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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.


It had been a quiet day at Lavender Haze, and Jupiter was expecting it to continue to be quiet until she closed up in a few hours. She'd sent Preston out with some cash to buy lunch for both of them, and she herself had been sorting some thing sin the back for a while--technically that meant the front was unmanned, but honestly, any nonsense would be caught on camera and Jupiter was pretty sure that she'd hear if something really bad happened. Or if anything happened at all.

Thus, it was something of a surprise to step back out and see a package sitting on the counter. It was early for mail, and Jupiter didn't think the store was expecting any deliveries anyway--so she frowned at it, and walked over cautiously. Sure, JUpiter generally thought the best of people, but she also wasn't stupid, and so she examined the package carefully.

Her confusion only deepened.

The box itself looked like it had been throguh the wringer, scuffed and dented and with one corner practically pushed entirely inward. It looked faded, too, like it had been sititng for a very long time. And even more strangely, the address label was yellowed and crackling, and on it, written in a flourishing hand with what Jupiter recognized as fountain pen ink because there was a sweet calligrapher who liked to come in and leave pretty art pieces on consignment, was her name. And her home address, not the store's.

So what was it doing here?

She frowned even deeper as she searched for folds to open it--it somehow seemed sealed without tape, like someone had glued the box closed, which seemed really quite silly, but she finally got her nails under the flaps to pry it open, and what was inside only made the whole situation stranger.

From within the box, she withdrew a beautiful piece of art--an elegant butterfly, metalwork and stained glass, that shimmered in the afternoon light. It filled her hand, wings stretching out beyond the sides of her palm, and it seemed at once ancient and immediate, as if it, like its container, had been lost to time, and she couldn't begin to think of what to make of it. Certainly she knew jewelers and artisans, but she wasn't sure any one of them could have made something like...this. If they had, it would have taken hours--days, even--of labor, and Jupiter was sure they'd have included a note, or at very minimum, a return address. Surely they would know that she would want to thank them for such an incredible gift.

She set the butterfly sculpture on the counter, and picked up the box, turning it over in her hands to see if there were any clues present there. Nothing jumped out, though, and she was left with nothing but a sense of unsated curiosity.

Oh well, it seemed harmless. She could probably just...keep it, right? Let it decorate the shop?

At the very least, that sounded like a nice idea to her.

[wc: 505 words]