Promptvent - Day 4

25 days of winter prompts to thaw your writers (ice)block - and this year it's all about being Cozy.

If you’d like some wintry musical inspiration whilst you write, why not try listening to View Through Time by Andrew Gialanella in ‘Cozy Winter Instrumentals’ on Spotify.

Listen to me read the guided invitation via audio below or if you prefer to read the transcript, that is also available for you underneath the audio.

Hello and welcome to day 4 of Promptvent!

Welcome back to our Promptvent village advent calendar where you find yourself standing once again before the cozy Christmas window.

Bundled up in your warm woolen mittens and thick scarf, you are eager to to know what wintry word of the day awaits you. What world will you step into and discover today? Your nose begins to pick up a faint scent that is deeply familiar to you. You lean closer, and can feel the eagerness in your fingers as you pull off your mittens and reach for the iron latch on the window, lifting it with care.

Through the open window, there are rows and rows of glass jars from floor to ceiling, sitting on thick wooden shelves. Each jar is filled with various liquids and solids of all different colours. The scents within the jars slowly begin to waft towards you, hints of pine, cinnamon and citrus, spiced apple and whisky. That deeply familiar scent you recognised from before arrives again and gives you butterflies. That smell. You long to get closer to it.

Suddenly, the red wreathed door to your left slowly opens, inviting you in. You step inside, stamp off the snow from your boots and hang your winter coat up on a golden brass hook. The scents softly swirl and dance around you as you near the first shelf. The jars are labelled with titles such as, ‘Frosted Pines & Cinnamon Swirls’, ‘Evergreen & Cozy Clove’, ‘Snowy Citrus Bliss’, ‘Sugarplum Spice’, ‘Roasted Chestnuts & Christmas Hearth’, ‘Mistletoe & Mulled Wine’, ‘Cranberry & Fir Embrace’, ‘Peppermint Winter Breeze’.

Each name stirs a memory from within, collecting warm pastries from the bakery and cafe on the corner, visiting relatives on the far side of the pond and the smell of the air and the forests, helping family in the kitchen with pots and pans bubbling away on the stove, wearing the sweater of a loved one no longer with us and nuzzling your nose in the collar for comfort. The smell of your dog, napping and content on the sofa, long winter walks between the pines. Still, there is that scent - the one that feelings like coming home. The scent that your soul craves when the world is heavy and full of sorrow. A scent you would recognise anywhere and at any moment. You pick up your pace and scan the second row of shelves, until, ah - there it is. Labelled as you knew it would be and only as you would know it. You reach out and pick the jar up off the shelf, unscrew the lid and take a deep inhale.

You stand there for a moment, lost in the haze of memory until a little wick peeking out of the jar lights up, producing a small flame. You smile and realise that this particular jar had been sitting on a notebook, a pen resting beside. You know that the spirits of time and all of those lost or living that are related to this scent are communicating with you, they want their story to be written, they want you to remember.

You pick up the notebook and pen and walk with the jar over to a comfy armchair, placing the jar on a small wooden table next to it. With the candle lit, the scent is even more evocative, you quickly open the notebook and see one word in large cursive script written at the top of the page.

It reads: SCENT

You take one last deep inhale (if you’d like to take this time to close your eyes and take a deep inhale and exhale, please do) and then you pick up the pen - and write.