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 84: She did not know how far she would need to travel before she would be able to restock.
She did not know how far she would need to travel before she would be able to restock. Thee was both relief and fear leaving the mines. She worried she would not have enough rations to get her to where she was going. She reminded herself that she could cleanse the rations she found stored in various places along the way, but the sheer emptiness of the land weighed upon her.
She had grown used to the silence of the mines as she waited for the spring flood water’s to recede. They were not truly silent. Rock shifted and there was water flowing somewhere she could occasionally hear behind the rocks. But it was still and enclosed.
The wide world was, well, the wide world. The wind blew, the rain fell and the trees shifted their leaves. But there were no animals lowing in the fields. No birds chirruping in the trees or taking flight at the presence of a human.
There were no other people and despite the cure, Kasca kept her shield in place. She may trust the efficacy of the cure but she also knew that if she saw anyone moving about they might be desperate. She would need to evaluate before allowing anyone to see her.
Any people she came across could be more danger than assistance.
As she pushed north, Kasca began to long for even the sight of dangerous people. The world was too empty and made her twitch. When she stopped for the night, Kasca found enclosed spaces to rest. Somehow the lack of birds and animals seemed less weighty if she was enclosed.
Spring was progressing. The trees were budding out and flowers were pushing up from the earth. The signs of plant life were the only life signs she saw and she drank them in as she moved, using it as proof that she was not the only living thing left.
The weather was still unsettled and when traveling was not an option, Kasca used her scrying bowl to seek out others. She looked to the sanctuary, monitoring them. Many of Jascon’s supporters were gone and infighting began. Several people died from poison as well as the disease. As she headed north those now in charge decided that locking down the sanctuary was their best survival option.
She was no longer mentioned. The Overlord was mentioned in passing, but for the most part they turned inward. While their larger population had been hard to maintain, hence the plan to release the disease and then appear with the cure, it’s reduced numbers could easily be maintained. There were only handful of children and women left in the Sanctuary and Kasca wondered how that would play out long term.
For now, they ceased to be a concern. Her visits south in her scrying bowl would be to the library and not with an eye to the people. She turned her sight north when she could, pushing past the passage she planned to use to see the land ahead and plan her arrival.
The costal areas had more contact and were therefore more strongly affected. Many of the coastal communities were abandoned. Kasca thought the cities would be a better destination. She worried that if she arrived in one of the villages, a stranger from the land where the disease originated, she might be targeted, blamed for the deaths. If she could lose herself in one of the cities there would be enough people that she might not stand out.
Ten til Midnight 