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 130: Three days after the first of the cold rains blew in, Kasca had her chance to test its efficacy.
Three days after the first of the cold rains blew in, Kasca had her chance to test its efficacy. The day was miserable. The sky was a sheet of gray and the air hung heavy. When the rains started it was no relief. It made the sky press down more heavily. The rain wa cold. Not enough to sound like ice, not yet, but almost.
No one who didn’t have to move about did. The streets were quieter than she had seen them since her arrival. No one lingered near her doorway and the bell over her doorway remained motionless. Kasca had the door to the shop open but spent he bulk of her day in the work room. While she mixed, ground and sifted, she allowed herself innumerable cups of tea. There was only a small firebox in the corner and while it was enough to heat the workroom if she closed the doors, with the door to the shop open the heat seemed to dissipate before it managed to warm her.
The tea helped.
When the bell for her door jangled as it opened, the sound was jarring. This was not a time of day when she typically received visitors and in truth she hadn’t really expected any. She did feel vindicated in leaving the door between workroom and shop open though.
As she made her way to the front, Kasca tried to decide if sacrificing the heat was worth one patron. Still when she stepped into the shop, she could see the patron was not well. She could see the signs immediately. Her breath fairly caught in her throat. She wasn’t aware of making a sound, but she could see the man visibly sag at he slight reaction.
“I was afraid that’s what it was,” he said. “I saw enough die from it last winter. So there is nothing you can do?” His tones were rounded and she could tell he was from one of the upper echelons of society. After so long in the city she was learning to distinguish the different accents from the different quarters. He sounded something like the lords she occasionally dealt with.
“There might be,” she said. “Have you contracted the disease before?”
“A light case,” he told her. He laughed. “Or so I am told. It didn’t feel all that light to me but as I survived…” He let the sentence trail off.
Kasca nodded. “Just the once though? No reinfection?”
“No,” he told her, just the once.”
“Wait there.” She told him. Kasca went into the work room and took one of the bottles from her shelf. She placed the bottle on the counter and named the price. He lifted an eyebrow. Kasca went back and forth with herself on the price. She didn’t want to make it so costly that those who needed it couldn’t afford it, but she also didn’t want to make it so inexpensive that others thought it mere snake oil.
