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 140: “We’ll find her and make sure she is fine.”
“We’ll find her and make sure she is fine.” He returned to his breakfast and Kissa sniffed.
“I know we will,” she wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “And until then we have things to get on with.” As Kissa and Heval started planning their day, Anya took her leave. She let her mind wander out of the house her oldest sister shared with her husband and child. She felt a lump rise in her throat and sniffed back tears of her own. She felt both pleased and gutted to hear that Kissa was worried for her.
As Anya let the sight of the orb take her down the street she wondered if there was a way to get a message to Kissa. ‘It would have to be one that wouldn’t tell Lord Mathis where I was,’ she thought. Any message she sent would need to be carefully worded. ‘If and when I find a way to send it.’
As she debated letting Kissa know she was for the most part safe, Anya drifted towards the house she shared with the family. Her aunt and uncle were inside. Once she thought of them as parents. They were strict and sterner with her and her older sisters than they were with their own children but they still fed, clothed and housed her and she always felt there was love there.
Now her thoughts and feeling on them were jumbled. She entered the house and saw that all was not as it had been. The rag rugs that covered the floor had been worn down and pressed as flat as felt through years of wear. Even when freshly beaten free of dust and brought in from hanging in the sunshine, they had a lack luster appearance. They were now gone. While the house didn’t boast the fine carpets that the rooms in the House of the Star featured, the rag rugs were new, the wool strips that went into making them fresh and looking soft to the touch.
The rugs were not the only changes. The inside of the house was freshly white washed and the hired girl was laying forth a multitude of bowls and platters out upon the table. There were sausages as well as porridge and fruit that looked purchased from one of the market stalls rather than gathered in the woods. In fact none of the fare placed on the table looked as though it had come foraged from the woods. Only market fare graced the table. It was that more than the amount of food that made Anya gasp with surprise. Never had she seen market food on the family table before. They foraged and sold to markets, they didn’t purchase food from them.
As Anya watched Declan frowned at the bowl placed before him. “I don’t want it,” he said mulishly. “I want Anya’s stew.”
Ten til Midnight 