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 126: She pushed to a sitting position and saw small rivulets of the remaining water race towards her as though worried about being left behind.
She pushed to a sitting position and saw small rivulets of the remaining water race towards her as though worried about being left behind. Penelope watched the water race towards her and when it reached her, the little rivulets snaked up her body towards her mouth. She watched them with a strange sort of detachment and when they reached her lips, she opened her mouth drinking in the last of the lake water.
Penelope stood on the path.
The flowers waved in the breeze like they had before. They seemed unchanged. Thinking of how much water she took into her body, Penelope thought about how she felt. She knew in the past if she drank too much water too fast it felt heavy in her belly before it dispersed to the parts of her needing hydration. She didn’t feel heavy. Instead, she felt light. She looked at her hands.
They seemed the same, they weren’t swollen with lake water, her skin bursting at the seams. Her thoughts shifted to a bloated water logged drowning victim she saw in a movie once. It seemed like the skin was splitting.
‘Except I didn’t drown and remain in water to bloat for weeks,’ she thought.
Still it was a relief to see her hands looked normal. Confident that her skin was fine, she looked at her clothing. It was dry as a bone. Not a droplet of moisture on the cloth. Penelope lifted her hand to her hair. It was laying flat down her back instead of wafting in the lake’s currents. It was also dry and when she sniffed the ends it smelled like her shampoo instead of lake water.
Curious about the lake now, Penelope started walking. The path wound through the field of multicolored flowers. She felt no sloshing from the water inside. She reached the lake’s edge, where the sidewalk stopped and sand began. There was no water.
It was a dry sandy bowl.
Dry. Empty.
Surprisingly there were no abandoned plants or dying fish. ‘No trash either,’ she thought. The empty lake was just an empty bowl lined with dry sand. It was also a lot larger than she remembered.
“Losing that much water can’t be good for the park,” she said studying it. It was oddly the only thought that came to mind.
“It will refill,” she heard.
Penelope turned around and saw a woman standing there. It wasn’t a woman she knew. She wasn’t sure it was an actual woman. She seemed to glow. Penelope felt no fear looking at her. She also didn’t feel any radiant joy. It felt normal. Like the woman was supposed to be here. ‘Like a sign that says no dumping,’ she thought.
“I am rarely compared to signage,” the woman said with a smile. She seemed slightly amused but still neutral, neither Penelope’s friend nor enemy.
“The lake will refill and the plants won’t die?” she asked. It was the only thought she found she could ask.
“It will, but not for you. This will be your last visit here. You have drunk the lake dry.”
“Is this a bad thing?” Penelope asked.
“It is an unusual thing,” the woman said. “Good or bad will depend on how you use what was given to you.” She stared at the empty bowl where the lake was. “You did not come to the edge and walk into the waters.”
“Was I supposed to?” Penelope asked.
“It is what most do. They follow the path to the lake and join with the waters, eager to access their abilities.”
Penelope looked away from the woman and to the dry lakebed.
Ten til Midnight 