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 Eighty Three

A family gathering under the quarantine laws is an admittedly strange affair. Just by doing so we all realize we are not following the protocols to their exact letter, at least in the Lost Quarter. But every jurisdiction has rules that are slightly different and it is hard to keep straight just what is allowed and what isn’t. One is permitted to go into a restaurant, but not to see one’s family at each other’s homes? How strange to feel like a law breaker when all we are doing is seeing our siblings and parents.

We were guarded and uncertain when we first came together, hesitant to do anything that might cause alarm. A cough is no longer just a cough after all. But after a time we all were able to relax and enjoy the evening. A necessary one I think, for one can only bear so much time apart from friends and family before one begins to feel the lack of it desperately. There is risk in doing this, but there is risk in secluding ourselves as well. We need our strength to be able to endure the long months ahead, and that comes from each other. The dread lord is not defeated, and we cannot be alone forever.

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 Eighty Two

A day of cleaning. My love and I swept the floors, cleaned the kitchen and the bathrooms. We did the laundry and ran the dishwasher. Tedious chores, though necessary, as most chores are.

In this time of the grippe reborn cleaning has become an even more arduous task, truly endless. For every time we leave the house, or bring something inside, there is cleaning to be done. We must wash our hands until our skin is raw. We must scrub the bathrooms, the sinks, the light switches and door handles. Everything must be scoured and scoured again lest we overlook something.

I long to return to a time where living in general filth is a matter of simple, blessed laziness, and not a breach of quarantine protocol, allowing our defences to be penetrated by the dread lord. When letting some dust settle on the furniture could plausibly be said to not be a dereliction of one’s duty. In the meantime, it is probably time I washed my hands again.

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 Eighty One

The days come and go and the news is all the same. It feels like we are on the precipice of something momentous and that soon, inevitably we must tip over and begin the plunge below. Yet we remain where we are, forever waiting and uncertain. When the moment actually arrives, should it ever, will we even notice?

By the time we do, it will be too late. That is the fear anyway. We are narrow sighted creatures, only able to notice what is right in front of us. It is only after we have passed a hundred trees and lost our way that we realize we are in a tangled forest that does not want us to escape.

I will not pretend to have any answers for any of this. None of us knows anything. We are all just guessing, hoping that the dread lord and all those other demons we face everyday have not already planned for this eventuality. How can they? We are bizarre and various, capable of anything. Even we cannot predict ourselves, how can we expect others to. The inherent strangeness of all of us is what gives me hope. No one can claim to understand us. We can only ask the questions and hope for some semblance of an answer.

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 Eighty

Don’t you think it might be time to just rest? All these scattered things cast about – we’ve got nothing left to hold onto. We’re all of us a little incomplete, not quite there, shining and corrupt darkness. And yearning for those pieces to fill all those absences.

All lost on All Souls Day. The dead tumble out of the sky, dropping like cannonballs with echoes of precision fire. I can hear the intimations of a new reality now that I’ve got my nose pressed tight to the sulphur-laced ground, as an endless line of boots march by.

The doorway is enigmatic, hanging precariously open. The building shakes with the weight of its hundreds of lives. The pre-dawn raid carried out, a ruffled corpse left – uncollected – on some failed piece of real estate, bleeding clean through. Reservations lost, the final trappings of conspiracy. The far side of the sky is all filled up.

The dregs of the morning’s coffee sit in the cup, cold to the touch. The ambiguity of the situation is now apparent. You smile, in that off-hand kind of way.

The night sounds softly, like the hush of breathing from a sleeping form, a song that drifts on and is lost on the breeze.

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 Seventy Nine

A hurried walk through the city in the morning, the sun up and the towers gleaming in the light. The streets are empty of people, only a few cars pass by. Those I encounter don’t quite meet my eyes and hurry on their way, as I do on mine.

I pass through a park where flowers are in bloom, though the fountains are still empty. In one corner there are two men conversing with a glazed look to their eyes, blankets and clothing at their feet. Beside them a huddled form lies, a face not visible beneath the coverings.

Further down the street I hear an incoherent shout behind me, but I do not turn around. As I cross an intersection an older man emerges from a corner store, today’s paper in his hands. He crosses to the other side and we move in parallel down the street, each going past closed shops and darkened windows. In the middle of the block he unlocks a door and enters a building and I catch a glimpse of a set of stairs leading to the apartments above. Instinctively my eyes go to the second floor windows to see if I can see what is within.

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 Seventy Eight

The conflagrations continue to spread in the great southern empire, while the emperor continues his spittle-flecked hectoring, demanding it cease, demanding everyone obey and his order be restored. It is hard to see an end to any of this, though it will eventually as it always does. Will it be with a conciliatory gesture or an iron fist that bloodies enough people that the populace is cowed, at least momentarily? The empire appears to stand upon a precipice from which there is now no turning back.

We in the Lost Quarter, and the greater Dominion, often look upon the problems of the grand old empire with an unseemly smugness. By comparison we are so much better, we think, and certainly there are many facets of life that I would not trade with anyone in the empire. But it is also a means of avoiding acknowledging our own failures and troubles. If we are not worse than the empire, we are no better.

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 Seventy Seven

The landscape of the Lost Quarter is deceptive. By all appearances it is a plain marked only by rolling hills, like waves rippling across a vast sea. In some parts it is said you can watch your dog run away for three days, and certainly it is flat in places. The horizon is daunting as a result, with seemingly no end to it; the closer you look, the farther it goes.  The sky dwarfs everything else, vast and blue, a reminder that we are but specks upon the earth.

There is a small rise on a road that winds its way through the Lost Quarter that I often think of. One hardly notices it as you pass along, particularly if one is proceeding north. It is not a great hill, one passes by others that are much steeper, whether going north or south. The land simply rises up and then levels off, as it does in a thousand other places.

Yet, if you pause at the top of the rise, facing south and look out upon the horizon your entire perspective will change. For at the edge of the horizon, miles away, there is another rise and everything else lies below. This innocuous little hill, unremarkable in every way, is not a hill at all, but edge of vast and unnoticed valley that contains much of the Lost Quarter. You would never know you were in a valley unless you stand just there and happen to look.

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 Seventy Six

The first thunderstorm of the year awoke me in the dead of the night. The lightning cascaded from the clouds, so many strikes that the sky went white and light filled the bedroom like it was midday. The thunder groaned and roared, near and then far. A hard rain followed.

I listened for a time to the storm, not bothering trying to return to sleep, letting all that clamour wash over me, while the flashes filled my eyes with light.

Eventually I returned to sleep, though it was restless, filled with dreams of terrible battles. Artillery sounded in the distance, cannons booming, threatening to come nearer. We waited and watched the skies, uncertain whether to flee.

I awoke to an overcast sky, the air heavy with moisture, my mind uneasy.

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 Seventy Five

Turmoil again in the grand old empire to the south. This time it doesn’t concern the dread lord, or not just him. All roads lead back to him eventually these days it seems. Now it is almost as though he has ceased to exist, his incursions forgotten. Old injustices, deep in the fabric of the empire, cuts that won’t heal, have become infected again. Always they are left to fester, never dealt with, and in times of turmoil like these they can only worsen.

Make no mistake that the grippe reborn is not the direct cause of the violent clashes, but his return has exposed the fault lines everywhere as never before. Those of us with wealth and positions that allow us to remain in quarantine in comfort are so much better off than all those others who cannot afford to do so. They must risk their lives and venture out and it is they who will suffer the most from the dread lord’s touch and from all the other fallout as well.

This has begun in the grand old empire, and other places, but it will only continue so long as we continue to suffer from the dread lord’s attacks. It will come to the Lost Quarter in some shape, it only remains to determine the form it shall take, for many here suffer and will grow angry as their suffering shows no end if nothing is done to aid them.

The collapse of old certainties – that this is how life must be, that our governments and our beliefs and everything cannot be otherwise – will only serve to make people believe that the fault lines that we have accepted as facts of life, as necessary in some way, are nothing of the sort. They can shift, they can be redrawn. The earth can shake and reform and we can too.

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 Seventy Four

The alkali flats glisten in the sun, shadows of birds flitting across its unbroken white surface. He pulls the truck up as close as he dares and walks down the rest of the way to where the grass ends and the slough begins. The divide is very clear, the ground going from hard and dry, spiked with tendrils of dull grass, to the wet cement texture of the alkali. Beneath the white surface the mud is dark, almost black.

He skirts the edge of the alkali, following an old cow trail. There are tracks in the alkali, coyote and bird, though they don’t go deep into the slough. Littered on the ground, in the flats and alongside, are bits of old machinery and scrap metal. Old wagon wheels, bent and warped. Parts from a Case 830, the only remnants left of that piece of machinery. He pauses here and there, kicking at the pieces, or digging into the alkali to pull them up to get a better look at them. Each time he shakes his head, clicking his tongue, throwing the piece back into the alkali, before continuing on.

Soon he has made a complete circuit of the flats to the fenceline that creeps in to the far edge of the alkali, so he turns around and makes his way back to the truck. He takes a wider route this time, farther from the slough. There is less detritus here, but he still takes the time to inspect all of it, his head down. A clump of tiger lilies bloom and he kneels down to look at their vivid orange and gold colors, his hand reaching out to brush against their petals.

Back at the truck, he leans against the hood, resting his head on his hand, staring off across the flats as if expecting it to reveal its secrets. A meadowlark calls and the wind stirs the grass. He shakes his head and gets into the truck and goes.