Perceptions 2020

rush of cold through her whole body, traveling towards their connected hands. The man didn’t notice and gently pulled her along.

When they arrived at the edge of the city, the man let go and turned to face her with a kind smile. She shyly returned it, noting the light sheen of sweat on his forehead and how his body shivered lightly.

“I think I’m coming down with something. I will hopefully see you around,” he told her.

“Here, as a thank you for helping me out.”

She unpinned a small bouquet of flowers and herbs from her dress and handed it to him. He gently took it with his nimble hands.

His eyes were bright with surprise as he took a small sniff of the bouquet. It was a fairly strong scent compared to normal flowers, strong enough to mask unpleasant odors.

“Thank you,” he whispered, pinning the flowers and herbs to his collar on his coat.

Lilith nodded before walking away, too afraid to look back on what she had Spread onto him. She should spend the next few days with him, for observation, to see if it actually took hold of him. But she couldn’t. It would be too painful to watch a person that she had an interest in die. So she kept walking farther away, repeating his last words to her over and over again to calm her breaking heart.

The Spread of the Bubonic Plague happened quickly. Even with lulls where it seemed to calm its hunger for people, it continued to feed.

Lilith could clearly see the struggle Sol faced to help find a cure, but his assignment wasn’t to begin until much later. Instead, he had to watch millions of people suffer in the hands of his best friend. Even Dee seemed to struggle and stretched themselves thin trying to collect the millions of souls that finally caved to eternal Rest.

Dee, Lilith, and Sol always kept to the edge of the crowd, listening to what people said and how they responded. They watched as the high priests announced the terrible disease that was spreading through all of Europe. The Black Death, they called it. They watched as small school children playfully came up with the rather clever rhyme about it, throwing themselves to the ground, laughter leaving their young bodies, as they tried desperately to cling to whatever childhood they had left.

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