For those just tuning in, this challenge is about taking a story idea from bare bones idea into a fully fledged story by writing consistently every week day for fifteen minutes. The sentence I end with on one day, is the sentence I start with on the following. Part one was Bob’s story and has nothing whatsoever to do with the story below. Part Two follows a character named Penelope. I have a few basic sentences to act as road marks on her journey. I am loosely calling that an outline. We will see where she ends up by the time the story is done. For now, we start Part two of the 2025 Fifteen Minute Writing Challenge.
Day 41: She wasn’t certain she believed the logic of the thought.
She wasn’t certain she believed the logic of the thought. At the moment she had no way to tell if they were related. “The brakes could have been a coincidence.”
She supposed it mattered if she thought someone was trying to kill her. “But how would they know I would go to the front cart return. Or even be at that grocery store at that time?”
It seemed a bit far fetched to have someone lined up to crash into her and kill her this way. ‘Not very certain,” Penelope thought. “The driver could have turned in the opposite direction not even hitting the cart return.”
She didn’t know how anyone would target her with someone else’s brake failure at a place where she normally didn’t go in the first place.
“Even if they were watching me.”
The word magic rose up from the depths of her thoughts and Penelope leaned back in the chair letting is slide around in her brain. She didn’t know if magic could be used to trigger a brake failure. “I don’t really know much about magic at all,” she thought. Until the day before it hadn’t really been a part of her world. She knew people had it and those that had a lot of it tended to work for the Emperor or hos family. That more or less covered her knowledge.
“Need to remedy that,” she reminded herself.
Instead of letting her thoughts go to the library and the research she planned to do there if only o get herself on firmer footing with both magic and her family enemies, Penelope stuck with the accident for the moment.
“If someone was watching and had the sort of magic that could tamper with a car’s brakes then maybe the accident wasn;t an accident.” It would still leave a lot of what ifs in the equation but she could see someone trying it. “If they were desperate.”
Penelope shewed her lip and sunk a little deeper into the squishy chair. She just came into her inheritance. She didn’t think it was an inheritance anyone else was expecting to get so she didn’t think there was an unknown relative angry about not getting what came to her. “So if not a relative who wants the inheritance then it would have to be someone who wants something in the house or wants to stop me from getting involved with something.”
Penelope sighed heavily. It was a lot of mysterious somethings. “And maybe I can figure that out with my planned research.” She sat up straighter and took a deep breath. “So accident or not, the same research will possibly give me answers.”
With that as cleared up as she could get it, Penelope thought instead about her own feelings. She felt like she was being watched. She didn’t know if that was magic or if she still felt a little wary of what would happen when her step mother realized she moved out of the house completely. “Then there is the cart.”
Penelope could still remember the feeling of not being able to force herself to go to the front cart return. It was as if every cell in her body refused to obey her brain’s commands, rebelling at the same time.
“And it kept me from being flattened.”
Everyone said she had magic but until now nothing close to being termed magic ever happened to her. “Maybe I have a magic warning system.” She thought of the books in the other room. “I suppose there is nothing to do but study there too.”
Penelope rubbed her forehead and realized that as unsettling as her grocery store visit was, it didn’t change anything.
Ten til Midnight 