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 99: There was something etched into the back.
There was something etched into the back. Penelope squinted as she looked at it. The etching was done with what looked like a professional etching tool. It wasn’t scratched in or there by chance. It was deliberately added. She didn’t recognize the symbol.
‘Maybe it is an owners mark of some kind,’ She thought. She tilted her head and thought that maybe it could be someone’s stylized initials. Wondering if any of the other pieces came from the same owner, she set the four leave charm necklace down and started flipping over the other pendant necklaces.
All of them had a small something etched into the back, but none of the somethings were the same something. All of the etchings were different. “So either all different owners who wanted stylized initials on the back of their charm necklaces, or it is some other sort of symbol.
Not entirely sure what to make of it, she picked up one of the bracelets. This one had small metal beads that were latticed together with slightly larger disks placed between the latticework sections. Penelope twisted it around and found that there were small symbols etched on the flatter sections, Each of the flat disks had different ones.
Penelope continued her search. Every one of the pieces she picked out as not matching the rest of the costume jewelry had some sort of symbol marked on it. Some of them were repeats, and she started grouping them into categories. Some had multiple symbols.
Out of curiosity, she looked to the piles of costume jewelry. They didn’t hae any etched markings on them that she could find. She looked at the ring she still wore and found a small symbol etched on the inside. She started to set it down with the rest of the jewelry on the bed but stopped. Somehow it felt better to wear it.
It was the same sort of feeling she got at the grocery store.
She slipped the ring back on her finger and the feeling faded. “Right,” she said shakily. Careful not to disarrange the carefully laid out jewelry, Penelope slipped off the bed and went to the desk. She picked up her pen and the notepad with her to do lists. She took both back to the bed and once settled in the center, she flipped to a clean page and began copying out the different symbols on the various pieces she found.
When she was done Penelope found there were thirty seven different symbols. Some were repeated on many different pieces, others she found only once. “So maybe one is more common,” she thought.
Picking up her list, Penelope once again extracted herself from the jewelry festooned coverlet and took her notepad to the library. “Hopefully there will be something about symbols,” she said.
Penelope slowly moved through the library, scanning book titles. Unfortunately a large number of the books did not have titles on their spines. These she pulled off the shelf, flipped to the title page where she read the book’s title. It was slow going, but it was informative.
‘I at least know the sorts of things that are on the shelves.’
On the third shelf, she pulled out a book and found there was something hidden behind the books.
Ten til Midnight 