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 250: Sometime in the night the thought of self-sufficiency took hold.
Sometime in the night the thought of self-sufficiency took hold. Perhaps it was thinking about her family and providing for them. Perhaps it was the realization that simply starting the garden wouldn’t commit her to permanently staying in the mountain.
‘Perhaps it is simply the last thing I read before bed.’ She countered as she slipped her last hair pin in place. Either way the thought wouldn’t leave her.
‘And it will give me a good indication of whether or not the Orb can help me locate things inside the mountain as well as looking in on people.’
Dressed for the day, Anya looked to her small store of food items. Soon Marta would be placing another bag under the stone basin. Anya thought she had about a week. Anya sliced off a piece of bread and a carved off a piece of cheese. She took both back to the fire and slipped the bread onto the toasting fork. She warmed the bread in the flams, slightly toasting the edges and then added the chees to the top of the bread slice. She held it near enough to the flames so that the heat could soften the cheese but not near enough to burn the bread.
When she was pleased with how it looked, she pulled it out of the fire, slid it off the toasting fork and set the fork back into its place beside the fire. She settled into her chair and ate her slice of cheesy toast.
‘Yes, I’ll start by seeing if the orb can locate items for me and then I will make a list for Marta of the things I cannot get in case she can secure them. Then we will see how the rest of the day plays out.’
Anya knew there was the possibility that the orb wouldn’t be able to locate the items she wanted and that she would just need to write out a longer list for Marta. She refused to let the possibility dampen her spirits. Today she would look into providing for herself. It made her feel more like a participant in her own life rather than an object to be hidden away against the threat of Lord Mathis.
Anya finished her breakfast and washed and dried her hands. Feeling ready to face the day, she moved to the orb and placed her hands upon its surface. Its warmth was a comforting pulse under her hand. Anya thought about the items she needed and just as with her observation of people, the orb whisked her sight away. Anya thought about each item on her list and found that all of them were stored somewhere in the mountain. The items were divided between three different store rooms.
Confident that she could reach these store rooms unnoticed, Anya allowed her sight to bounce between the rooms. One was a room that didn’t seem to see much use. In the time Anya observed it, there were no people coming and going.
‘Perhaps those items are stored for spring,’ she thought. ‘Or no longer used.’ The store room had a disused look to it and when Anya looked around to see the hallways surrounding it, she found no one in them and indeed all of the living quarters nearby were unoccupied as well. ‘Maybe those items are only needed for the indoor gardening area.’ She guessed. Anya wondered if they were like the rest of the mountain and refreshed by the magic or if they were no longer usable.
‘I suppose I’ll find out.’
The majority of the items she needed were in that store room but there were a few things scattered in the other two. Those store rooms had people who used them.
Ten til Midnight 