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 146: Jeron watched quietly as she explained and then began her work.
Jeron watched quietly as she explained and then began her work. He said very little as she set up the first of the potions to steep, to brew and to begin the distillation. When the first round was set up, Kasca stepped back.
“This will take three hours,” she said pointing to one. “This will be done in six.”
She turned to the final one. “In twenty minutes this will have steeped long enough that I can move onto the next step. But it takes about twenty minutes to prepare the items for the second step.”
Kasca’s hands moved confidently between the ingredients. Now that things were in motion, Jeran asked about the combining and the separate brewing.
“Each of the ingredients has its own enhancement,” Kasca explained. “They need tome to set before they can be integrated. It is the separate enhancements and the slow integration that allows the remedy to be possible. If the ingredients were simply mixed it wouldn’t be potent enough.”
Jeran nodded and watched the slow integration of the ingredients into the third mix. When it finally was through, Kasca set it on to distill down to the essence she would need to add in to the final blend. She stepped away.
“At this point it is a watch and wait while preparing more ingredients for the next batch,” Kasca told him.
“Extraordinary,” Jeran replied. “As I mentioned I do not have the healer’s gift, but I have watched several at work. This is a far more complex procedure than I have witnessed before.”
“May I ask a question,” Kasca asked him.
“Of course,” Jeran said looking away from the set up.
“Were you planning on replicating this or sending one of your healers to learn this remedy from me?”
Jeran smiled. “I figured you’d reach the conclusion sooner or later. My plan was initially to memorize the steps and take them back with me for other healers to replicate. It would have been replicated and then disseminated throughout the various healers so that should the Blood Death return annually we would be prepared.”
“And now?” Kasca asked.
“I would not be able to adequately convey all of the nuanced details accurately so I doubt that I would be capable of passing the information on. My rendition would be flawed, even if I took copious notes.”
“Because you are not a healer and you don’t know the enhancement spells?” Kasca guessed.
“Exactly,” Jeran replied. “The measurements and distillation I could teach but even were I to memorize the enhancement spells to pass along, they vary depending on the ingredients. You measured the magic depending on the potency of each individual element and I do not know how to do that or even how to convey that.”
Kasca looked at her work table, frowning at the ingredients. “It is something I do automatically,” she replied. Kasca noticed the flame of one of the burners was a tad too high and adjusted it. “It is part of training to be a healer. Why did they not send a healer to observe?” She asked. It was what she wondered since Jeran told her he wasn’t a healer.
