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 86: Sometimes they were large and lasted months, other times only a few cases were reported.
Sometimes they were large and lasted months, other times only a few cases were reported. Many things were blamed, bad water, a miasma carried through the air. In Tyrin it was considered a sign of poor hygiene. Regular bathing and scrupulous attention to cleanliness ensure the disease could not take hold.
In many places there were stories about the wickedness of the people bringing down the death upon themselves. Even the priests of Tyrin thought this was foolishness and claimed that unless the people had become so wicked that they abandoned attention to hygiene that their thoughts had little to do with their sickness.
Reminded of her own hygiene and that she had no laundress to assist her, Anya locked her door and stripped down. It wasn’t as good as dipping in the waters to bathe, but Anya did a thorough job of cleaning herself. When no dust remained, she pulled on her night dress and began to work on the dust and dirt left from her day. As she cleaned her dress, Anya wondered how someone could have cause the sickness that took her birth father and mother.
The why was not something she needed to question. If the vision was accurate then her family had been prosperous, the money and value of the family goods now claimed by those who took her and her sisters in. She could see it might be a powerful incentive.
‘But how would one cause an illness,’ she thought. ‘And it couldn’t be just one family, others would have had to have fallen ill.’
From her mushroom gathering she knew that there were mushrooms that could cause sickness or death, but the signs that they were used was clear and obvious. ‘So someone couldn’t use a poisonous mushroom and then claim that it was the sickness,’ Anya thought. ‘Unless they found a mushroom that mimicked the disease.’
Anya wasn’t certain if there was one or if a concoction could be made to blend the properties of different plants and herbs to come up with such a concoction. While she could see that being done it seemed like it would need to be given over a long period of time. ‘People don’t die instantly of the sickness,’ she though remembering the stories of the lingering, the slow downward spiral and agonizing death. One of the reasons it was considered so deadly was because at first it often didn’t seem like much so a person could pass it to many people before they even realized they were sick.
Anya shook her thoughts away as she hung up her newly cleaned dress to dry in the night. She emptied the now no longer clean water out and let it drain away. She had a small amount of water left for her morning ablutions but that would be enough for now. Anya let the thought of the sickness fade away and made her way to bed. As she slipped between the sheets, Anya wondered about Lord Mathis and the people he sent to Tyrin. She wondered about the following morning when talking would resume. She wondered if she could trust those around her.
Anya blew out the lamp, to full of her own thoughts to think about reading. She stared off into darkness trying to quiet herself. Eventually sleep came and Anya drifted off. Her dreams were full of dark creatures that reached out from the shadows with sharp claws. The light shifted sometimes concealing the writing things in the dark and sometimes glinting off of saliva covered fangs and shiny black claws. Moring’s arrival was a welcome relief and Anya slipped out of bed eager to leave them behind despite her worries for the day. She used the little remaining water to wash her face and then dressed for the day.
Ten til Midnight 