The fifteen minute novel writing experiment is a attempt to write a complete (and very rough) draft of a novel by writing for fifteen minutes each day. I have taken a timed writing from one of the daily prompts done in 2021, cleaned it up a little and used it as my jumping off point into a story. Each day I will take the last line of the story written the day before and use it as my sentence starter and write for fifteen minutes, growing the story as the year progresses.
Day 2: Anya had no illusions about the avenue of her escape remaining a mystery for long, but she hoped to leave a little confusion behind as it seemed only fair.
Anya had no illusions about the avenue of her escape remaining a mystery for long, but she hoped to leave a little confusion behind as it seemed only fair. After all confusion had reigned in her since her arrival. She remembered being watched in the market. She remembered feeling eyes upon her and looking around to see whose gaze it was. She was fetching water and had rolled up her sleeves to keep them dry.
There were many others who did so so Anya was not out of place at the village well. Once they stepped back with their filled buckets, sleeves were rolled back down to modestly cover the arms to the wrists. Since fetching the water from the village well was a task that often befell the younger girls of the household, there were few to look and stare. With Anya’s sleeves rolled up the strange birthmark on her arm was visible.
The others were used to it now, but it wasn’t so strange all things considering. Many had birthmarks. The fact that the one on her arm was perfectly shaped to form a crescent moon was merely an accident of birth not a sign.
Anya remembered others thinking it was some sort of sign when she was smaller, but as she grew and nothing happened, all dismissed the notion. As she mostly kept her arms covered as did the other daughters of the village, most forgot about it or thought of it only in passing. And by then it was just part of Anya, nothing special.
But the man looking at her wasn’t one of the villagers. He was a stranger and he came with several other strangers. They were well dressed and clearly in the employ of a great lord. The cost of just one of their jeweled rings would have kept Anya’s family fed for a month.
When she glanced over, the man was looking at the birthmark on her arm. Anya filled her buckets and backed away from the well. She set the buckets down by her feet and rolled her sleeves back down to cover her arms. She buttoned the cuffs and picked up her buckets. Anya then began walking back to her house, thoughts of the man falling from her thoughts as she went through her list of chores. There were the little ones to see to. Her family scrimped and saved and managed to buy apprentice ships for two of her older brothers. While they made little and could send back even less to the family, their food, shelter and clothing were no longer a burden on the family. Unfortunately that also meant that they were no longer around to help with the chores needed to keep the household running.
With her two older sisters married off, the last this spring, Anya was the one left in charge of the younger children. A couple of them were old enough that they could leave with Mother when she went to work at the great laundry in the middle of town. There they took in all of the house linens from the grand houses who did not wish to have such a service within their own house. In truth many of the grand houses of Tyrin were not grand in the same way larger towns used the term. They were large and the occupants far more comfortable than Anya and her family were, but they were large houses rather than grand estates. As their smaller stature provided work for people like Anya’s mother she wasn’t sorry that Tyrin did not boast grander spaces. In fact, Anya suspected that once her younger sister was old enough to look after the younger ones, she would take her place in the laundry working alongside her mother as her older sisters did before they were married.
Ten til Midnight 