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 Two Hundred Sixty Four

The unseasonable weather continues. It is warmer now than it was most of last April when we first entered into the quarantine protocols, when all I wanted was for winter to end so that I could see some green come back into the world to prove that the seasons had not also been suspended by the grippe reborn. I cannot recall the last stretch of weather this warm in December. It is a blessing at a time when so many protocols are being reintroduced and fears mount that we are losing control of our battle with the dread lord.

The last two days I spent a great deal of time outdoors. After a stressful, busy week, where it seemed I hardly strayed from my small office, rarely glancing away from my computer screen, it was such a relief to be able to venture outdoors. I walked down to the river again with my love. It was crowded with people doing the same thing. The next day I biked along the river, weaving my way among the walkers and joggers and families out with their dogs. It was wonderful to see so many smiling faces, to hear laughter and the chatter of voices.

It is an absence one doesn’t notice until one is back out among people, a longing that is there without being recognized. For a time at the beginning of the quarantine regulations there were those who talked about how this would reorder our way of doing things completely. No longer would we be going out to places with anything like the same frequency. We would be more cautious and insular. Some I’m sure will be that way, but now that we have endured nine months and counting of insularity, most of us have had more than enough.

Strangely I do not pine about crowded bars or movie theatres, hearing a hundred other strangers laugh in delight at what they are seeing, though I certainly will see myself to those places as soon as I am able, to luxuriate amidst the rabble. What I miss at this moment is to sit in a café, lingering over a coffee, watching people as they come and go, listening to snatches of their conversations. Letting the sound and colour of it all wash over me. Even these small pleasures have been denied us for the most part and I will not take them for granted for a long while

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 Two Hundred Sixty Three

It is hard to imagine what the Lost Quarter looked like before the arrival of Those Who Came. We have the descriptions of the first of Those who arrived in these parts, but it had already been transformed completely by their arrival in the eastern and southern dominions centuries before. They came to a place undergoing change and found peoples whose lives were completely different than the ones their ancestors had.

Those Who Came had no way of knowing this, no way of seeing the context behind everything they laid their eyes upon. They assumed it was the world the way it had always been. That has always been the myth of the Quarter and the larger continent, that it existed in a natural, pristine state and only the arrival of Those Who Came changed that. Those Who Went Away in this telling were no different than the bison and deer they hunted, living and dying upon the plains without altering them. It is a strange conceit given the changes Those Who Came had wrought upon their own homes. Why should they think the people here any different?

Worse, Those Who Came were oblivious to the destruction they had unknowingly brought with them. For travelling with them was the grippe, the dread lord they had been battling him for centuries without success. Having never encountered such terrible powers before, Those Who Went Away were defenceless against him. The great empty plains that Those Who Came marched across were graveyards. The great bison herds, so vast it took days for them to pass, were so large because so many of those who had hunted them were now gone.

What would have happened if Those Who Went Away had been familiar with the dread lord, had known some of his tricks? They would not have perished in untold numbers and Those Who Came would not so easily have been able to claim the continent for themselves. They would have conquered these places eventually, for there were few parts of the world that the dominion of Those Who Came did not touch eventually, but it would have been a different sort of conquest.

Those Who Went Away would have been far too numerous to force into exile. They would have remained and the Lost Quarter would have been a very different place.

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 Two Hundred Sixty

She kept seeing him. Every time was like the first. His eyes were wide, with an open seeking look, like an antelope searching the plains for some predator approaching. There was something almost feminine about them, a contrast to the rest of his face, which featured hard lines and angularity. She could not look away.

He was alone when she first came across him, sitting on the shores of the Glover’s Lake. He had just returned from a swim and his pants and shirt still clung in places to his damp skin. She was having lunch with her cousins from those parts in the Quarter. The whole community came out there on summer Sundays after church, swimming and picnicking.

No one she asked knew his name, though they all seemed familiar with him. Hardly a surprise, he was there at the lake every Sunday. Some said he had taken over the homestead at the Gilbert’s place, others that he was some cousin of the Dradfort’s who had come out to look after their place in the hills following their misfortune. He talked little of himself when he was there, they all agreed, remaining aloof, offering little in the way of talk and only when pressed. They mostly left him to himself, which he seemed to prefer.

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 Two Hundred Fifty Nine

This past week I have been feeling overwhelmed by my correspondences, the work seeming to multiply exponentially like the grippe reborn’s allies. I woke up this morning and even before the fog of sleep had evaporated from my thoughts I was already going over all I needed to get done today and wondering how I would possibly do it. At least it is a distraction from being overwhelmed by the grippe reborn’s steady march.

The walk with my love in the morning darkness helped to distract from all these intruding, worrying thoughts. By the time I returned home I felt awake and energized, ready to face the day. Of course by the time I sat down to my correspondences more had arrived and the work I needed to get done was overtaken by other more urgent tasks.

The whole morning has felt off kilter as a result. I am rushing so that I am only behind, not lost entirely. The sense that things may slip completely beyond my control continues to build, a thought in my head that I cannot entirely shake.

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 Two Hundred Fifty Eight

We are in the early days of winter still, the days will continue growing shorter for some weeks now. More of it awaits us than we have left behind. Thus far the season has been kind enough. There has been a little snow, and some still lingers, but the days are warm and sunny. We have escaped the bitter cold, but we all know that can’t last forever.

The early stages of winter are often like that. The weather is crisp, but not frigid, and we wonder how long it will last. It is a strange kind of oasis before we find ourselves in the absolute depths of the thing. Midwinter arrives around the solstice. The days gradually, imperceptibly grow longer, but it feels like we are trapped in the longest night. The coldest days arrive and everything seems frozen in place, immovable, something we will never break free of, something that has broken the will of nature and all our future days will be winter ones.

March arrives and people elsewhere think of spring, but this is only late winter in these parts. Most years the coldest days are past, but it is often the snowiest month. If we are lucky the weather will have turned by months end and begun to warm. But just as often winter lingers on, far past its welcome, the guest who sets up camp rather than leave. April passes and there is still snow, sometimes even into May. Spring, when it finally does come, is so sweet. We emerge to the sweet smell of the air and sight of green at long last.

Right now we seem to be in the long midwinter of the grippe reborn. His hold upon seems impossible to break. We are all so tired and we long to hibernate for a time until spring comes. For it will, we know it will, even if it is hard to see past these long, cold, lonely nights.

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 Two Hundred Fifty Seven

A glorious sunrise greets us this morning as we rise from bed. Waves of red and orange and pink move through the banks of cloud standing in the eastern sky, the colours shifting their hues with each passing minute as the sun climbs into view upon the horizon.

One of the benefits of the shorter winter days is that I am up in time to see the sunrise. The angle of the sun at this time of year, keeping the sun low on the horizon most of the day, creates spectacular sunsets and rises. They are fleeting though, creating moments of beauty that last only a few minutes. This is in stark contrast to the summers where they linger for hours.

 In the midst of this gloomy winter, when all one can seem to dwell on is the toll the grippe reborn is taking upon us all, it is easy to forget that the sweeter things in life exist. Each day brings more grim news as seemingly greater numbers fall to his touch, and each day it is hard not to long for all those things that bring us pleasure that are currently denied us by the quarantine protocols. But a sunrise is enough to remind us that there is still much good in the world, and that there are beautiful things the dread lord can never touch.

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 Two Hundred Fifty Six

“If you can’t find them, grind them,” Bernard says with a chuckle as he fights with the gear shift. The old three ton wheezes with each shift upward of gears, the red box, and what it contains, rattling with each lurch.

Shaky doesn’t answer from the passenger seat. He is looking out the side mirror at the dust rising in their wake. There is snow in the ditches and a smattering in the surrounding countryside, but the road is clear. Shaky adjusts himself on his seat, buttoning up his jacket. It is cold in the cab despite the fact the heater is blasting at its highest setting.

“Quite the haul. Quite the haul,” Bernard says, as much to himself as to Shaky. His companion gives a little half nod, still not turning from his inspection of the road behind them. “Come off it kid. Ain’t nobody coming after us. Ain’t nobody here at all.”

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 Two Hundred Fifty Three

My love and I saw Venus, bright in the dark morning sky, as we walked through nearly empty streets to her tower. There was less traffic today than there has been in some time. Last night the government enacted their latest quarantine restrictions and asked that those who could work from home do so. Yet my love’s company has declared their work essential and insisted everyone attend at their offices, so we still have our morning walks. A mixed blessing to be sure.

One hopes for the best from these latest strictures even though I have doubts they will do much to slow the tide of the grippe reborn. He has swamped these parts with his minions, so many now that our trackers cannot trace them all. We have lost control and the only way to regain our footing and get back to solid ground seems to be protocols similar to those we had in the spring. What we have will no doubt limit the dread lord’s powers, but his forces are now so great that his malign influence will remain substantial regardless.   

The regulations themselves raise questions about the government’s priorities. Schools will close and move online for a few weeks both before and after the winter break, while our pleasure palaces – casinos and restaurants and bars – are allowed to remain open. No further funds will be given to schools to better protect children and teachers. There was much said about the noble efforts of health care workers, but no additional funding or policies to address their rising workloads.

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 Two Hundred Fifty Two

The days continue sunny and warm, above freezing for a few hours each afternoon. The snow from the clipper storm remains in places, the ground having frozen enough that it will take a truly warm day to melt it entirely. A reminder that winter is here even if it doesn’t quite feel it yet.

Last night word came that our elected leaders here in this Western Dominion are meeting to determine their response to latest incursions by the grippe reborn. An announcement was to come this morning, but it has since been delayed to the end of the day. And so we wait to see what they have determined. Restlessly it seems, people flooding grocery stores and pharmacies as though expecting we will be forbidden to leave our homes.

It seems clear that things cannot continue as they have, though our leaders’ natural inclination is that they should. They do not want further restrictions, having convinced themselves that the economy and the quarantine protocols stand in opposition. We must choose one or the other, but life is rarely so simple.

The holidays loom – Christmas one month away – and no government wants to be the one to cancel that. Yet by refusing to consider more moderate restrictions earlier on, our leaders may have done just that. So we wait to see what is to come.

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 Two Hundred Fifty One

The spread of the grippe reborn continues unabated in these parts, every day bringing alarming news of his growing forces. Most alarming of all is the complete absence of our elected leaders to deal with the matter. The premier of this Western Dominion hasn’t been seen in ten days, since he had to isolate himself after coming into contact with one of the dread lord’s forces. Through the spring and summer he has always been visible at government announcements, even if only virtually, so his disappearance these last days is notable. It is odd, to say the least, that in this moment of growing crisis he has chosen to absent himself utterly.

It has been obvious for some time that the measures that have been put in place since cases began to rise in the fall were ineffective at countering the dread lord’s incursions, but our leaders have refused to act. Elsewhere in the Greater Dominions it has been much the same story. We were all told that the severe quarantine protocols put in place in the spring were necessary to buy time to plan for what was to come in the fall, when the weather would begin forcing people indoors and the grippe reborn’s ability to move amongst us would increase.

In the southern hemisphere we saw other governments make the same mistakes through their fall and winter, lose control of the situation, and have to return to severe lockdowns. Europe has been a month ahead of us since the beginning of the dread lord’s rise and what has happened there has generally followed here. Most countries there have been forced to return to their spring restrictions to counteract the growing spread.

It has been obvious since the end of September the trajectory we are on, yet little has been done to stem the tide. Even when it became clear that the growth was exponential the government declined to respond. Personal responsibility was the mandate, so that the failure could be pushed upon the afflicted and not upon the government. It was the failure of those who fell to the dread lord, not the failure of those with the power to address the systemic issues leading to the rise in cases.

Now that they have no choice but to act it seems our leaders finally will. What they will do is unclear but it can only be seen as an unmitigated failure to allow us to come to this state, where the dread lord can venture everywhere in the dominion and we cannot even track his comings and goings. If we do not know where he has gone we cannot hope to stop him and it has become clear in the last week that the health system can no longer keep pace.

We have always been a step behind the dread lord, forever reacting to our failures to contain him, acting too late to thwart him entirely. Better late than never though. Still I look longingly at eastern domains where they have managed to stem the tide without resorting to the harsh measures we have here and wonder why we cannot have done the same.