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 178: Anya closed her eyes and allowed herself to walk through the memory.
Anya closed her eyes and allowed herself to walk through the memory. The church smelled of cold stone and beeswax and she was with a group of other small children. She thought she was about five or six at the time. She remembered that before their lessons at the church they were sent to the bathhouse so they would be extra clean. Her hair had still been wet as was the case with many of the other girls. As the soap was communal and routinely restocked as it wore, they all had the same clean soap and lakeside scent to them as they stood listening to Brother Fertamosan take them around the church.
“And who is this?” he would ask as they stopped in front of one of the statues.
“Amaroc of Grenwa,” they all chorused. Anya smiled remembering that Yeran couldn’t remember any of the saint’s names and merely mouthed words as the other’s spoke, hiding a little behind one of the taller boys so no the Brother teaching them wouldn’t see he didn’t know.
“And how do we address him?” Brother Fertamosan asked.
“Please watch over the fields and bring a bountiful harvest,” they chorused. Brother Fertamosan looked over them and nodded pleased with their response. He turned and they followed him to the next niche and the next saint. Anya remembered that the lessons continued until all of them could say all of the saints names and address them properly. Once they learned as a group they had to be taken individually around so they could recite individually the saints and their addresses. Once they could do so it was decreed enough of a training for anyone not wishing to take vows and the lessons ended.
“Yeran had to go through six times,” Anya recalled.
Slowly Anya let her mind pace through the church reciting the names and details. Even now she could remember all fifty one. Of the fifty one only two of the saints were women. Anya remembered their addresses were a little bit different than the others. When she was little she assumed it was because they were female saints and they simply liked to be addressed differently than their male counterparts.
As vows had never been something that interested her, Anya merely learned the lessons required and then more or less forgot about the. In Anya’s mind she reached the first of the female saints. She was placed at the far north end of the chapel. Her place was right under the one stain glass window in what always seemed to Anya a place of importance even if none of the others seemed to give her any special importance.
“And who do we have here?” Brother Fertamosan asked when they reached her niche.
“Polara,” they all repeated.
“And how is she addressed.
“Please guide us when we are lost,” they all chorused. Brother Fertamosan gave a cursory nod and they all moved on. The second statue of a woman was the last in the line, the fifty first saint and she was half hidden in the shadows behind the altar. They stopped in front of her statue.
“Lecaros.” He said. “And then to reactivate when you return tomorrow, Recaros.”
Ten til Midnight 