Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Thirty Five

The songbirds have arrived from the south. I can hear them chattering in the trees that line the avenue outside my home as they dart back and forth between the bare branches. They will not stay bare long with the warmth of the days to come. The snow is finally gone from the ground, the earth warm. It is time for things to begin to grow.

Word of a great tragedy far away in the eastern dominions reached us last evening. A madman on the loose in the midst of our battle with the grippe seems impossible to comprehend. He must have been in league with the dread lord, yet it seems not. This morning as I listened to the birds singing I came upon my love weeping as she read about those who perished. It is strange to be comforting her on a day that seems a harbinger of warm summer days and all the happiness that brings.

What a terrible reminder that nothing ceases, even with the dread lord stalking our every step. We cannot stop going forward even as we have no way of knowing the direction to go or what perils await us on the paths we take. All we know is that there will be many, the dread lord lurking among them. But we will go anyway, because there is no other choice for us, hoping that the world we arrive in eventually is one that brings some measure of peace.