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 Fifty Nine

A baby cries in the distance and I go still, straining to hear. But the sound vanishes as quickly as it came. I can hear the quickened footsteps of someone in boots passing. By the time I go to look out the window the street is empty. A rarity, even in this time of quarantine law.

Above is a cloudless sky. The sun is warm in a way it hasn’t been since spring began to make its tentative way into the Lost Quarter. It feels like a new beginning.

They are beginning to ease the quarantine restrictions in the Quarter. It is a tentative process. Even then there are many who feel it is too fast, that we are not prepared. But of course we will never truly be prepared in the way they want us to be. We cannot be entirely safe from the dread lord now. Not when he has already breached the walls of our defences.

Then there are those who feel this is all too slow. They point to any contrary evidence they can find and point out every time the experts were incorrect or changed their advice on how to combat the grippe as though this were evidence that all they say is false. The dread lord is reborn, his powers changed. It would be concerning if we were not adapting our approaches based on what we learn from each encounter that challenges our assumptions of the nature of his power.

My love has been told she must begin her return to work in her tower. She is angry at the news and I cannot blame her. Her employers assure her that all is well, precautions have been taken, but few specifics are offered. They seem more concerned at the need to return to normal than at ensuring the dread lord is kept out.

But that normal is no longer there for us to return to. It vanished as soon as the dread lord rose again and the quarantine laws were enacted. We will all have to find new ways forward and we will need imaginations to do so.