorm. If there were little mousely tooth marks on bread or meat or any of that, or if there were bitten-loose threads on the edges of shirts and pants and anything else: certainly that was reason enough for mousetraps and reckless abandon.

...Also, really, it was unsanitary to have a mouse in here at all. He'd need to call the landlord at some point about that. But the mouse seemed to have been sufficiently threatened by all that fuss, and had skittered itself off somewhere else; pleased by this, Ashton turned her attention back to the movie, and contemplated the virtue of posting anonymous strongly-worded reviews online about how, no, no matter how gory you made it, Christmas-themed horror movies were not good by default, and, in fact, required extra effort to become so.

Prompt 8 (Mouse in the House): It’s snowing outside, and it’s going to keep snowing--all night long. They're not calling it a blizzard but it sure does feel like one. The power seems like it’ll stay on, which is good because it’s so cold outside. You’re safe and warm--but you’re not alone. At first, you might not notice anything. Maybe you see something move out of the corner of your eye, or hear something in the other room. It doesn’t take long to find the culprit: a mouse.

A mouse is sharing your living space, your shelter from the storm. On one hand, you don’t know where it’s been. On the other hand, it’s freezing outside, and it has big, sweet eyes. Do you have the heart to kick anything out in this weather? ...Do you really want that thing running around your place unchecked?