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 90: With a start, Penelope jumped forwards stepping into the lake with both feet as the ring of sand turned to molten glass.
With a start, Penelope jumped forwards stepping into the lake with both feet as the ring of sand turned to molten glass. The lake was now surrounded by a ring of clear glass. She could swear her feet hissed as they entered the water. Looking at the glass made Penelope think that the lake looked more like a giant bowl rather than something natural. She looked down and saw it wasn’t her feet steaming, it was the edge of the lake. The heat seemed to be moving into the water. She saw it evaporate off the edge and felt the water around her feet warm. She took a step back instinctively.
The water rose rapidly to her knees with that one step.
“I’m going to be boiled alive,” she thought. She turned away from the steaming edge. Penelope noticed that only her side of the lake was steaming. The other side wasn’t and there was a path leading from the edge of the lake back through the field of flowers. Remembering earlier dreams where she reached the same destination going in either direction, she thought that the path was probably some sort of giant loop.
“So I could get back to where I started.” She wasn’t sure that mattered, but she did notice that the ater around her legs was still getting warmer. She was a good swimmer and thought she could swim across the lake before the water reached a dangerous boiling point.
“No pint in staying here,” she told herself. She charted her course, to the right of center rather than directly over the center of the lake and then Penelope dove into the water. She felt it cover her and then she used long smooth strokes to cross. She kept her breathing calm and even.
Crossing the lake took less time than she thought and she was soon reaching the other side. The water was cool and remained so even as she reached the other side of the lake. She dipped under the surface to let the water push the wet strand of hair back on her scalp so they wouldn’t be hanging in her face and then she climbed out of the lake. There was no heat on this side of the lake.
There was no molten glass or super-heated concrete. She climbed out of the lake and walked across the sand to the sidewalk. She kept walking, not wanting to be near the lake anymore. ‘But if it goes in a circle this might bring me back to the other side.’
Penelope stopped walking and looked around. She saw movement and looked at her skin. Words were moving across her skin. The moved in the same fashion as running water should when she got out of the lake, water spilling down her body, pulled back to the lake by gravity. Except that this words water wasn’t running off her body. Her skin was absorbing the words.
“Like I’m the lake.”
She knew that it was strange and felt that she ought to be afraid, yet somehow, she wasn’t. ‘Probably scream my head off when I wake up,’ she thought.
Penelope tried to focus on the words but they rippled as they moved and they disappeared into her skin too fast. They seemed to be moving faster than before as though since she noticed them they wanted to get out of her sight. Penelope watched the last of the words disappear and then looked up. The field of flowers was the same. A cool wind blew and she felt cloth shift. Penelope looked back down at herself and realized she was no longer wearing swimming clothing. She was back in her regular clothing. ‘Complete with shoes,’ she thought wiggling her toes inside her sneakers.
Penelope blinked and woke up in her bed.
Ten til Midnight 