The fifteen minute novel writing experiment is a attempt to write a complete (and very rough) draft of a novel by writing for fifteen minutes each day. I have taken a timed writing from one of the daily prompts done in 2021, cleaned it up a little and used it as my jumping off point into a story. Each day I will take the last line of the story written the day before and use it as my sentence starter and write for fifteen minutes, growing the story as the year progresses.
Day 128: She went in search of Lord Mathis and his men, wondering if any of them were still lurking.
She went in search of Lord Mathis and his men, wondering if any of them were still lurking. Anya moved around unseen, her mind and her sight flying through the House of the Star. It was a heady experience. She could see it becoming habit forming. She shook the thought away. She enjoyed seeing the citadel in its entirety and enjoyed the ability to move around unhindered, but she was only using the orb to make certain she was safe. ‘It would gt lonely to only see people this way,’ She decided.
Anya searched looking for the faces of those she knew. She hadn’t seen the man in her rooms, and wondered how he got there in the first place. He hadn’t sounded like the man with Lord Mathis. That man was nowhere in sight. Nor was Lord Mathis.
Had Mathis left someone here to continue looking, or was this a new threat? Anya didn’t know. She hadn’t heard all of the conversation and didn’t know if the man claimed to work for Lord Mathis or not.
‘And unless I hear him talking again I won’t know who he is.’
Anya decided instead to see where it was the others lived so she knew what spaces were occupied. The rooms she used when she first arrived were closed and emptied. Anya found the hidden passages connected to the well room so if she needed to, she could still draw water and bathe. She was certain she could find a bucket or pitcher of some sort in one of the rooms. To her surprise, Anya also found a small hidden entrance leading into the larder. ‘So if I go in after everyone else has gone to bed and am careful with what I take I can get food even if Marta can’t get any to me.’
Food and water were two of her main concerns now that she had a place to sleep. With those checked off her list, Anya felt a little more at ease with the situation. ‘If I can get the fire to work in that fireplace then I’ll be even better. As she looked she saw that the area where she was given quarters was occupied mostly by individual women. The men who were in the House of the star were located much further away and Anya was certain that it was in a completely separate building rather than in the house of the star. Most of them appeared to be married men. She saw few single ones. It was difficult to tell where the house of the star began and ended as it was part of the honeycombed space through the mountain.
‘The hidden parts run all the way through the mountain as well,’ Anya realized.
Deciding she had seen all she needed to see at the moment, Anya pulled her hands away from the orb. While they were warm, the rest of her had chilled. She rubbed her hands over her arms, trying to spread the warmth about as she began making her way back to her new quarters.
‘While there is light I need to figure out if I can use this chimney or if I need to find different quarters.’ Anya didn’t think she would be able to last very long in the quarters without a fire. While she was warm when under the layers of blankets, she couldn’t stay in bed all of the time. She found herself back in her space and by the early morning light, she knelt on the stones in front of the fireplace and bent over to peer into the chimney.
Ten til Midnight 