I wasn’t quite finished with the story I was telling by the time 2025 ended and so decided to continue it until it reached an ending point. Then I will start a new one. Besides, I kind of want to see where Penelope ends up. And so we have…
Day 230: Mind settled on the tracker, Penelope began making a list of the things she might want to study while she was pretending to heal.
Mind settled on the tracker, Penelope began making a list of the things she might want to study while she was pretending to heal. It was a long list and she found herself glad she had the time off. ‘At least I won’t be bored.’
She decided breaking out a schedule was a good way to start and knowing she couldn’t just read all day long she alternated reading sessions with more practical ones. By the time she was done, Penelope felt good about her enforced time in the house. She would be able to put it to productive use.
‘I will also be more than ready to leave the house by the end of it,’ she decided.
To kick things off, she put the item she was certain was a tracker in a little jar filled with rubbing alcohol and set it on the kitchen counter. She would need to remember to take it with her when she did leave the house. For now it was fine where it was. Penelope took both books on symbols that Lenore gave her and settled in her favorite reading chair. The day before she was mostly skimming for details, today, she would start actually reading, with the attempt to learn to create her own symbols.
‘And maybe figure out what exactly the strange thing of Peter’s did.’
She read until it was time to eat and took a break to fix herself dinner. Her head felt full and she appreciated the break. As she ate Penelope realized she needed to adjust her schedule to add in a few more breaks so she could process the information she was reading. ‘Maybe I’ll investigate each room fully on my breaks.’ She decided. It would not only give her a mental break but get her body moving a bit.
After dinner she went back to reading and read until her eyes were drooping closed. Despite the tiredness, Penelope was excited by the thought of going to sleep. Tonight she was hoping to go back to the lake and speak with it’s guardian. Barring that, she hoped she might go to the multicolored starburst. Now that her arm was healed and her need was not great, she wanted to look it over more fully and see what sort of lessons might have been set aside.
She readied herself for bed and lay down, snuggled beneath the covers. It felt good to have her arm healed. There was no twinge of pain, no specific position she had to maintain to avoid issues in the night and no worry in her mind that she should have taken any medication. Unfortunately she found herself staring at the ceiling, eyes refusing to close.
‘How can I be so tired before I get in the bed and then not sleep once I am in it?’
Penelope sighed. She suspected her eagerness to speak with the guardian was at fault. ‘So think of something else,’ she told herself. Penelope took a deep breath and thought of the pills. They were probably exactly what the doctor claimed, but she was not inclined to believe him. ‘He didn’t give me a prescription, just the container.’
Penelope thought about the pills and the various ways of finding out what they actually contained. She thought knowing that might help her decide how far to trust them. ‘And I’ll need to tell them I went to another doctor to get the cast off.’ She wasn’t going back to that doctor if she could help it.
‘So how do I find out about pills?’
Her thoughts varied from actual possibilities to increasingly more absurd ones. She found herself growing drowsy as she plotted a break in of a chemical laboratory. In the heist she was dressed all in black and lowering herself through a skylight. There was a waiting chemist ready to test the pills. Since he was waiting she didn’t know why she needed to slide down a rope lowered from a skylight.
‘Because he doesn’t want anyone to know,’ she told herself as she drifted into sleep. The implausible scenario became a dream.
Ten til Midnight 