The goal is to write a full first draft in fifteen minutes a day. It is a way to get a story out of my head and to keep working forward on an idea that might otherwise languish while I work on other things. After all there are many good ideas that get abandoned because there isn’t time now for them. I think that’s why I find this so much fun. it is an idea that might be lost. It is a lot harder to lose a full draft. I d notice when I am writing these I tend to skim over certain details that I will later work to full out in more complete scenes. For now though it is enough to get the idea down and to make sure I know what I was thinking with the first pass when I later come back to do a first edit. And so with that in mind, the story continues…
Day 26: ‘By lunchtime I will be far enough from the city to feel comfortable stopping.’
‘By lunchtime I will be far enough from the city to feel comfortable stopping.’ Anna made sure she had enough components to scry multiple times. She suspected today would be the day that would determine what went on. If she didn’t appear, they would be looking for her in the city.
‘They will check the gates as well,’ she thought. She knew the official city gates were monitored. Even if there was no alarm raised when she used them, they would make certain to replay the recordings from the time they last saw her onwards to see if she left and which gate she used.
‘Which is why I always find ways out of the cities that don’t involve the gates.’
What Marcus and anyone with him did after that would help her decide her next moves. She suspected that as she didn’t appear on the gate surveillance, they would suspect, at least for a little while, that she was still in town. They could find her apartment or they could find any one of her safe houses. There was the possibility that they would track her to the safe house she last used. She doubted if they would be able to monitor her leaving there.
‘They might think it is my primary residence.’
When she left she had very little with her and given that so many of her spell components would need pricy ingredients, they would know that she could not make money from her spell craft. That she found ways to use less pricy ingredients might or might not occur to them. It took her a whiole of experimenting to realize what worked ant what didn’t and that was an act if necessity rather than choice. She doubted those coming acter her were scrimping on anything. If finding her was important, they would have the best of ingredients. She just hoped the little tricks she learned would fly under the radar.
‘Nelson said they were undetectable,’ Anna consoled herself as she kept walking. ‘Or nearly so.’ They made some tests when she was still in the city of Frenenburg a few years prior. The trackers that were used to track other spells mostly relied upon tracking the components or combination of components. If a shielding spell used silver and fire opal then it was the combination of silver and fire opal that was used to find out where a shielding spell was used, where it was active and how to break it. Using glass and aluminum allowed Anna to get not only a stronger shielding, but as it contained none of the same trace elements as silver and fire opal, the spells used to track shielding spells didn’t work.
In their time together she and Nelson worked together to figure out how to keep her spells hidden as well as which components made them stronger or created added benefits. Anna enjoyed working with him. And working with him allowed her to build up her resources. He wasn’t being hunted and was able to help her make money from her spell craft, working as a broker so she could stay hidden.
Nelson was gone now, succumbing to fever. The money she earned working with him lasted long enough that even now, she hadn’t needed to search for a new source of income. She was able to live off what she saved from then.
‘But Marcus wouldn’t know that and might think the safe house my primary residence.’
Ten til Midnight 