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 82: As she waited, Penelope ignored the curious looks from the bank tellers and thought about her own roof top garden.
As she waited, Penelope ignored the curious looks from the bank tellers and thought about her own roof top garden. She thought the plants stopped growing when she opened her eyes. But what if they hadn’t? What if they were as large as the succulent now? Penelope took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart.
‘They were more vine like,’ she recalled. ‘If anything they would stretch out to cover everything like a creeper vine rather than grow big round and heavy. In the office, Penelope was certain she heard the wood of the desk creak as it had to support such an increased load.
‘There are no succulents on my roof,’ she reminded herself. The thought calmed her somewhat. She was confident that she wasn’t going to come home to a pile of rubble crushed under a magically enormous succulent.
‘That’s a relief,’ she thought. ‘No need to attack myself when someone else is clearly doing that for me.’
She may not have known about cars, but she knew that when one leaked where previously it didn’t there were problems. ‘And presumably Michaelson knows more about cars since he agreed it was the break line.’ She doubted he was agreeing with her just to be nice.
‘But maybe he was just being a calm and reassuring agent until the mechanic went over it. Penelope decided it didn’t matter. Someone attacked the car and as her home was not being crushed by an over sized houseplant she had somewhere safe to go.
She glanced back. Michaelson and Fairchild were still in conference. Her eyes flitted to the closed door of the office before turning away again. She was angry looking at the papers. She didn’t recall feeling any strong emotion on the roof top. ‘Maybe the first was a flare of magic coming to life and the other fueled by emotion.’
A lifetime of petty insults from Trinity and being disciplined when she complained taught Penelope to hold her emotions in check. ‘Or at least not let them show.’
She doubted the plat was responding to her facial expressions showing her emotions. ‘So try not to get emotional around plants.’
Penelope snorted. Somehow the thought struck her as funny. ‘Must not get emotional around plants. At least not until I figure out some form of control.’
Dimly she wondered if amusement and laughter would produce the same results as her anger. Penelope’s amusement faded. It had been a while since she had been genuinely amused by anything. There were moments of dark amusement, flashes of personal humor that kept her calm and moving forward but she doubted they would affect the plants much. Lately with Trinity and Janette it had been one thing after another. Small things, petty insults and silly when looked at alone, started to occur more frequently. They were no longer tossed occasionally into conversation but sprinkled liberally over every interaction. The lack of invite to Trinity’s birthday and the requests that she move out were just the latest.
Looking out of the window she could see the rain stopped. The sky was still gray and lowering, and she was certain rain would soon circle back. For now, however, the rain stopped.
Ten til Midnight 