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 36: He waved the apology away.
He waved the apology away. “I understand the impulse,” he replied. “We have healers who repeatedly remind us of the same thing.”
“Of course,” Kasca replied. She looked at him and saw the dark circles under his eyes, the fatigue that sat on him like a weight. “Is there more to share because you might want to conserve your energy. I don’t how much the communication ball takes…”
“But it is energy I can ill afford to expend,” he replied with a smile. “There is the information about the Overlords fleeing and our expanded contamination. I don’t believe we will have any more information for you until the disease burns out but I wanted you to have the information so you could expand your search as far as possible. I will need to conserve my energy, all of us will so I will not contact you again until the contagion clears. You will no doubt see smoke in the distance as we will begin burning the belongings of the contaminated as well as the bodies in an effort to purge the Sanctuary.”
“I understand,” Kasca said. “Hopefully I can learn something. I will compile what I find for when you next contact me.”
“Until then,” he said. He did not wait for her reply before letting the ball of light flicker and die. Kasca frowned and now that she was alone she let her worry show. She knew that part of the quarantine required energy to be expended in keeping up personal shields. Kasca kept hers up during her trip. It caused her to eat more of her rations than she intended, and she was exhausted when she arrived.
‘I helped it a long time but not as long as they have,’ she thought. She knew maintaining those shields was an effort and she could see it wearing on them. How long before those personal containments failed?
“Maybe it is a larger one for multiple people instead of for a single person,” she told herself. There were spells for that in the books she was reading and no doubt those in the Sanctuary proper knew them. “With a larger shield they could trade out people, so the burden didn’t fall to one.”
Kasca took a deep breath and knew she had to put the thoughts away. She could do nothing to help them except seek more information. Knowing she needed more energy she made herself a large meal and ate heartily. The large meal left her sleepy, so she rested for an hour or so to let the meal settle.
Once settled, Kasca filled her bowl with snow once again and returned to the cottage. She let it melt by the fire as she looked out over the area enclosed within the palisade. The snow was beginning to melt under the sun, but with the darkening sky she thought it wouldn’t be long before more snow arrived. She took a deep breath and smelled smoke and the scent of burning. She looked to the sky and saw a thick plume rising and merging with the incoming storm clouds. The burning of the contaminated had begun. Kasca wished them well and moved towards her fire.
Ten til Midnight 