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 77: The deadly Ruffled Tan was listed as Morca Jelusi.
The deadly Ruffled Tan was listed as Morca Jelusi. The Spotted buttons with their white button shaped heads spotte with green dots were called Morca Keltov. The word Morca was placed in the name of all the mushrooms Anya knew to be deadly just as Epiec was placed in the name of the mushrooms she knew were good to eat.
There was a third set of names for mushrooms. They all started with the name Fartel. There was Fartel Rumat, Fartel Caroon, and Fartel Herava. None of the mushrooms listed were one she knew. Curious as to what Fartel denoted, Anya kept turning hoping she would find a few she recognized. Towards the center of the book she found Fartel Opin and she recognized it as the mushroom the midwives gathered when a difficult child birth was eminent. They called it Pain Break and boiled it into a tea, steeping the mushrooms in the boiling water, draining it and then cooling it. The liquid was then dribbled into the expectant mother’s mouth.
Bone Knit was listed as well. It was called Fartel Gurune. Anya had been asked to gather it for the healers before as well. She knew these mushrooms too were soaked in boiling water to extract something from them. In this case it wasn’t drunk but bandages were soaked in them and wrapped tightly around healing bones so that infections could not sink in and the bones could heal straight.
‘So Epiec for edible mushrooms, Morca for ones that can kill you and Fartel for those that the healers use.’ Anya nodded and slipped the book back on the shelf with some regret. While she would have loved to study the book on mushrooms, at the moment she didn’t have a need for it.
‘It would have been nice when I left the tower,’ Anya thought remembering the mushrooms she passed as she fled. They weren’t ones she could identify so she left them alone just to be safe. ‘I’m sure at least some of them would have been listed.’
Fresh mushrooms would have made a nice addition to her rationed meals. She shrugged and slid the book back on the shelf. ‘Perhaps I’ll return later,’ she decided. The next book she pulled from the shelf dealt with mosses and lichens. Anya knew of only one moss that was edible and another that was often gathered by healers. As she flipped through the pages, she found the same careful pictures and descriptions. The images were all labeled with names the same way as the mushrooms. Each had two names.
Ten til Midnight 