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 121: She lifted it and followed Marta out of the kitchen.
She lifted it and followed Marta out of the kitchen. Anya concentrated more on not spilling the water than anything else, letting her mind become a calm blank. The problem was that the floorplan of the citadel kept intruding. She could feel it around her even if her eyes couldn’t see it. She felt almost as if she was watching herself move through the House of the Star, her hands still placed on the sphere.
‘Maybe it is an after effect of using the sphere,’ she thought.
Even though she couldn’t see the floor plan it made it’s presence felt. She almost turned left, taking a quick route to her quarters and only last second adjusted her path to follow Marta. Marta noticed her misstep and smiled.
“The layout sometimes takes a bit of getting used to,” she said. “I remember my first month here I got lost several times and needed someone to come find me.”
Anya smiled and nodded back. She glanced down the hall and saw several hidden doors. They all looked like the panel doors, but some led to corridors and open spaces rather than the private studies. Using those passageways would be a more direct route than Marta was taking. As they walked, Anya realized Marta couldn’t take that path as those walkways were hidden from her.
‘Which makes the obscure path the direct one for her and the others,’ Anya thought. She recalled the matron telling Lord Mathis that things were smoothed over so some spaces seemed like they were intentional but others were not converted by the arrival of war. Any wondered if the new construction to make things look as though it was an intentional design were simply to further hide the hidden spaces.
‘If the space looked intentional they wouldn’t look for something hidden.’
They reached her door and Anya set down the water jug as Marta waited for her to unlock the door. Anya fitted the key in the lock and turned, leaving it there. Marta opened the door wide while she went back for the jug. She slipped the key into her pocket and started to bend to retrieve the jug.
“What are you doing here?” she heard Marta say. She said it loudly and indignantly. As it was louder than her normal speech, Anya realized it was intended to carry. She was still in the doorway and hidden from sight. Anya took the hint and left the jug where it was, sliding down the corridor as quickly and as silently as she could. She worried that the doors nearest her might squeak so she waited until she was around the corner and out of sight before opening one of the hidden passages and hiding in one of the corridors. She closed the panel behind her and wondered who was in her rooms. Who was waiting for her and who did Marta send her way from.
‘I need to see,” she thought. Her first thoughts were of the orb, but the passageway didn’t connect to that section of rooms. Anya closed her eyes and behind her closed lids she could feel every pathway, both hidden and not of the House of the Star. Anya found there was a corridor leading behind her rooms. It was in the hidden sections and she could reach it. She saw the air shaft that led from her bathing area to the surface connected with the passageway. While she couldn’t see anything, Anya thought there was a possibility that she might be able to hear something.
Ten til Midnight 