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 133: Penelope learned that one garment every now and then attracted no notice and soon became a part of ‘the wardrobe collection’, especially if the items Jeanette knew she purchased remained in rotation.
Penelope learned that one garment every now and then attracted no notice and soon became a part of ‘the wardrobe collection’, especially if the items Jeanette knew she purchased remained in rotation. Penelope still purchased from the second hand store. And often she waited until Jeanette gave her money for her clothing and then added her own to increase the purchases so it looked as though it all came in at once.
She became, if anything, quieter at home. She didn’t announce that she had a job, but she didn’t really do anything to hide it either. She just went on about her day. Penelope always thought someone might know something but then when she graduated high school, Jeannette told her she would need to get a job to pay for anything beyond university tuition.
Somehow the fact that Penelope had held a job for several years prior never managed to be noticed.
‘I guess they really weren’t paying attention,’ she thought.
Penelope opened her eyes and frowned down at the book. The incident with the vacation provided a catalyst for change but Penelope wasn’t entirely certain she could say with any conviction that her magic had anything to do with it. “Did it lose the luggage so it had to be replaced?” She asked the empty room. “Did it make Mr. Wallace agree to hire me on a part time basis?”
She thought about it and decided if the magic lost the luggage then she would be fine with it’s intervention. If it influenced Mr. Wallace then she didn’t want to know. She had been proud of being hired on her own merits and worked hard at that job, earning praise along with her pay. Praise had been a rare thing in her life and she didn’t want to think of it coming because it was magically induced.
“So maybe luggage,” Penelope decided. “Unless the magic kept them from noticing because they would object.”
She frowned. That too was a hard one. She hadn’t gone out of her way to hide things but no one saw. She always chalked it up to their self-absorption and the desire for her to remain mostly invisible. The job took her out of their sight so they should have been happy and not looked for details. ‘But they might have objected due to loss of control.’
When Penelope had no money to buy things on her own she had to live with jeanette’s decisions and pronouncements, regardless of her opinion or even need. Once she had money of her own she could find ways to work around things. Jeanette would have realized that. ‘And she might have put a stop to me working to maintain more control.’
Penelope sighed and ran a hand through her hair. She could see why, the influence of a person’s magic when not directed was hard to detect. Penelope had no idea if she was looking at the right moment but she felt that if magic had intervened it probably would have been at a pivotal moment and that vacation, as well as the aftermath had changed things about her and the way she dealt with the family. She may not have hid the job but she did hide what she spent money on, and the fact that she had savings. It did adjust how she moved through the family dynamic.
“I just cant prove that magic was involved.”
She wondered if all of the other incidents she could think of would be this way. While she was able to push past the sting of the incident, leaving behind the embarrassment and moving into the aftermath they weren’t incidents she cared to think about too much. She wasn’t sure she wanted to study the others as they were even less pleasant.
Ten til Midnight 