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 122: Penelope slipped her hands from the glass leaving it on the velvet cloth.
Penelope slipped her hands from the glass leaving it on the velvet cloth. It was once again a smooth if unremarkable oval shaped piece of glass. Penelope picked it up and slipped it back into it’s velvet casing. She stood up from the bed and took the glass over to the desk, setting it carefully next to her lap top.
She didn’t want it scratched or damaged in anyway. ‘Especially since I will need to use it again.’
There were still so many questions circling in her mind. So many things to think about, to ask about. She had more information at least. ‘That’s something,’ she thought.
She felt a little like a snoop looking in on others but tat the same time, she needed to know who she could trust. Thinking about it Penelope felt a little more guilty for looking in on Mrs. Merriweather since she seemed to be exactly what she said she was. She felt less guilty about spying on her neighbors now that she knew they weren’t just being polite to the new arrival.
“I guess I only feel guilty when there is nothing to see.” She wasn’t sure what that said about her, but Penelope decided not to question it any further at the moment. She walked back to the bed and picked up the book that showed her how to use the glass to do her spying. She closed it and walked it back to the library. As she did, certain words and phrases kept circling.
Her neighbor, when talking to the shadowy man talked about incidents happening to those with strong magic in them. Things that seemed like coincidence but really weren’t.
Oddly the first thing she thought about was loosing a friend to Trinity. The friends she lost proved to be friends she thought were friends because they ran in the same circles. They proved not to be and as a result, she looked outside the circle and found new friends who were actually true friends.
‘But that’s not magic,’ Penelope thought. ‘That would be like saying the time I got sick with a fever and cold and had to stay home from the field trip when everyone who went ended up with food poisoning and had to have their stomachs pumped was magic at work.’
She shook her head. She had a lot of incidents like that in her life and was certain other people did as well. ‘Besides why would magic make me sick to help me avoid getting sick? That makes no sense.’
She picked up the book Amelia stowed away in a hidden box and marked research and took it back to the bedroom. The day was winding down and she suspected that after a little while reading she would fall asleep. It made reading in bed instead of the library seem more sensible.
‘When things go back to normal I’ll really have to work to get back into a normal sleep pattern,’ she told herself. Even though she was tired, she knew it was far earlier than she usually went to bed. Penelope set the book down and changed into her pajamas. She brushed her teeth and brushed out her hair promising herself a shower in the morning.
‘Since I am going out of the house with Agent Michaelson I’ll need to be clean then anyway.’
Ready for bed, she plumped up her pillows so she could lean against them as she read. She turned out the overhead light but kept the bedside lamp on and then slipped between the sheets.
“Maybe I can ask Mrs. Merriweather about it,” she thought. Penelope picked up Amelia’s book of research.
Ten til Midnight 