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 256: Even though she was finished with setting up the garden area and there was still daylight, Anya didn’t feel like asking any more questions.
Even though she was finished with setting up the garden area and there was still daylight, Anya didn’t feel like asking any more questions. She knew that answers were possible for many of the questions she had for most of what was inside the mountain. She suspected that if she asked Deran about the final siege he might tell her the answers to many of the questions she wanted to know. Arkaron was looking into the guild membership and possibly finding out why Lord Mathis sent people to the house that once belonged to her parents.
She thought about using the orb to look in on the hunter, Marta, the Matron, Arkaron or even the young man and his grandfather who saw her when she visited the Fairweather estate. All were things she knew she should do. She thought about looking in on her sisters but decided immediately against it. If they were still worried for her, she didn’t want to see it as she could do nothing to alleviate that worry. If they were not worried and had moved on believing her now lost to them, Anya didn’t want to see that either.
She didn’t want to see how someone was hired to replace her in the house where she grew up. She didn’t want to think about plots and schemes or even survival and magic. Anya realized that at the moment she was tired. Tired of the constant questions and the additional questions that attempting to answer any question brought. She thought of the basket of lace making supplies sitting beside her reading chair.
“Yes,” she decided. “That’s what I am doing.”
She picked up the book dealing with the garden and after one last check to make sure everything looked as it was supposed to, Anya took the book upstairs to her quarters. The fire was burning low so she added another log for both her and the seed beds’ benefit. She showered off the remnants of the gardening activated and dressed in a clean dress. She washed the one she had been wearing in the bath tub before draining it and cleaning it out and hung the now wet garment up to dry.
Feeling more like herself, Anya settled into her reading chair and pulled the lace making tools out of the basket. In a twinkling the pillow was settled on her lap and the bobbins were in place. Anya set the pins as they were needed and she began to make her lace. Anya’s fingers moved in a confident rhythm along the set pattern. The thin filaments of silk string slowly became an ever growing strip of lace. The strip of delicate silk filigree grew and Anya felt a lot of the rough spots inside of her smooth out. She was doing an activity she knew well and didn’t have to think too much about. Her fingers knew the motions without the benefit of her eyes and mind engaging. In addition, the sight of the strip of lace growing made Anya feel as though she was finally giving back something to the House of the Star after spending so long simply taking.
Anya worked on the lace until the sun began to fade and then she set the pillow aside to go down to the garden, cover the seeds for the night and return back to her quarters.
‘Tomorrow I will start looking in on the others and start working on my lessons again,’ she told herself. Inside she felt much more calm, much more settled in her own skin than she had in a while. She wondered if it was returning to a routine task, finding a way to give back or simply having a task where she could see tangible results forming that made her feel more at ease.
‘It is the first time I have made progress on anything really,’ she thought.
Ten til Midnight 