Prompt 9 (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.


There was chatter on every message board for Destiny City that Nevaeh visited about the weird occurrences happening again this holiday season. Mostly unconfirmed reports of this happening or that occurring but there was never really any proof. Even as she scanned the topics of conversation did the young woman finally give into temptation to just close everything down for the night. It was not going to end well if she got into an online argument this evening given how strange everyone seemed to be getting. Logically it was possible that everything that people were posting about had actually happened but Nevaeh felt as if some of these topics were just too far fetched for the city that she had grown to love.

Of course - given that it was Destiny City, and remembering her most recent encounter with an oddity, maybe there was some truth to the rumours that were circulating. But seriously, snow lizards and snow bunnies?

Shaking her head Nevaeh rose from her computer desk before merely closing the lid to her laptop in order to have it fall into sleep mode. There was something very satisfying about being able to surf the internet at any time that she wished, but she was beginning to get a little concerned about just how much time she allotted for her message boards. Taking in the empty house as she walked through to the kitchen did Nevaeh recall the reason for being alone this winter. Some family emergency had seen that both of her parents leaving her to her own devices over the holidays and while, yes, it wasn't fair, Nevaeh couldn't begrudge the fact that someone else's need was greater than hers this year. Besides, if it came down to it, she did have her court family that she could hang with if she really needed the interaction over the holidays.

Peering out into the street beyond the kitchen window Nevaeh was surprised to watch as an unknown delivery driver pulled away from in front of her home before she felt curiosity rise up from deep within. Her parents had expressed doubt at sending anything to her in the mail as they'd have a belated celebration instead once they returned. Had they changed their minds and sent their daughter a gift to tide her over? Nevaeh moved to the front door and set about undoing the deadbolt before opening the door and peering down at the shoe-sized boxed package that lay innocently on the doormat. Well, if the package was from her folks then they really needed to get off the old-fashioned look vibe they had in order to send the gift. brown paper packages, tied up with strings flitted through her mind as she lifted the box by the twine that kept it firmly sealed. The yellowed name tag bore her name and her current address but why hadn't her parents put a return address on the corner?

Taking the parcel into the house and locking the door behind her Nevaeh sighed before she studied the unknown box before noting the scuffed up marks, "It must've been a rough ride in getting here. Hopefully whatever is inside wasn't fragile or mom will blow a fuse. Hopefully whatever's inside is intact."

Turning around Nevaeh went to the drawer were scissors were kept before returning to the table in order to inspect the box one last time. The scissors made quick work of the twine and soon the box lay unwrapped before her. Lifting the lid to peer inside at what it was that her folks had sent her, Nevaeh grew extremely puzzled. Why would her folks have sent her this?

Reaching into the box Nevaeh gently handled the item inside before closing her eyes. There must have been a mistake. Why would they send her a wedding veil ... and even as the yellowed color made itself known she scoffed a bit, an extremely old wedding veil at that?

Intricate patterns, lost to time, adorned the piece but Nevaeh only thought about how odd it was that it had been sent to her. It couldn't have been a family heirloom, that she was certain of. But yet ... something about the way it looked brought out a feeling of time's passing, ages ago. She didn't like the feeling. Making sure that the veil was tucked away in its box did Nevaeh sigh before fastening everything back up and scraping away the name tag that bore her name. Someone, somewhere must've gotten mixed up in either addresses or names or both because there was no way this was meant to be hers. Taking the box back to her room she placed the now closed box onto her bed before booting her laptop back up and began type furiously on one message board before opening a new tab to do some random google searching. Maybe this package wasn't meant for her, but it wouldn't stop her from doing some checking around to see if she could find the true owner. In the back of her mind she had suspected that while her folks were the most calm and collected people out there, they would have not hesitated to play a small prank on their only child. But this would have been taking it a step too far. There were boundaries that they knew not to cross and this hinting about marriage was one such line. So if the veil had not come from them then what was left for a reasonable explanation. As far as she knew she was the only "Nevaeh McGregor" that resided at this address. Glancing to the box that now sat innocently on her bed did Nevaeh click the link for a genealogy site. While most such sites required a paid membership to access all the features that were available, Nevaeh simply ignored the prompting text before quickly searching for any other possible spelling of her last name. Maybe it had been meant for a MacGregor but that still didn't explain the correct address.

Oh well.

In the morning she would simply take the parcel back to a delivery center and explain that it must have been mislabelled. That was the only possible thing to do because she certainly was not going to keep the veil at all, especially because of the feeling she was associating from it.