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 129: She was racing the seasons now and only just managed to get the last of her small harvest in before the weather truly turned.
She was racing the seasons now and only just managed to get the last of her small harvest in before the weather truly turned. The full end of the harvest arriving was in it’s own way a blessing. Kasca still found herself rising early, but instead of going into the garden to harvest and then into the workshop to process, she was able to start her morning’s slowly.
She brwed a cup of tea, lingering over it’s warmth and then sought out the Sanctuary’s library. After a brief sweep through the buildings to look in on the sleeping residents, Kasca took a short while to read through one of the books, adding a few spells to her collection each morning.
Then she would end her scrying and begin her day. Despite the lack of harvest, the days were getting busier as well. Kasca wasn;t certain if news of a Heler spread or f it was just the season, but her business lost the ebb and flow it had earlier and remained busy all day. She cleansed the space of contaminants each night after closing.
Thus far there were the common ailments she would expect. There were a wider variety of them simply because there were a wider variety of people. There were creams for those who found fingers stiffening in the cold and balms for those who wanted to keep their lips from chapping and cracking painfully. There were people who wanted cough remedies in advance of the season when they would need them.
Kasca sold the necessities and found that while there often others picked up non-essentials. The coins in her till grew. Kasca stored them upstairs, using the trading tokens more than the coinage for most of the things she needed. The coins were needed periodically to purchase exotic ingredients for spell work, but as the weather grew colder she spent more time with cold remedies than she did with anything exotic.
Then, as the first of the cold arrived, the streets became a little less buys, a little more empty. The stockpiling and preparation for winter was over. There would still be people going about their business, but they weren’t lingering and few were shopping for anything that wasn’t an immediate necessity. Her patrons dwindled to a few.
It was a relief of sorts. Her pace in the shop became slower. She was able to work in the back room for longer stretches. While she knew many had stocked up in preparation, many more would come when there was an actual illness visiting. She needed to be prepared.
Trusting her new cure, Kasca made a batch of it and sent it by. She looked at the bottles, knew that it would at least help to ease the symptoms even if it didn’t cure the disease outright. She had high hopes but without anyone to administer it to, she could not tell how effective it would be.
Three days after the first of the cold rains blew in, Kasca had her chance to test its efficacy.
