The fifteen minute novel writing experiment is an 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 203: She loved that the stones that built it were huge and appeared to have another life before being brought to the church.
She loved that the stones that built it were huge and appeared to have another life before being brought to the church. On many of the stones there were bits of carving that didn’t connect with any other adornments. They were bits taken from other buildings and reused here just as the saints were. Some of the carvings were meaningless shapes, curves that cut off where the stone was squared away the rest of the curve lost as the matching stone was either used elsewhere or lost to time.
Other stones had more recognizable details to them and Anya remembered many a boring service where her thoughts drifted from the sermon and picked out faces and animals as well as repeating geometric patterns in the stones. Sometimes she liked looking for stones that might have once been placed together. There was one pattern which once must have stretched over a long distance of wall. She could spot the designing running in a strip through several different stones. Once she was certain they were all in a line. Now they were scattered about the church in various places. She tried to fit them together like a puzzle with her eyes to amuse herself.
Today however she looked away from the stones and moved towards the statue of Bendeasa. The statue was as she remembered it. It was still recognizable as the shape of a woman seated on a throne. The general outline reminded her of the Lady Moon as Anya thought of the woman from her dreams, but there was no detail. The statue was old, older than even the worn decorations around the reused stones of the walls.
As Anya studied the statue, it’s features seemed to grow sharper and come into focus. The more she looked, the more the statue resembled the Lady Moon.
‘But that can’t be right,’ Anya thought. ‘How can a statue get…younger and less worn?’
The statue nevertheless came into focus. As Anya studied it she suddenly got the impression that the statue was looking back.
‘This was the visage you remembered,’ The lady’s voice sounded in her head. The statues lips didn’t move any more than the one in her dreams but the voice was the same. It was however softer and more distant, less immediate and body thrumming painful to hear.
‘Yes,’ Anya replied feeling that some response was needed.
‘This avatar once stood in the temple of Ced,’ the lady said. ‘It remembers you as a child though it was here long years without any to pay it homage.’
Anya wasn’t certain how to respond to this and so she remained quiet.
‘There were others with you,’ the statue said.
‘The other children of the village of Tyrin,’ Anya said.
‘They were not touched. They will not remember seeing me.’
Again Anya was unsure how to respond and retreated into silence. The lady seemed to retreat as well, whatever speech she felt necessary over. The features of the statue once again blurred with time and became the familiar worn elements she recalled from childhood visits. The feeling of another presence retreated as well and Anya felt as though she was alone in the church. She decided that perhaps she had wandered the distances with the orb for long enough today. She slowly retreated from the church and returned to the House of the Star. Anya returned to the room of the orb. She pulled her hand away from the orb and opened her eyes.
Ten til Midnight 