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 78: Each had two names.
Each had two names. All of the names started with Epiec, Morca or Fartel. The one edible she knew was labeled as Epiec and the one the healers used was listed as Fartel.
‘So I guess they use the same descriptors,’ Anya thought. ‘It easier than remembering that the Fat Friar is good to eat and the Ruffled Tan will kill you I suppose. If all the names start with a listing of edible, medicinal or deadly it would be harder to mix them up.’ As she turned the pages Anya marveled at how many of the mosses and lichen listed were actually edible.
Knowing she could easily become distracted. Anya put the book back on the shelf and reached for one on the shelf below. This one contained drawings of herbs and flowers. While interesting, she kept it out long enough to see that the Epiec, Morca and Fartel naming pattern held and then closed it.
Anya continued looking through the books, slowly working her way down the shelves, reaching for volumes on either side of the ladder. She found books on trees and shrubbery. She then found books on fish and other sea creatures. She found a separate volume on mollusks and other shell fish and a surprising one dealing with plants of the sea.
Lower down Anya found tomes dealing with planting and harvesting. On the other side of the ladder she found books that detailed the processing of many of the plants. By now, Anya had her feet back on the floor. She wheeled the ladder to another set of shelves and climbed up. The processing continued and Anya found books detailing which parts of plants were useful and how to harvest, process and store them. Further down she found recipes not just for food stuffs but for tinctures, poultices and soaks.
Again when Anya found her feet on the floor she moved the ladder. She found more books on where different types of plants grew and where different animals lived. She slipped through books about hunting and butchering , trapping, farming and fishing. The books available then moved into identifying different types of rocks and what they could be used for. Some were based on building and featured details about the strength of the stone, what kinds of tools were needed to cut it and how to use it in all its forms.
‘But not just building,’ she found. Some of the books Anya found involved taking smaller pieces of stone and grinding them for various uses. Anya marveled at the different uses the different types of stones could be put to.
‘And that someone would write all of this down,’ She said. Some of the details seemed like the sorts of things guilds would keep secret. That they were stored here in books that anyone could open was surprising.
Ten til Midnight 