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Prompt 1 (Diamond Dust): This time of year, snow is common. What’s uncommon is the single, strange snowfall where each snowflake that fell glistened like tiny diamonds. For the most part, the snow seems fairly normal—it’s cold, wet, and melts just like any other snow, it just also happens to look like tiny little gems are falling from the sky. Depending on who you’re with, it’s either incredibly strange, or incredibly romantic.

When the snow is coming down at its strongest, crystalized snowflakes trickle down with the rest of the snow. These are roughly the size of a quarter and are light and hollow. They are fragile, like glass, but glisten like a fine cut gem. No one can explain this anomaly, but these small snowflakes won't melt. And they are all over Destiny City. You can find them gently falling to the ground, or lying in the fresh fallen snow. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly magical about them, but they are beautiful and make pretty keepsakes.
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backdated to Christmas Eve.

If only the mission into the Rift had fallen a couple days later.

Sable didn’t suppose that it made too much difference to most people, really. Anyone who had a family (probably) wound up with sufficient time to decompress before having to deal with ******** Christmas and all of its myriad bullshit, which now potentially included explaining all manner of injuries or assorted weirdness to people who would not—could not—understand. Anyone who didn’t have one—or whose entire family was already with the Negaverse anyway—wouldn’t need to explain anything (or if they did—if, perhaps, they’d been among the ranks of the injured—then at least they wouldn’t need to fabricate any nonsense and could just tell the truth about what had happened).

None of that concerned Sable. Therein lay the entire problem.

Unfortunately (for Sable personally), the mission into the Rift hadn’t lasted long enough to overlap with the holiday itself. Cut into people’s prep time, she guessed, if they were the sort of lunatics who actually enjoyed anything about Christmas, never mind all of the parties and time spent with family. But Sable couldn’t simply pretend the holiday wasn’t happening because she was down in the Rift, free from the burden of dealing with her cellphone, or familial obligations, or other people’s ideas about what did or did not constitute an acceptable use of her time. (Well……maybe not so much that third thing, but facts remained: as Andesine, she would have gladly answered to any of her superior officers about their ideas regarding good uses of her time. Her parents and siblings, on the other hand, had no good ideas about how Sable should’ve spent her days.)

Since she’d been lucky about not getting banged up too severely—thrown around a magical rotating hallway some and knocked into Miyamoto by the preserved wind some Uranus Knight had left behind, but not nearly injured as much as some people—she couldn’t cite any illness or other physical reasons for wanting to avoid going over to her parents’ for the holiday. Sitting on the tiny couch in her apartment, staring down at her phone, Sable pondered trying it anyway. Her mothers would have clocked her if she called—they knew all too well how each of their children sounded when they tried to fake sick—so she could have tried a text message…?

Sable had barely started typing one up for Mama before deleting all of it. Shaking her head, she sighed at her own stupid idea and at herself for ever thinking that she could get away with it. As soon as she’d sent the text, Mama would have been on her like youma on a senshi’s starseed, ringing her up to hear her voice and discern whether or not Sable was faking it with all her claims of illness. Would have ended up going the same way as simply calling Mama with a lie ready on her tongue.

Grumbling, Sable glanced over at the window—and she practically felt the lightbulb springing to life above her head. Oh, the snow looked like a pretty little picture, with how much of it was coming down. She’d have to go verify how much was coming down, but the roads around her building were perpetually lower on the City’s priority list for clearing out than other places in town. The super regularly didn’t bother cleaning up the sidewalks until someone slipped on ice and threatened to sue. Her parents knew this all too well, after the handful of times they’d paid her an unannounced visit with snow on the ground.

Spurred on by the mere potential for a “get out of Christmas Eve jail free” card, Sable suited up quickly. Heavy winter jacket, scarf, boots. She didn’t need to be too protected for how long she planned to spend checking things out. An elevator ride to the top floor, then a quick jaunt up a short flight of stairs, and Sable rushed out into a bracing cold.

Jesus, it was almost enough to make her power up. Despite wearing, as Andesine, significantly less clothing than Sable currently did, at least Andesine also gained some kind of magical protection from the cold. Either way, a bright, wide grin burst onto Sable’s face like a solar flare: the snow on the roof was already close to her ankles and under her boots, it felt like exact Most Wrong of consistencies. Too firm and packed in to push through easily, too powdery to get any stable ground for one’s feet, and just slushy enough that you could never guess when a patch of it might freeze over into ice and lurk there menacingly, ready to knock you flat on your a**.

Idly pacing the roof, Sable texted Mama, [Sorry for the late notice, but the snow is awful by my place. Don’t think I can make it tonight]

She intended to keep pacing while she waited for Mama to text back, but Sable stopped when something crunched beneath her boots. She took a step back, crouched down to inspect it……and even switching on her phone’s flashlight, amplifying the ambient lights from the streetlamps, she struggled to see what it had been. Ever so faintly, the right lighting helped it stand out against the snow, but only just enough to see.

It looked like shattered glass.

Wrinkling her brow, Sable slipped her other, ungloved hands out of her pocket. Maybe reaching out to touch something that looked like broken glass wasn’t the best idea. But—was it broken glass? Was it actually?

She never figured that out.

Before Sable could actually touch the stuff, she noticed another something glistening against the snow. Getting over to it was a little awkward—Sable tried to move without uncrouching, and consequently knocked herself over into the snow—but when she reached it, Sable found what seemed to be a crystal. About the size of a quarter, it appeared to be a snowflake. Further, several others showed up all over the roof, the more Sable shone her flashlight around.

They didn’t melt in her hands, either, so she filled her pockets with them. No idea what she’d use them for, but they were pretty and Sable’s apartment desperately needed more beauty inside it.

By the time she was ready to head inside, she finally saw Mama’s response: [Of course, sweetie. You be safe, let us know if your brother should pick you up for tomorrow]