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 55: ‘But I have three days of silence,’ Anya thought.
‘But I have three days of silence,’ Anya thought. As the silence settled in, Anya found her thoughts turning inward. The twitchiness of her fingers settled. Her mind turned to other things. She decided that she couldn’t go back to Tyrin at the moment. Her lack of supplies and lack of knowledge about Lord Mathis both conspiring to keep her from trying that course.
‘But is there anything there for you,’ she found the thought drifted up through her mind. It was an odd one and not one she ever really thought about. She and her two sisters were taken in by her father’s brother and his family when her parent’s died. They earned their place in the family and helped out where they could. Anya was too young to remember anything before they moved in with her uncle and Aunt and in fact thought of them as mother and father as she didn’t remember anyone before.
Her older sisters used the same terms for them, but they remembered life with their parents and often complained about some of the things Anya took for granted. Kissa was the oldest and the one who most clearly remembered life with their parents and she often complained the most. Kissa claimed that there was a dowry set aside for each of them and that she saw it loaded into the wagon when they were taken from their parents. Yet when Kissa wanted to wed, their parents said such a thing never existed.
‘She also asked about some trinkets taken from the old house,’ Anya recalled. While Kissa earned her dowry working at the laundry, she cried over a missing necklace she was supposed to wear on her wedding day. Anya frowned and wondered why she was thinking of such things now. She was too young to remember them and when the issues arose thought it best not to take sides since she could not say the truth of the matter.
‘There is no place for you there,’ Anya blinked at the thought. It circled through her mind. She frowned. The thought too was a strange one. She knew that more tasks fell to her when her sisters married. ‘but that was because I was the oldest left in the house. When I took my place in the laundry one of the younger ones would have taken over the tasks.’
Except.
Anya recalled a conversation she overheard a few months before she left Tyrin. Her parents thought she was asleep. They were discussing what to do when Anya was old enough to work in the laundry. It sounded as though they were planning to hire someone in to look after the others.
‘But that couldn’t be right,’ Anya thought. The oldest of her younger sisters was almost as old as she was when she was given charge of the younger children. ‘And there is no money to hire anyone anyway,’ she thought. She remembered thinking that the conversation must have been part of some dream or misheard as it didn’t make sense.
‘but there was never any talk of the younger girls earning their dowry in the laundry.’ Anya thought. ‘Or of helping to pay for the apprenticeships of the boys.’ Anya tried to dismiss the thought as it felt disloyal. ‘It was only because they were so young,’ she told herself. ‘I’m sure it would have been brought up when they were older.’
Yet there were whispers niggling at the back of her mind as she sat in silence. Parts of half heard gossip, dismissed at the time and now starting to surface when there was nothing else to occupy her mind and her hands rose in her thoughts.
Ten til Midnight 