The Fifteen Minute Novel 2023 Part 2: Day 20

And so the story continues…

Day 20: The apartment she called home was modest, but a far step above the safe house she just left.

The apartment she called home was modest, but a far step above the safe house she just left. After the day she had it felt like a haven of warmth. Unlike many of the places she lived before this, there were personal touches starting to appear.  She had actually been here long enough to start making this a home.

Anna shrugged off her coat and hung it on the peg beside the door.  She slipped off her boots and they too were left by the door.  While she didn’t want to track mud through the house, she also had a second pair of boots placed by her bed so that if she had to run in the night, she could slip them on and go out the back window.  She wondered if that habit, along with so many others she acquired over the course of the last few years would fade if the offer was genuine and they stopped hunting her.

‘Of course if I don’t go to the meeting tomorrow then they might go back to the hunting,’  Anna knew that was a possibility despite the papers she had.  Uncertain if the tracing spells might become active again if she removed them from the spelled holder, Anna left them where they were.  Soon she would perform the more complex spells needed to remove the tracer, but today was not the day for that.  The process of removing them would temporarily expose her to the tracking spell and she needed to be in a place that was warded to prevent that. 

While her safe houses were good, they weren’t warded.  Such warding would be noticeable and could bring people looking.  After all why would someone ward something if they didn’t want to keep things hidden? It was in its own way a beacon letting people know that something was being hidden from the authorities. There were places where the wards were active already and would not draw attention because everyone knew they were there and why.  Most government buildings had wards and even the archives had a warded space for protected documents. 

Normally she would take the documents to the archives and go into the warded space, removing the tracking spells in a way that looked like part of her normal research.  ‘But I don’t think I’ll be going back to the archives again for a while.’

Anna frowned.  If she was honest, her research was almost complete.  She had a few pieces to put together and a few elements were still missing.  She had gathered all of the information she was going to get from this archives.  The problem was that she didn’t know where else to go for the missing pieces.  There were eight main archives and in the course of her research and running she visited them all.  This was the last of the known archives.

‘And there are still missing pieces.’

Anna shook her head.  In her research she found references to a lost ninth archive and was fairly certain she knew where it was, but getting to it would be an interesting process.  ‘If it still exists.’

There was the possibility it was destroyed in the war.  It was, from what she managed to gather, in the wastelands.  While the wastelands held little fear for her, Anna knew she would have to leave this place where she was starting to feel at home.  The trip would take her away.  She would have to let this home she was settling into go, leave the few friends she was managing to make and uproot herself again. 

As Anna slid her feet into her house slippers and padded silently towards her kitchen, she thought of her day.  Uprooting might be coming anyway.  Someone wanted her to leave and return to her old place. They might not take her refusal well.

‘And now that they know my general vicinity it is only a matter of time before they show up.’ Anna thought.  Was it better to leave now and risk the lost archives?