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 Four

The sky is heavy with dark clouds and the promise of rain. It has been so dry these last weeks that I can almost feel my skin tightening, as if I am slowly desiccating and soon will be preserved for centuries. Of course, there is little that lasts that long in the Lost Quarter.

I recall that in my youth there were concerns that a portion of the Quarter, where I grew up, would turn into a desert. My grandparents even appeared on the news to talk about the possibility and as they spoke pictures of windswept dunes were shown. Ridiculous. It is a desert of a sort, but one of grass not of sand. There can be no doubt, it was drier there than the rest of the Quarter, some years receiving so little rainfall crops couldn’t even grow. The wind would blow and take the soil with it, filling the air with clouds of dust that dimmed the sun, so that it felt like one traversed an alien landscape.

But that was a fundamental misunderstanding of what was happening with the climate and the land. We were in the midst of several dry years, common in that area, which were followed by wetter ones. The first of Those Who Came found the area uninhabitable it was so dry, but later arrivals thought it bountiful. Both were correct. Now the extremes shift from year to year, the storms growing more violent and strange.

Only the wind remains constant. It is never still on the Quarter, sometimes a howling menace, sometimes a sweet comfort on the hottest days.