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 Five Hundred Twenty Six

A week of rain showers and cool. The mornings crisp and autumnal, announcing the coming season. It feels abrupt after the endless weeks of heat. I wandered by the river this morning and the water was higher after the rains than it has been since June. The sky is still blue, the smoke still absent for the time being, only thin clouds sketched across the horizon.

An odd time, not quite fall, but not feeling like summer any longer. We have been stranded in some nether region for much of the summer after the exultation of spring when the inoculations against the dread lord arrived and his powers began to decline. The smoke came first and then he returned, diminished to be sure, but still present, still stalking those who have declined the doses. The number of those affected and in hospital has steadily risen, while those taking their doses has dwindled. For a moment in the spring it truly felt like we would thwart the dread lord’s desires, but now it is unclear what awaits us in the fall and the winter. Will we be overwhelmed again or will the doses tell the tale? Everyone awaits the answer with dread.

I myself am confident in the inoculations, both for myself and my love and us all. They will carry the day in the end. But with so many still without, both here and around the world, it will be some time before that is the case. So we are left in this strange state where we will not face the quarantine measures of the last year, but we are still not free of the grippe reborn. How does one live in that world? We learned to live in the quarantine zone, exhausting as that was, and though we wanted to return to the world of before, that was never possible. Instead we shall have to learn to find our way in this one.