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 Sixty One

A traditional holiday in the Lost Quarter has begun. Normally this would be a time for people to head to the hinterlands and experience nature’s delights, while I stay home taking pleasure in an emptied metropolis. Instead most everyone is staying close to home and the river is busy with people taking the sun and chatting.

It is heartening to see people going about their days, meeting up with friends and family, enjoying a walk or a bike ride. If one didn’t look too closely it would almost seem normal, thoughts of the dread lord entirely absent from everyone’s mind. A closer look shows the truth though. All those gatherings of people are carefully spaced so that no one is near enough to touch another and on the paths everyone is careful to give as wide a berth as they can manage.

There are even shops open here and there, including one selling a iced drink. My love and I partake and wander along the river, watching the people as they go by. Those of us who love to indulge in the pleasures of watching others in their infinite variety have been left sorely lacking these last weeks. Of all the idle pleasures I miss the one I have felt keenly is to sit in a café or upon a bench and watch people as they go by, imagining who they are and the stories they might tell.

Today makes it feel like we are closer to that day’s return, despite the dread lord’s depredations, which makes my heart soar.