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 One Hundred Thirty One

The clouds swirl, dark and ominous. At their centre, a deep and pulsing calamity, with its own strange gravity, pulling and pushing at the same time. Other clouds are drawn in, a massing of forces, but all else is cast out. Rain falls and then hail. Lightning scatters across the sky. The clouds shift, reaching out, dark tendrils taking a menacing shape.

They follow the wind, watching the horizon. The day is sunny, but they can see what is coming, can feel the air changing. A calm arrives, unsettling, for the storm looms larger and larger. The air feels heavy, damp, expectant.

The rain comes first, a drop or two spattering on the ground. A warning of sorts, followed by the deluge. Soon hail joins the rain, landing hard, beating and bruising. The verdant foliage wilt under the onslaught.

All that is only a distraction for the cataclysm, the monstrous core of the clouds, that swirling mass that wants to reach out, to touch the earth and extinguish it. It pulls everything before it into its fearsome vortex, swallowing and spitting it out as though the taste were wrong.

It is gone as quickly as it came, vanishing on the far horizon. Behind them they can see sun and cloud intermixed, a peaceful serenity. The rain ceases and the sun returns as bright as before, as though nothing at all has happened. A gentle breeze moves amongst the broken things left behind.