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 109: As Anya finished shelving the last of the books she left thoughts of lightning aside and studied the still dusty tools lined up on the work top.
As Anya finished shelving the last of the books she left thoughts of lightning aside and studied the still dusty tools lined up on the work top. She had no name for most of them. Some looked sharp and she had the general notation of knife, but as most of the knife blades were shaped differently from the belt knives and eating implements she had seen before, she was sure there was some other word that went along with the descriptor of knife. Some of the blades were long and thin with double edges. Others had small hooks on the end. A couple were triangular in shape.
All were coated in years of dust and fallen spider webbing. Anya took up her cloth and carefully picked up the first item. It almost hummed in he grasp and Anya nearly dropped it. She frowned, feeling the hum in her hand as a vibration more than a sound. She carefully wiped the dust away revealing as silver edge to the blade and an intricately carved handle. As she wiped the dust and dirt from the crevices, she noticed that while the design was intricate, it looked as though it was also designed to aid the users grip.
‘Which I suppose is useful if it is vibrating all the time.’ As the table top was still dusty, she wiped the blade and carefully placed it on the floor. She worked through each of the implements one at a time. Even though not all of them could be called blades even in her mind, most of them had some form of sharp spot. On some it was just the pointed tip, on others it was sharp little hooks. As she had no idea what they were used for, what they were called or what sort of residue was left on them, she didn’t want to risk cutting herself with them.
Each of them pulsed as though it contained it’s own energy. Some fluttered like butterfly wings while others had the rhythm of the heart rate of a heavy sleeper. ‘If I knew what they were for I would almost be able to pick them up and know what they were without actually looking at them,’ Anya thought. ‘Each one is so different.’
As she cleaned and set them aside, Anya wondered if that was the point. If sorcerers selected their tools by touch and not by sight. ‘I also wonder if the others would feel the vibrations.’
As it was bad enough that she could see rooms and read books the others couldn’t, she decided not to mention the tools to anyone for the moment. Once the tools were clean Anya cleaned up the surface of the work top. The surface was a thick would and was supported by sturdy legs, each larger than her own legs. The wood was good, or had been once. She could see it polished up and being the pride of some lordling’s study. However fine this table started hour however now it was scared and battered. There were nicks, scraps and even burn marks along it’s surface.
Anya frowned. It wasn’t the condition of the table that bothered her. Seeing the implements she could guess that their use occasionally caused mishaps. It was the relatively good condition of the table top that gave her pause. Anya looked over to the cleared space where the chair had sat. It’s cushions had molded and succumbed to the passing of the years. The wood too had been mostly rotten. She could feel the brittleness of the wood as it moved and saw the trail of dusty wood crumbs along the floor when she moved it.
Ten til Midnight 