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 101: She took them to the bedroom and tucked them back into the bags with the costume jewelry, leaving out the inscribed pieces.
She took them to the bedroom and tucked them back into the bags with the costume jewelry, leaving out the inscribed pieces. Penelope moved the baghs of costume jewelry back to the closet. When everything was more or less tidied up she debated her next step. Did she look at the symbols or dive into Amelia’s research.
“The research will take longer and the symbols should just be flipping through the book looking for matches on the pieces,” She decided. “So symbols first, put the jewelry away and then read Amelia’s research for the rest of the day.”
Penelope felt the emptiness in her belly. “Maybe study the symbols, make a sandwich then dive into the research,” she amended.
Action plan decided, Penelope went back to the Library and retrieved both books. She settled herself on the bed in front of the list she made of symbols and the jewelry pieces themselves. She opened the book and was relieved that the book contained pictures of symbols and then a small paragraph about them, their meaning and their uses.
It was more of a reference book than a how to book of magic but for the moment that was what Penelope wanted.
“After all I’m not putting symbols on anything at the moment.” She flicked through the pages looking for the symbols she found. As she had no names for anything the index was useless to her. She couldn’t name the symbols and didn’t know what they actually did so she had to rely on the pictures. It was slow going as some of the symbols were very close to others. She had to not only check her drawings, but often look back at the pieces themselves to make sure she didn’t miss any details. On a couple she missed small lines that she thought were scratches in the metal and not part of the inscribed symbol.
She was relieved to find that the most often symbol, including the one on the ring she felt like wearing, were for protection. It was a rather generic type of protection used when the wearer didn’t know what form of attack might come their way.
“Protection is good,” Penelope decided. She picked up one of the bracelets with multiple protection charms on it. All of the protection charms were listed together in a section of the book and each of the symbols for protection were represented on the bracelet. There was the general symbol for over all protection, a protection against poison, fire, drowning, falling, and smothering. There was a symbol that seemed to deflect wounds so that even if the wearer took injury it would not be fatal.
“That one seems to protect the wearer from stabbing while that one sort of deflects bullets.”
Penelope frowned and studied the bracelet. It was a delicate thing. Delicate metal chains between small flattened beads. Decorative spirals were carved on one side of each bead with the protection symbol on the other. “Someone was either paranoid or had a lot of enemies,” she decided.
Thinking of the cut brake lines, Penelope fastened the bracelet on her wrist. “It doesn’t say anything about car crashes but perhaps the non fatal wounds would help.”
While she doubted it would do anything in the apartment, Penelope liked the thought of a little extra protection when she went out.
Ten til Midnight 