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 98: She looked past the ring to the book.
She looked past the ring to the book. The rings remained in place. Seeing them there gave her a funny feeling. It seemed like something she shouldn’t let anyone see. Penelope gathered the rings up. Sweeping them off the page into a small pile. She added the broken string on top and folded the extra long sheet inside the book.
She closed the book and started to put the delicate ring down. Something stopped her and she ended up slipping it on the ring finger of her right hand instead. She took a deep breath and felt right about the addition.
“It is a pretty ring,” she conceded even though she knew that had little to do with her actions. Penelope left the library and went back to her room. She went into the closet and took out the bag of extra jewelry. The bags she purchased were large and stuffed with unwanted items. She was certain that the owner of the shop expected someone to purchase the bags to possibly melt down the contents for their metals. At the time she thought it was optimistic of him as she doubtee any precious metals were mixed in, or at least not in large enough quantities to make melting them viable.
Penelope took the bags of excess. She started to take them back to either the library or into the living room but something felt wrong. Somehow she felt that this was a private thing. She took the bags to the bed and sat cross legged in the center of the bed. She upended the bags creating a large pile of jewelry.
“A miniature dragon’s hoard,” she joked with a smile. “If he favored old broaches and cheap metal,”
She began sifting through the items she once discarded. This time she separated them by type. Broaches went into one pile, earrings in another, rings in a third and necklaces in a final pile. Most of the jewelry was old fashioned and not something she would wear. A few pieces were items that while they hadn’t been useful for the costume she was pulling together were items she liked.
Then there were a few items that her fingers automatically went to. Her fingers picking them out of the pile almost before her eyes spotted them. These she set in their own pile, regardless of the type of jewelry they were. It wasn’t a large pile and they didn’t match the ring she was wearing but they somehow felt like they belonged in the same category.
Shifting the other piles to the side, Penelope focused on this last pile. She slowly untangled chains, laying the necklaces out flat on the duvet. She paired up earrings and made a line of the rings and little circles of the bracelets. There were more rings and pendant necklaces than anything else. Once everything was untangled, Penelope looked over the collection. Some of the pendants looked fairly generic. A four leaf clover on one, a heart charm on another and a triple star pattern decorated with what she was certain were rhinestones.
There was nothing to mark them as special. They looked like items she could pick up pretty much in any gift shop with a modest jewelry selection. “The metals are better quality,” she thought. She was certain some were at least partially gold or gold plated and others looked silver or silver plated. Still, they didn’t look special. She picked up the four leaf clover pendant and turned it over. There was something etched into the back.
Ten til Midnight 