Backdated to December 12, 2025
Snowbunnies Prompt - Holiday 2025

Another year had gone by.

It was the thought that jumped out the loudest to Kyrie as she checked over some of her notes. Her sketchbook lay across her lap, notes on the recent developments with the ship and Enoch and Realta and conversations with different parties and she really needed to follow up on a few things with Daesva and Ekstrom and---

Her mind spiralled as it did, whirling and twirling and dipping and diving across mountains and valleys far, far from Earth’s orbit and the snow covering the city. Distant, her eyes glazed, barely registering as her pencil jotted quick Solarian script and numbers.


December 12, 2021

2021 → 2022 → 2023 → 2024 → 2025


Five years. Five years since she’d followed that call from the emptiness of the city she’d carved into something of a shelter, leaving behind her hollow world and all she’d scrabbled together in attempts to preserve what remnants she could find of her people. Five years since she’d broken her centuries-long streak of not seeing hide nor hair of a single other living, breathing creature or plant or.... anything. Just the storms, the winds, the biting reality of how dead her world was. Or nearly was. Her own continued existence and the tiny oases she’d found for bits of sustenance showed some life still clung. Some other will beyond her own kept pushing for her to keep going.

Five years that she’d been wondering, whenever her eyes were drawn up to the stars that broke through the light pollution and city’s glare, just why it’d insisted on her. It’d have been easier if her starseed had just gone back to the Cauldron, wouldn’t it? Let some new Sailor Solaris be born here on Earth, surrounded by loved ones and family here, be bound in life and love to a living world here... and not...

Not a corpse. A corpse of a planet. A memory of a people and loved ones and life.

At her shoulders, the living, feathery-furry scarf moved, and its ears twitched, hissing softly as Vellus stared off into the night beyond their little sanctuary, then stiffly down as it drew itself slightly up into a more standing position. Small sounds drew her attention from the page she’d been scribbling on—her notes were spared her scritches and scrabble, at least. The doodles of figures outlined by harsh graphite depicted a form screaming beneath the cluster of shadows and gaping maws and clinging claws. All highlighted by a simple line of dates and numbers.

A tiny set of paws was placed neatly against the edge of her van’s open rear door, opened wide to the elements as she sat helterskelter along the rim. Her wings flexed at her back, the soft light from inside her little home glittering across her skin in gentle iridescence. No glamor. No need. She was pretty far from the main trek of the city, and wasn’t too concerned about others making the drive out towards the reservoir this time of year... or night. She only, apparently, needed to worry about fuzzy little visitors.

But these weren’t lilac paws of a familiar feline. These were smaller. White. The tiny face that peered up at her was a crisp, clean white, the color of snow and dark eyes that seemed incredibly gentle to her in that moment. A few more small sounds—crunches of snow, tiny, light movements. More of them. Drawn to the heat of her, of her home, even as open as it was. Kyrie felt a smile flicker across her lips, torn between delight and... something. Something that choked her, something that snagged and tangled in her chest and refused to move up and out of her throat so she could breathe without these little hiccups.

Putting her sketchbook aside, she reached for the curious little snowbunny, noting it didn’t pull away from her touch nor fight her as she gently lifted it into the van. It sniffed about, ears twitching this way and that, before it hopped delicately up into her lap. Vellus made a soft huff as if not approving of the additional fauna company, but it only recoiled itself around her neck, tucking its nose in against her cheek. Kyrie could only laugh, or whatever it was that came out of her. Her hands stroked the soft fur, watching with quiet amazement as more hopped and snuggled up into the back of her van. Snowbunnies. The proof that life still existed in this galaxy, the first physical comfort she’d had in centuries.

Why her—it was a question she could pose to Solaris, and to the snowbunnies. Both seemed to be rather insistent on it, whatever their reason.

Another little sound, laughter or a sob or something entirely different, and the alien relaxed where she sat, surrounded by snowbunnies and a Caelisyr, having no new answers for all her considerations and dwelling. But she was warm.

Another year had gone by.


WC: 827