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 125: The clerk walked off into the back of the building where the private offices were located.
The clerk walked off into the back of the building where the private offices were located. Kasca waited. There wasn’t all that much to see. The clerk pulled a loose page ovr what he was writing when she walked in. She wasn’t certain if it was because he wanted to keep the information private or because the ink needed to be blotted.
‘It could be either,’ she decided. She noticed the inks they used her tended to be wetter than those she used at home.
She might have been the factor there as she tended to make her own inks. With reading and writing so limited under the Overlord’s reign no one actually bought inks in shops even if inks were available in shops. As artistic endeavors were banned even more fearsomely than writing, especially after the caricatures of the Overlord began circulating, no one could be seen to buy ink anyway.
‘Not without drawing the wrath of the Overlord down on them.’
As she waited, her thoughts turned back to the Overlord. Her mind flashed on the body lying in the grand bed, in the house filled with treasures. It seemed a fitting end and she wondered if he had been found yet. The city where he lay was not too far from here. She chose not to make it her destination because of him, but it wasn’t far. It would not be taking to send her scrying there to see what became of him. It would satisfy her curiosity and she could let it go.
Harder to let go were the little reminders. The small things that kept her comparing life here with life under the Overlord. It wasn’t even a thoughts of home comparison. The thoughts were not homesick, and she was not longing for an older way of life, pining for what she had known and what was now lost. The things that struck Kasca the most were the small everyday things that were used and done so freely here but had been denied under the Overlord’s ever tightening reign.
‘Ink,’ she thought. She remembered collecting the ingredients and going deep into the woods to grind roast and blend them. Much of the process had a great deal of odor and creating the inks in town would have brought immediate notice. Here she knew she could go to a shop and purchase small glass bottles in many different colors. In fact she had done just that when she started taking notes and working on her cure.
‘And not just secreted upstairs,’ she thought. There was a bottle in the shop so she could record the money that came in from sales and went out for supplies. No one thought anything of it. It was standard practice. It was the fact that it was standard and unremarkable that strangely hit her the hardest. Kasca wondered how long it would take to shake the vestiges of her old life away.
How long to get used to the standard and no longer be reminded of the deprivation?
As the clerk returned with the magistrate, Kasca shook the melancholy thought away and stood. She fixed a pleasant mile on her face. The magistrate was smiling broadly at her and seemed thrilled to see her. She had the feeling he turned the smile on anyone who turned up in his office.
“Mistress Healer, my clerk has explained your difficulties,” he said. He gestured to his office.
