The Fifteen Minute Novel is an attempt to take a single prompt and use the last sentence written each day as a start for the next day. This year I had several prompts circling around a similar story, so I have combined them. However, the story starts the same way each day, with the last line from the day before and a timer set for fifteen minutes. The hope is to end up with a complete, if very rough draft by the end of the year. Some stories are better than others, but I always learn a whole lot about my own writing when I do this so for me it is not only a nice way to work out a story, but it is a tool for helping my writing get better. And so, we continue this story for 2024 with…
Day 195: There was really only one course of action at this point.
There was really only one course of action at this point. She had her ticket and the gates were mapped out. She was certain there would be some changes along the way, but then she would just ask whoever was changing them to direct her to the new gate. All of her decisions had already been made She chose her destination and now it was the job of everyone else to more or less get her there. She was simply a self moving package until she arrived at her destination.
There was something amusingly comforting about that. Sophie found her gate and before she settled herself in the seat she took her water bottle to the water fountain. She hadn’t been on a flight in a while, but the lat time she flew she remembered feeling as thought she was somehow being dehydrated. She remembered being very thirsty.
With the water bottle filled, she settled herself in the chair to wait. As she sat, she watched the others and amused herself by trying to guess why they were traveling. Some people were clearly dressed for business. They were dressed in some form of office wear, some casual, some in full suits and ties. They almost always carried a laptop bag but little else. Many stopped for coffee but for the most part they were talking or texting on their cell phones, too busy to pay attention to anything else.
There were a few families and watching them Sophie found herself very glad she only had to get herself through the journey and not conduct an entire group. One couple appeared to be heading up a multigenerational trip and had a hard time herding both small children and elderly people. Both seemed to see something they wanted and wandered off from the group while the middle aged couple seemed intent on gathering them all up and moving towards their gate. Sophie was unable to see how successful the venture was as boarding was started for her flight.
Her attention shifted to the woman announcing the various boarding groups and when her section was called, Sophie got into the line with everyone else. The flight was not a full one and on this leg of the journey she had no one in the seat beside her. This leg of the flight was only an hour long, but it was still nice not to feel crowded.
‘And unless someone booked after me then I might not have too many people around me on my main flight.’
When she booked there was no one else in the three seat section for the trans-Atlantic flight and she hoped it remained that way. Sophie found her bag was easy to slide under the seat in front of her and after taking out her mp3 player and head phones she slipped it under the seat. Her water bottle stuck out from the outer pocket, but it too fit well under the seat.
‘And as I have no desire to use the airplane bathroom, I can wait on drinking it until I need it.’ Sophie leaned back in her seat and wait for everyone else to settle and take off to begin.
Ten til Midnight 