6 Months
It hath been 6 months since the outbreak.
Six months, and many have lost hope. Their souls are weary—as is mine—of the long fight that seems an endless, impossible road to travel. The way is hard, even for those who have been spared from the throes of infection. I see them work tirelessly day and night, with little sleep—sages, soldiers, herbalists, others—tending to the sick, curing those they can, calling everyone they can to join the fight, and always, always searching for a worldwide cure. Yet there still be hundreds of plagued who have lost their hope, seeing nothing but the advantage the outbreak seems to have over our every effort. Most have marooned themselves—either of their own choosing, or from a dearth of access to community; they are as wanderers on a bleak and empty island—as the world was before it was touched by the givers of life—roving in circles along blackened shores.
But not all menn are so.
Some—though few compared with their counterparts—fight on, because they believe in a world free of plague. They, like me, have looked to the dim horizon and seen a glimmer of hope lingering there like wan sunlets.
A dear friend once told me that the trials we face are not stars in the sky, but are such that they can be counted and fought. He dared to tell me that there is hope in impossibility.
I believed him. Because he was right.
That man is now fallen to sleep eternal, but still for him—and for all Elyrians who I call my brothers—fight I.
-Mélia Lazarre, plague victim
7 Months, 10 Days
I feel the reality of sun on my skin—feel it real and warm like I’ve just come out from underground after my whole life—and there is no feeling more wonderful. I inhale, letting the cool air slide through my lungs, and lift my arms over my head, stretching to the sky. My skin rustles as do dead leaves in autumn, still painfully scarred after the abuse it endured from the plague. I grimace, but only momentarily; each day, I can see the wounds closing, the dead skin falling off in large flakes, as I know that I slowly heal. Vitality flows through my body, rising in surges, but unlike the euphoric delirium crashes, settling softly in contentment.
For the first time, it is not mad zeal against the plague that pulses in my brain, but fear.
What if I do not succeed? What if my cure was for naught? What if I cannot give enough?
How real, that fear, but how ridiculous indeed! For were not our chances at the beginning of this horrible searing next to nothing? Yet still we persisted, through impossibility, and cut a wide swathe through the plague’s claim on our people. How is that any different now? Every day we push back the outbreak and dog forth with our cure efforts. Joy—yes, joy—should be filling my pockmarked heart now, not fear—for I now know that others can feel what I feel now. Freedom, not only to live, but to give more life.
For this reason—for the hope of life—I have begun my training to become an herbalist, that perhaps my salves poultices will cure bodies and hearts, and my research aid in finding a cure for all and an end to this hell.
-Mélia Lazarre, plague survivor and herbalist
