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 215: ‘Maybe I could use another bowl of some sort.’
‘Maybe I could use another bowl of some sort.’ The idea had merit. ‘I would just need to figure out how to go about using the bowl for looking into other places. ‘When she used the bowl with Marta it seemed as though the woman merely dipped her fingers into the water and images floated up. Anya didn’t know if there was magic imbued in the basin as it was in the orb or if Marta herself did something prior to Anya’s arrival. She called an image with no prior activities, but it was only after Marta used the same basin and water for the same thing.
‘So I would need to study up on that before I use it,’ Anya thought. It was another item to add to list of things she wanted to learn. The list seemed never ending. ‘But at least they are interesting things to learn,’ Anya thought. ‘Much more interesting than learning the list of saints. Although I suppose that did come in handy,’ she admitted.
It was also a longer list of things she needed to see if she could find with the orb. While Anya was certain there were books on using the basin to look into past events, since Marta would have no doubt studied them in order to learn how to use the basin, finding them was the difficulty. Anya left the shelter of the hidden spaces to pick up the books Marta left her. She used the hidden study in the library to look out over the library and make certain no one was in the space before stepping the few steps require out of the hidden space to pick up the books left for her and leave the ones she finished, before hurrying back to the hidden places.
All told she was exposed for only a brief moment. To search the shelves would take longer. ‘Too much time to be out in the library.’
Anya sipped her tea and thought about it. Even if she could find the books in the library, retrieving them might take longer than she wanted to be exposed. Anya had collected a substantial amount of books from the other hidden spaces. ‘If the books are there I can easily get them. If not maybe I could leave a note with the books and Marta can add them to the stack on the end of the table.
It was a thought, but Anya was a little concerned about Marta’s acceptance. The older woman, like Deran, had a set course of study planned out for her. While Anya was doing her best to stick to the bulk of that and continue with her basic studies, other needs were intruding. ‘Luckily many of Marta’s basics and Deran’s basics are similar. Both wanted her to concentrate on learning about flora and fauna and their uses and properties before moving on to anything else. While Anya enjoyed such studies and could easily see their use, both in an everyday way and in a magical one, since they formed the basis of much of what magic could do it wasn’t enough. The threat of Lord Mathis made it not enough.
Ten til Midnight 