Morning all and welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Here I take the start of a story idea and work on it for fifteen minutes a day. I started with an old writing prompt that interested me, cleaned it up a bit to fit the basic outline of the story I want to write and then set aside fifteen minutes each week day to see it grow. Each morning’s writing starts with the last sentence of the day before. And so now we have the story of Kasca…
Day 21: For her that was a rarity and as she blinked blearily awake she realized the lack of dreams was a sign of just how hard she pushed herself.
For her that was a rarity and as she blinked blearily awake she realized the lack of dreams was a sign of just how hard she pushed herself. She stretched and realized she slept through the night. It was now later in the morning than she usually woke. She rubbed the remaining sleep from her eyes as she extracted herself from the bed.
‘I must have really been tired.’
She pulled on her clothes and went to the outhouse. When she returned, her belly reminded her that an apple was not a meal and she went to the pantry to pull together her first real meal in this place. Even though everything was relatively easy to find, it was a new place and normal things took longer as she had to find things.
In due course she made it to the table. She ate slowly and savored every bite. With her stomach no longer rumbling, Kasca thought about what she should do with herself. ‘The apples need to be harvested before they go to rot,’ she thought. Even though the pantry was stocked, it would be a shame to let them go to waste. Food was always scares enough that the thought of wasting it was almost unfathomable.
Given the state of the tree she decided that was the first goal of the day. Kasca cleaned up from breakfast, slipped her cloak on and picked up one of the baskets. She left the cottage and found a bright sunny day waiting her. Despite the palisade, the area had a pleasant aspect. With the placement of the cabin and the palisade, she couldn’t see the Sanctuary beyond.
It felt as though she was the only person in the world.
While Kasca normally relished her solitude, after traveling through the wastelands, it held less appeal. She began gathering the apples and thought about the lands. Many of them were agricultural lands. While some harvested their crops already, many fields were left standing full.
‘I expect there will be birds taking advantage,’ she thought as she filled the basket and took it inside. There were still more apples, so she unloaded the basket onto the table and went back to refill it. Kasca thought of the fields she passed, filled with ripe grain. There was no startled flock rising from them that she could see. In fact, she hadn’t seen any birds.
“But I had my concealment on so they might not have startled,” she reminded herself as she set the baskte on the ground and began to fill it again. Still, she hadn’t seen any creature move after she dodged the patrol near the Overlord’s compound. Thinking as she worked, Kasca tried to remember when she last saw anyone.
“I dodged the Overlords collectors outside of Gerna,” she recalled. They had been traveling on a coach and she remembered the driver looked particularly angry as he passed. She avoided towns as she was worried about what caused other runners to go missing. ‘But I am certain there were some people in the orchards,’ she thought. Autumn was far more advanced in the Northlands than it was here.
Ten til Midnight 