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 Six

36 days in quarantine, that most portentous number. At least here in the Lost Quarter, we cannot help but feel some trepidation at the thought of it all.

36 days and truly no end in sight. The barricades still stand. We have torn up the streets, turned the furniture to rubble to hold the dread lord at bay. Yet still he comes.

It is a fact little known that the Lost Quarter has no rats. Though they teem throughout the rest of the world, wherever they have had the opportunity to go, they have been given no foothold here. Part of it is our remoteness. The ways in to the Lost Quarter are hard enough, even for those who know them. For a very long time that was all it took, for rats are not native to these parts.

But gradually they made their way from the eastern dominions, encroaching upon territory after territory. It was only a matter of time before they found their way into the Lost Quarter. And they would have, if not for the people of the Quarter who banded together and created a Watch to guard the borders against those creatures.

The Watch prowls the borders and passages that anyone must cross to enter the Quarter looking for signs of the creature. For wherever go they will try to follow. Whenever signs are found the Watch gathers, setting afire whatever the rats have inhabited, be it a bale of hay or a granary. Like the proverbial sinking ships the rats flee the flames and the Watch is ready for them with their weapons of choice.

It is why I allow myself a measure of hope when I think about the trials to come in our battles against the grippe reborn. For the people of the Lost Quarter have banded together in common cause before and succeeded, though our guard must never slacken. No we have to do so again, but having walked those roads before we know the ways.