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 120: They walked into the shop and came directly to her to ask for what they needed.
They walked into the shop and came directly to her to ask for what they needed. Surprisingly it wasn’t much different than the items the ladies wanted. They were tailored towards more masculine tastes, but similar for all that. They wanted hair pomade that didn’t smell of flowers and lotions for dry skin that emitted more musk scents. There were mustache waxes and throat lozenges.
Kasca found that like their female counterparts, the men wanted orange and honey flavored lozenges. It wasn’t typical in Deva, but it seemed to be the standard here.
Unlike the ladies there was no browsing. With the ladies Kasca had the feeling they were making an inventory of her regular stock so they knew what was on the shelves in case something else was needed later. The men simply walked over and asked her for what they needed. Several of them seemed stunned when she walked them to the shelf where the item was located, as though they didn’t realize the shelves were there for anything toher than wall decoration. They also didn’t look around after they had what they came in for, simply walking back out.
‘I guess they will repeat the same process next time they come in,’ Kasca thought.
Once the mid day rush was done Kasca had a little bit of quiet before the average work day ended. Then as everyone began leaving their work behind , heading home, Kasca found another rush of patrons. As dinner time arrived her shop emptied out and Kasca felt comfortable closing up and locking the front door.
During the day she used the lulls in customers to work on refilling some of the shelves. She put in a little extra time after closing, but it was not as brutal as the few nights before. ‘If this is the standard day, I should be okay,’ Kasca thought, relieved. This she could manage.
She went upstairs and prepared herself a simple meal. After eating, she worked quietly on her sewing. As she worked she found her thoughts turning back to the cure and the ravaging disease. Many diseases tended to be seasonal, or at least seem so. While the disease that ravaged her home appeared to be dying down, she didn’t know if it would return.
Given how far and fast it spread, Kasca knew that there would be few who hadn’t faced the contagion before. It made her initial cure rather limited. ‘It might be more effective here since the people were generally better fed and healthier,’ she thought. Still it’s potential lack of efficacy bothered her.
As she worked on modifying her secondhand clothing purchases, Kasca thought through the components of the cure, she looked at each of the elements both medicinal and magical and began twisting them around in her head, looking for better combinations, more effective formulas.
She made a little progress before her yawns became too numerous to ignore and she had to go to sleep. ‘But even small progress is progress.’
Kasca soon found the shop’s schedule falling into a routine. She posted the day she would be going to market so everyone knew that was the morning she opened late. Otherwise, she opened at the same time each morning and followed the same pattern. Occasionally there was an emergency. The surgeons soon knew of her shop. They ordered supplies and sent requests for medicines to treat those recovering from injuries.
