And so the story continues fifteen minutes at a time…
Day 17: Anna added her belongings back into the bag.
Anna added her belongings back into the bag. Once everything was collected including her notebook from the kitchenette, Anna sat down on the edge of the cot she kept here as a bed. With no physical tasks to occupy her, she was left with her thoughts.
Christopher and Marcus were working together. ‘I knew there was that slip with Jeffrey,’ she told herself. As good as it felt to have her suspicious vindicated, she felt hurt by Marcus. She could tell herself that he was following orders and console herself with the fact that he didn’t want any permanent harm to come to her, but behind that there was still the sting of betrayal.
For a moment Anna allowed herself to wallow in it. She once trusted Marcus completely. Now, she knew she never would. It was the loss of something she didn’t know she still held on to. Over the last few years, she grew accustomed to losing things.
“Okay,” she told herself. “That’s enough wallowing. Your fifteen minutes is up.” Anna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The exercises she was taught to use in order to calm the mind worked well here. As always they cleared the fear and worry. Many times they had been the only think keeping her from panicking and getting caught. Somehow she doubted her teachers expected her to use her lessons to hide from them and the government officials.
“Right,” she said feeling calmer. “Let’s start from the top.”
Anna stood up and began pacing the small space, somehow thinking better when she moved. “My research is more or less complete. There were a few manuscripts I would have liked to check, but at this point they would just be backing up the data I have already collected.” While Anna always liked multiple sources and found that often timed documents contained different wording or little side notes that helped her on her way, at this point it wasn’t strictly necessary. She did not need to return to the archives here. If anything else she was returning just to be thorough.
‘I probably should have moved on before this,’ Anna thought. ‘But I was comfortable here and no one found me.’
She set the thought aside for later. “They want me to go back for the Devra.” Anna wasn’t entirely certain what that was. She knew that many of her family were in the Order of the Devra and they occasionally made mention of it, but she didn’t know too much more. It was usually only mentioned when one of her family members was being initiated into the order. She was too young to be considered for initiation when everything in her world disintegrated so she never learned what the order did or even what the Devra was.
‘It could be a thing or a person,’ she had no clue. Once she decided to try and look it up to find out details.
Ten til Midnight 