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 Eight Hundred Fourteen

Last week my love and I journeyed to the capital of these Dominions, by reputation a sleepy town filled with government workers. It is also the place where protesters occupied the streets outside the parliament a few short months ago spouting conspiracy theories and demanding an end to inoculation requirements. I was there for work but still managed to see much of the area that was taken over during that cold winter interlude. Now the streets seemed barely recognizable, crowded with tourists and people just going about their days.

A handful of straggling protesters remained in front of the parliament buildings. They waved flags, some of which I did not even recognize, and tried to sell merchandise to passersby. From what I could see they were entirely given over to conspiracies about the World Economic Forum, Q and all the rest that seem to be proliferating in the wake of the seismic changes that came about with the arrival of the Dread Lord Grippe Reborn. We shall be living in the aftermath of the devastation he brought about for a long while.

The capital was a lovely place to spend a few days. We toured the parliament buildings and wandered along the canal and the river. The days were warm and humid, the trees and flowers lush. It felt like summer and quite different from these parts where everything is still far behind because of the late snows.

We returned in time to attend a street festival down the road from where we live. Throngs of people were out to look at the wares for sale and eat sausages and pierogis. It felt like summer truly, as it has not these last two years. I dread to say it feels normal, for I’ve lost all sense of what that even would be now, but it does truly feel like a return of something we had lost.