The TERRIFYING Fate of a Renaissance Syphilis Victim

Hey guys . tonight we …
you probably won’t survive this.

And yet, strangely, you’re still here. Still breathing. Still listening. Still wrapped in the soft safety of a modern night while your mind drifts backward, slipping gently through centuries like fingers through warm water. You notice the room around you dim just a little, shadows stretching, edges softening, as if the present itself politely steps aside.

And just like that, it’s the year 1495, and you wake up in Europe.

You don’t wake with an alarm or a glowing screen. You wake to cold. The kind of cold that seeps through stone walls and settles into bone. You feel it first in your feet, bare against uneven stone, then creeping upward, slow and intimate. Somewhere nearby, a candle flickers, its flame trembling as if unsure it should exist at all. The light smells faintly of smoke and animal fat, and you notice how it paints the room in amber and shadow, never quite revealing everything at once.

Take a moment here. Notice the air. It’s thick, slightly damp, carrying the mingled scent of straw, wool, and something herbal—rosemary, maybe, crushed underfoot days ago and still clinging to the floor. You inhale slowly, deliberately. The breath feels cool as it enters your chest, warmer as it leaves.

You’re lying on a low bed stuffed with straw and wool. Linen brushes your skin—coarse, but clean enough by the standards of the time. Over you, layers have been carefully arranged: linen first, then wool, then a heavier fur thrown across your legs. Someone has thought about warmth here. Survival, after all, is a craft.

You shift slightly, and the bed creaks in response. Wood complains softly in the darkness. From somewhere beyond the wall, you hear wind threading through narrow streets, rattling shutters, carrying the distant sound of a dog barking once… then deciding it’s not worth the effort.

Before you get any more comfortable, take a moment to like the video and subscribe—but only if you genuinely enjoy what I do here. No pressure. Just a small, modern ritual before we go any further back in time.

And while you’re at it, you might share where you’re listening from, and what time it is there. Midnight? Early morning? Somewhere in between worlds, just like this moment.

Now, dim the lights.

You imagine reaching out and pulling a heavy curtain closer around the bed. It’s thick fabric, maybe wool or tapestry, hanging from a wooden frame. Not decoration—function. A microclimate. You feel how the space immediately grows warmer, quieter. Your breath echoes less. The world narrows. This is how you survive nights in a time before central heating: by building small, intentional pockets of comfort.

Somewhere near your feet, a hot stone wrapped in cloth radiates gentle warmth. It was pulled from the hearth earlier, still holding the memory of fire. Heat pools slowly, predictably, around your ankles. You notice how calming that is. Predictable warmth. Reliable physics.

A cat—thin, alert, practical—has decided you are acceptable company. It curls near your knees, its body a quiet furnace of muscle and fur. You feel the faint vibration of its purr, a sound that seems to stitch the night together. Humans and animals have been sharing heat like this for a very long time.

You are safe for now.

But something is wrong.

You don’t know it yet—not fully—but your body knows. Somewhere beneath the layers, beneath the warmth and careful rituals, there is a quiet unease. A sense that something has entered the world that doesn’t belong. Something new. Something with no name anyone agrees on.

Outside, Europe is changing.

This is the Renaissance, after all. Painters are learning perspective. Scholars are rediscovering ancient texts. Ships are crossing oceans and returning with spices, gold, and stories that stretch belief. There’s excitement in the air, mixed with arrogance. Humanity feels clever. Almost invincible.

And that’s usually when trouble arrives.

You imagine standing earlier that day in a marketplace. Cobblestones slick with rain and refuse. Vendors calling out in sing-song voices. The smell of roasted meat drifting through the cold air, mingling with horse sweat and damp wool. You taste salt and smoke on your tongue. Life is vivid. Loud. Physical.

Bodies are everywhere. Living close. Touching. Trading. Laughing.

And now, quietly, failing.

At first, it’s just rumors. You overhear them while warming your hands near a public brazier. Someone mentions sores. Someone else laughs it off. A soldier swears it’s a curse picked up in Naples. A priest mutters about sin without looking anyone in the eye. Everyone agrees on one thing only: it’s not happening to them.

You rub your hands together, noticing the texture of your skin. Slightly dry. A little rough. Nothing unusual. Still, you linger on the sensation longer than necessary. Just checking.

You pull your cloak tighter—wool on wool, efficient and heavy—and feel how the weight itself is comforting. Layers don’t just trap heat. They reassure. They say: you have prepared. You have done what you can.

As night deepens, embers pop softly in the hearth. Each tiny crack sends a brief shower of sparks upward, then darkness settles again. You listen to the rhythm. Pop. Pause. Pop. Like a heartbeat you didn’t know you were syncing to.

This is how people calm themselves here. Not with explanations. With routines.

Herbs hang from the rafters: lavender for sleep, mint for clarity, rosemary for memory. You reach up and brush your fingers against them. They crumble slightly, releasing scent. The smell is clean, sharp, alive. You breathe it in and imagine it doing something helpful, even if you’re not entirely sure what.

Belief matters.

You settle back onto the bed, adjusting each layer carefully. Linen smooth against skin. Wool heavy and reliable. Fur slightly uneven, reminding you that it once belonged to something warm and breathing. The cat shifts, offended, then resettles.

Notice how your body responds. Shoulders drop. Jaw unclenches. Even here—especially here—rest is an act of defiance.

Because tomorrow, or the next day, or months from now, something may bloom on your skin that no one knows how to stop. Something terrifying not because it kills quickly, but because it doesn’t. Because it lingers. Because it changes you slowly, while the world watches and decides what you deserve.

But tonight, you are only at the beginning.

You don’t yet know the name of the disease. You don’t know its stages, its false recoveries, its long, quiet cruelties. You only know the feel of stone beneath your feet, the smell of smoke in your hair, the sound of wind worrying at the shutters.

Take one more slow breath with me.

In… cool air, herbs, night.

Out… warmth, tension, modern certainty.

Good.

Stay here. Stay warm. History is about to touch you.

You wake slowly, not because you’re rested, but because the world insists on itself.

Morning in this time doesn’t announce itself politely. It seeps in. A pale, gray light pushes through the narrow window slit, catching dust in the air and turning it into something almost beautiful. You blink and notice how your eyes feel slightly gritty, as if sleep never fully claimed you. The cat has abandoned you—traitor—for a patch of weak sunlight near the hearth.

You sit up, and the cold immediately reminds you where you are. Stone remembers the night. It always does. You swing your legs over the edge of the bed, toes brushing the floor, and you hiss softly at the chill. Instinctively, you rub your feet together, then reach for your boots, stiff with yesterday’s damp.

As you pull on layers—linen shirt, wool tunic, heavier outer cloak—you feel the ritual settle you. Dressing here is less about fashion and more about architecture. Each layer has a job. Each texture matters. Linen keeps the skin dry. Wool traps warmth even when it’s damp. Fur, if you’re lucky enough to have it, blocks drafts like a loyal guard.

You notice the smell of last night lingering: smoke, herbs, animal fur, and something faintly sour from the straw mattress. It’s not unpleasant. It’s lived-in. Honest.

Outside, the city is already awake.

You step into the street, pulling your cloak tight, and immediately your senses fill. The soundscape is layered—footsteps on stone, carts creaking, vendors shouting, church bells marking time in a world where time is mostly a suggestion. Somewhere nearby, a rooster is overcommitted to its role.

The air smells of damp earth and human closeness. Of bread baking somewhere you can’t see. Of refuse hastily tossed into corners. You breathe it in anyway. There’s no alternative.

This is Europe at the end of the 15th century. Confident. Curious. Slightly smug.

You pass a group of scholars arguing loudly in Latin outside a tavern, gesturing with bread crusts as if they’re footnotes. One of them laughs—a big, generous sound—and for a moment, everything feels almost modern. Familiar. Human.

The Renaissance is like that. It gives you hope.

Printing presses are spreading ideas faster than anyone can control. Artists are learning how light really works, how bodies actually bend. Physicians are cutting open corpses in secret, whispering discoveries like confessions. There’s a sense that the world is finally making sense.

And yet.

You notice people watching each other more closely now. A woman pulls her child a little nearer as a group of soldiers passes. A merchant pauses mid-sentence, eyes lingering on a man’s face just a beat too long. Everyone is looking. Assessing. Measuring health like currency.

You stop at a market stall and warm your hands over a brazier. The metal grate radiates heat unevenly, hot enough to sting if you’re careless. You hover your palms just above it, rotating them slowly. Fronts of hands. Backs of hands. Small, practical movements learned early.

Someone beside you clears their throat.

“Have you heard?” they ask, not quite meeting your eyes.

You haven’t—but you nod anyway. This is how information travels now. Sideways. Half-whispered.

“They say it came with the armies,” the voice continues. “Or the sailors. Or the foreigners. Depends who you ask.”

You notice the way blame slides into the conversation without resistance. How easily fear needs a direction.

You feel a flicker of irritation. Of unease. You shift your weight, feeling the stone beneath your boots, grounding yourself in something solid. The world may be uncertain, but stone is honest.

As you walk on, you replay the words in your mind. Came with the armies. Came with the sailors. You think of ships returning from far places, their holds full of spices and stories—and invisible passengers.

No one here knows about bacteria. Or spirochetes. Or incubation periods. They know what they can see. And what they can’t explain becomes moral.

You duck into a small chapel, more for warmth than devotion. Inside, candles flicker, their flames bending as if listening. The air smells of wax and old stone and faint incense. You sit on a wooden bench that has been polished smooth by generations of anxious hands.

You close your eyes for a moment.

Notice the quiet. Not silence—never silence—but a softer soundscape. Breathing. Fabric shifting. Someone murmuring a prayer they’ve said so often it no longer requires thought.

Faith here is practical. It’s another layer. Another attempt to keep the cold out.

When you open your eyes, you notice the way light filters through stained glass, coloring dust motes red and blue and gold. It’s beautiful. It’s distracting. And maybe that’s the point.

Outside again, the day unfolds. You eat a simple meal—dark bread, a bit of cheese, maybe a thin slice of cured meat if fortune allows. The flavors are strong and uncomplicated. Salt. Smoke. Fat. You chew slowly, aware of your teeth, your tongue, your jaw. Bodies are precious things, even when no one knows how fragile they are.

As afternoon drifts toward evening, you feel tired in a way that sleep doesn’t quite fix. You pause, frowning, trying to locate the sensation. Is it hunger? Cold? Just the weight of the day?

You shrug it off. Everyone is tired. This is normal.

Still, later, as you wash your hands in a basin of cool water, you notice a faint tenderness at your wrist. You press gently, then release. The skin looks normal enough. Maybe slightly flushed. Probably nothing.

You dry your hands on rough cloth, feeling the abrasion, the reassurance of sensation. You’re here. You’re solid. You’re fine.

As night returns, you prepare again. You place hot stones near the bed. You pull the curtain closed. You arrange your layers with care, as if precision might invite mercy. The cat returns, pretending it was never gone.

Before lying down, you pause.

You look at your hands again.

Just for a second.

Then you laugh quietly at yourself. Superstition. Paranoia. Everyone feels strange sometimes.

You lie back and listen to the embers pop, the wind worry the shutters. You inhale the familiar mix of smoke and herbs. Lavender this time. Someone has refreshed it. Thoughtful.

As your eyes grow heavy, Europe turns in its sleep.

It does not yet know what’s unfolding within its bodies. It does not yet know that optimism will soon meet biology—and lose.

But you are here, balanced on the edge of before.

Rest while you can.

You don’t notice the moment everything changes.

That’s the unsettling part. There is no bell. No announcement. No dramatic shift in the air. History rarely works that way. Instead, it arrives quietly, wearing the clothes of coincidence, slipping into your routine like a draft through an unseen crack.

You wake again to morning light, softer today, filtered through cloud. The room smells faintly damp, as if the walls themselves have exhaled overnight. You stretch beneath the layers, feeling warmth linger where the hot stones were placed, now cooling but still comforting. The cat lifts its head, blinks at you with mild judgment, and resettles.

You sit up slowly.

There’s a heaviness in your body that wasn’t there before. Not pain. Not illness. Just a sense of resistance, as if gravity has increased slightly and no one bothered to tell you. You roll your shoulders, feeling the joints protest, then comply.

“Fine,” you murmur to no one.

You dress, again. Linen. Wool. Cloak. The ritual steadies you. Fabric against skin. Weight against bone. The smell of smoke clinging to everything you own. You are anchored by repetition.

Outside, the city hums with its usual energy, but something in the rhythm feels off. Conversations break a little too suddenly. Laughter ends without a clear punchline. You notice more people touching their faces, rubbing their arms, scratching absently, as if listening to private signals beneath the skin.

You pass a small group gathered near a well. They’re not loud. That’s what catches your attention. They speak in low tones, heads inclined toward one another, bodies forming a subtle barrier against curiosity.

“…not like the pox we know,” someone says.

You slow your pace without meaning to. The stone beneath your feet is cold through the soles of your boots. You feel it clearly.

“They say it starts mild,” another voice replies. “Then changes its mind.”

You move on, heart beating just a fraction faster. You tell yourself it’s nothing. Stories grow teeth when passed hand to hand.

Still, as the day unfolds, the whispers follow you.

At the market, a vendor refuses a coin offered by a man with a rash along his neck. The refusal is polite. Apologetic. Final. The coin clinks as it’s withdrawn, suddenly suspect. You notice how distance appears—one small step back, then another—until space itself becomes a kind of language.

You warm your hands at a brazier and notice the heat feels sharper than usual, almost biting. You pull back quickly, flexing your fingers. The skin looks normal. You rub your hands together anyway, feeling the friction, reassuring yourself with sensation.

This illness—whatever it is—doesn’t crash into Europe. It seeps. It moves along trade routes and troop paths, through taverns and beds and shared cups. It favors closeness. Familiarity. Trust.

No one agrees where it came from.

Some say it arrived with Columbus’s sailors, carried back across the ocean like a curse disguised as discovery. Others insist it has always been here, merely changing its face. Physicians argue. Priests argue louder. Everyone else speculates.

Names begin to form.

You hear it called the French disease. Then the Neapolitan disease. Later, you’ll hear it named after whatever neighbor is least convenient to defend. Blame is efficient that way. It travels faster than understanding.

In the afternoon, you feel it again—that odd tenderness. This time along your forearm. You press gently, then more firmly. There’s a sensitivity there, a whisper of discomfort beneath the skin. No visible mark. No swelling. Nothing you can point to.

You wash your hands again, slower this time, noticing the temperature of the water, the way it beads and runs along your fingers. You focus on the smell of soap—harsh, animal, vaguely herbal. Cleanliness is one of the few defenses you trust, even if you don’t quite know why.

As evening approaches, bells ring for vespers. Their sound rolls through the streets, low and resonant, vibrating in your chest. You pause to listen. The notes overlap, echoing off stone, dissolving into something almost soothing.

Inside the chapel, the air is warmer than outside, crowded with bodies and breath. You hesitate at the threshold, then step in. Faith, like illness, spreads through proximity. You choose a place near the wall, where you can feel the stone cool against your shoulder.

You sit.

Around you, people kneel, cross themselves, murmur prayers. You notice a man a few rows ahead shift uncomfortably, wincing as he moves. A woman beside him doesn’t look at him. Not once.

You lower your gaze, suddenly aware of your own body in a new way. Of how it occupies space. Of how it might be read.

When the service ends, you leave quickly, pulling your cloak tight, creating distance without meaning to. The street air feels sharp in your lungs. You breathe deeply anyway.

Back in your room, you prepare for night with extra care. You choose the warmest stones. You add another layer of wool. You crush fresh herbs between your fingers—mint this time, bright and almost aggressive—and tuck them near your pillow.

You pause before undressing.

You examine your skin more closely now, in the uncertain candlelight. You lift your arm, turning it this way and that. Shadows distort everything. A faint redness appears, then disappears as the flame flickers.

You laugh softly, though the sound doesn’t entirely convince you.

“Imagination,” you say.

Still, you linger.

You remember overheard words. Starts mild. Then changes its mind.

You lie down, pulling the fur up to your chest. The cat joins you, warm and unbothered, its trust in the world intact. You rest a hand on its back, feeling the steady rise and fall of breath. It helps. Animals don’t worry about what they don’t know.

As you drift toward sleep, your mind wanders.

You think about how knowledge works. How it lags behind experience. How people suffer long before explanations arrive. You think about how the body carries secrets without malice, following rules written far smaller than anyone here can see.

Somewhere in the city, someone develops the first unmistakable sign. A lesion. A sore. A mark that cannot be explained away. Somewhere else, another person ignores it.

And somewhere else still, someone wakes tomorrow feeling only slightly tired, slightly sore, and tells themselves what you told yourself.

That this is normal.

The embers crack softly. The room smells of herbs and smoke and fur. You adjust your position, seeking warmth, seeking comfort, unaware that the illness now has something it needs.

Time.

You wake with a name on the air.

Not a clear one. Not agreed upon. Just fragments, carried through walls and streets and half-finished thoughts. A disease doesn’t arrive with a title card. It earns its names slowly, through fear and repetition and the human need to point somewhere—anywhere—other than inward.

Morning light creeps in again, pale and uncertain. You feel warmer than you expect beneath the layers, almost flushed, and for a brief moment you enjoy it. Then you realize the warmth isn’t coming from the stones or the cat or the careful architecture of fabric.

It’s coming from you.

You sit up slowly, listening to your body like someone tuning an unfamiliar instrument. There’s no sharp pain. Just a vague pressure behind the eyes. A dull ache in the joints. The kind of discomfort you might blame on weather, or sleep, or age—depending on who you are and what story you prefer.

You swing your legs over the bed and pause, hands resting on your knees. The stone floor waits patiently below, cold and honest. When your feet touch it, the contrast makes you inhale sharply. The shock clears your head, just a little.

“Fine,” you tell yourself again.

You dress with more attention than usual. Linen clings faintly to your skin, as if reluctant to let go. Wool follows, heavier, grounding. You notice how textures feel amplified today—every seam, every fold registering more clearly. Your senses seem tuned too high, as if someone has adjusted a dial without asking.

Outside, the city is louder.

Not busier—louder. Voices overlap in sharper bursts. Laughter feels forced. You catch words drifting past you like scraps of paper on the wind.

“…the French disease—”

“…no, no, they brought it—”

“…God’s punishment, I tell you—”

The name lands differently each time. The French disease. Spoken with a curl of the lip. With relief. With distance.

You stop at a vendor selling hot broth from a steaming pot. The smell is rich—meat, herbs, salt—and your stomach tightens with hunger. You cradle the wooden bowl in both hands, letting the warmth soak into your fingers. Steam rises and fogs your vision for a moment, softening the world.

You sip slowly. The broth coats your mouth, savory and grounding. You feel it slide down your throat, spreading warmth through your chest. For a moment, you’re just a body being fed. Nothing more.

Nearby, two men argue.

“It’s not ours,” one insists. “It came with them. Their soldiers. Their women.”

The other snorts. “Funny how every country says the same.”

You keep your eyes on your bowl. Names are forming, hardening. The illness is being given a passport, a nationality, a moral alignment. This is how people protect themselves—by turning uncertainty into accusation.

As you move through the streets, you notice subtle changes in behavior. People avoid touch more deliberately. Coins are exchanged quickly, then wiped on sleeves. A handshake pauses mid-air, then becomes an awkward nod. Bodies negotiate space like diplomats.

You pass a barber-surgeon’s shop and catch a glimpse inside. A man sits on a stool, shirt open, his skin mottled in a way that makes your gaze slide away instinctively. The barber’s face is calm, professional, unconcerned. He has seen many things. He has named few of them.

Above the door hangs a basin, catching light. You look away.

The names multiply.

In Italy, they call it the French disease. In France, the Neapolitan disease. Elsewhere, it becomes the Polish disease, the Christian disease, the foreign disease. No one wants ownership. No one wants intimacy with a thing like this.

You feel a strange, creeping awareness settle into you—not fear exactly, but vigilance. You become conscious of your own gestures. How you scratch an itch. How long your gaze lingers. How close you stand.

Your body, once invisible to you, is now something you monitor.

In the afternoon, you retreat indoors earlier than usual. The room welcomes you with familiar smells and shadows. You light a candle and watch the flame steady itself, then begin its slow dance. You like how it responds to movement, how it acknowledges your presence without judgment.

You remove your cloak and notice dampness along the collar where your skin has been warmer than the air. You frown slightly, then shake it off. Layers can trap heat too well. That’s all.

You wash again. Hands. Arms. Face. The water is cool, and you linger, letting it run longer than necessary. You scrub carefully, noticing every sensation—the rasp of cloth, the slickness of skin, the way your fingers trace familiar lines.

You pause at your wrist.

There it is again. That faint tenderness. This time, when you look closely, you think you see something—just a hint of redness, barely distinguishable from shadow. The candle flickers, and it’s gone.

Your chest tightens, just a fraction.

“No,” you whisper. “Not like this.”

You sit down heavily on the edge of the bed. The straw mattress compresses beneath you, sighing. You press your palms into your thighs, feeling solid muscle, grounding yourself.

This is how fear begins—not as panic, but as interpretation. As the mind testing possibilities and finding them all unpleasant.

You remember the conversations. The blame. The names. How quickly people decide who deserves what.

You breathe slowly, deliberately, the way you’ve learned helps at night. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. You smell herbs, smoke, old wood. Familiar. Safe.

Later, a knock sounds at your door.

You hesitate before answering.

It’s a neighbor, eyes darting, voice lowered. “Have you heard what they’re calling it now?” they ask, as if names themselves might be contagious.

You shake your head.

“They say it eats at you in stages,” they continue. “First small signs. Then… worse.”

You nod, offering nothing. Information feels heavy tonight. You’re not sure where to put it.

When the door closes, you secure it carefully. Wood against wood. Simple, symbolic. You add another curtain layer around the bed, narrowing the space further. You place fresh herbs near the stones. Rosemary and lavender together. Memory and calm. You like the thought of that.

You lie down earlier than usual.

The cat joins you, pressing warm weight against your side. You rest a hand on its fur and feel the steady certainty of another living thing. It helps anchor you in the present, in sensation rather than speculation.

As sleep approaches, your thoughts drift.

You think about how naming something gives the illusion of control. How calling it foreign makes it feel distant. How people will cling to these names long after the disease proves it doesn’t care what it’s called.

You feel tired in a way that sleep doesn’t quite explain.

Outside, bells ring again, marking time. Inside, your body keeps its own counsel.

Tomorrow, the names will spread faster than the truth.

And quietly, without asking permission, the illness will continue to settle in.

You wake with the uncomfortable awareness that your body has been awake before you.

There’s a moment—thin, fragile—where you lie still beneath the layers, eyes closed, cataloging sensations the way someone counts coins. Warmth where there should be cool. Pressure where there should be ease. A dull, persistent awareness that something is asking for attention.

You don’t give it that satisfaction just yet.

You listen instead.

The room breathes around you. Embers murmur softly in the hearth, almost spent. The cat shifts, stretches, then settles again with the casual confidence of a creature that assumes the world will continue to make sense. Somewhere outside, a cart rattles over stone, the sound fading as quickly as it arrives.

You open your eyes.

Light filters in through the narrow window, muted and gray. The day promises nothing dramatic. And somehow, that feels worse.

You sit up slowly, testing yourself. Your head swims for just a second—barely enough to notice, but enough to register. You place a hand on the bed frame until the world steadies. Wood. Solid. Real.

“Too fast,” you mutter, as if negotiating with gravity.

When your feet touch the stone floor, the cold bites sharply, sending a clear signal up your legs. You welcome it. The contrast helps. You stand there a moment longer than necessary, letting the chill remind you that sensation still works the way it’s supposed to.

You dress with care.

Linen first. It clings slightly, damp with warmth from your skin. You frown at that, then pull on wool, grateful for its weight. The familiar scratch against your forearms grounds you. Cloak last, heavy and reliable, the smell of smoke and old rain wrapping around you like memory.

Before leaving, you hesitate.

You look at your hands again.

The skin looks… fine. Mostly. Perhaps a little flushed around the knuckles. You flex your fingers, noting a faint stiffness, as if you’ve slept gripping something too tightly. You rotate your wrists slowly. There’s a tenderness there—not pain exactly, but a suggestion of it. A note played too softly to be certain.

You lower your hands and exhale.

Outside, the city greets you with movement and sound, but you feel oddly separate from it today, like you’re walking behind a thin veil. You notice details you might otherwise ignore: the way a man limps slightly, favoring one side; the way a woman pauses mid-step, catching her breath, then continues as if nothing happened.

You wonder how many of these moments go unnoticed. How many bodies whisper before they scream.

At the market, you approach a stall selling apples. The vendor smiles automatically, then hesitates when you draw closer. It’s subtle—a tightening around the eyes, a shift of weight—but you catch it. You both pretend not to.

You exchange coins quickly. The apple feels cool and solid in your hand. You take a bite, teeth breaking the skin with a crisp snap. Juice runs down your chin, sharp and sweet. You welcome the taste, the simplicity of it. Eating is grounding. Proof that some things still work.

As you chew, you notice a slight soreness along your jaw. You pause, apple hovering near your mouth. You roll your jaw gently. The sensation fades, then returns, faint but insistent.

You swallow and take another bite anyway.

Conversations drift around you, as unavoidable as smoke.

“They say it starts small,” someone says near the bread stall. “A sore. A rash. Something you’d ignore.”

Another voice replies, lower. “And then?”

A pause. “Then you stop ignoring it.”

You move on.

By midday, fatigue settles into you like a heavy cloak you didn’t choose. Your limbs feel slower, your thoughts slightly thickened, as if moving through syrup. You tell yourself it’s the weather. Or the cold. Or age, even if you’re not quite ready to claim that yet.

You retreat indoors earlier than planned, craving the quiet of your room. You light a candle and sit on the edge of the bed, letting the flame steady your breathing. The room smells of herbs and old wood, comforting in its familiarity.

You remove your outer layers and pause again.

This time, you don’t look away.

You roll up your sleeve slowly, deliberately, the way you might approach a truth you’re not sure you want. The candlelight flickers, casting shadows across your skin. You angle your arm, then another.

There.

Just above your wrist.

It’s small. So small you might miss it if you weren’t looking for it. A faint discoloration. Pinker than the surrounding skin. Not raised. Not angry. Just… present.

You touch it lightly.

There’s a sensitivity there that makes your breath catch. Not sharp pain—something worse. Something intimate. As if your body is leaning toward your attention whether you invite it or not.

You withdraw your hand and sit very still.

This is how it begins.

Not with terror, but with doubt. With the quiet, rational voice cataloging explanations: irritation from wool. A scratch you don’t remember. A bite. A coincidence.

You pull the sleeve back down and stand, pacing the room slowly. The floorboards creak under your weight, each sound familiar. You focus on the rhythm of your steps, the way movement keeps panic from settling too deeply.

You wash again, more thoroughly than before. The water feels almost too cold, making you gasp. You scrub your arms, your hands, your face, noticing how sensitive your skin feels under the cloth. You dry carefully, patting instead of rubbing.

You remember something you overheard days ago.

The first symptoms are often painless.

That thought settles uncomfortably.

As evening approaches, you consider seeking help. A physician. A barber-surgeon. Someone with answers. Then you imagine their eyes scanning you, cataloging, naming. You imagine the cost—not just in coin, but in certainty.

You decide to wait.

Waiting feels safer. For now.

You prepare your night ritual with extra attention. Fresh hot stones, wrapped thickly. Additional layers. You choose herbs known for calming and protection—lavender, mint, rosemary—and arrange them carefully, as if placement matters. Perhaps it does.

You place the bed closer to the hearth tonight, minimizing drafts. You pull the curtains tighter, narrowing the world to fabric and warmth. The cat joins you, warm and untroubled, pressing against your side.

You lie back and stare at the ceiling, watching shadows shift with the candlelight. Your mind drifts despite your efforts to anchor it.

You think about how people dismiss early signs because acknowledging them would change everything. How denial isn’t ignorance—it’s strategy. A way to preserve the present a little longer.

You flex your hand beneath the blankets, feeling that faint tenderness again. It’s still there. Waiting.

As sleep finally pulls you under, your body continues its quiet work, following instructions written in a language no one here can read.

And somewhere between breaths, you realize that whatever this is, it has already begun to introduce itself.

Softly. Politely.

Patiently.

You learn quickly that illness changes the shape of silence.

It’s not that the world grows quiet. It’s that pauses become heavier, more deliberate, as if every unspoken thought has weight now. You feel it the moment you step outside the next morning, cloak drawn high, posture just a little more contained than before.

The air is cold and smells faintly of damp stone and smoke. You inhale carefully, noticing how your chest tightens—not painfully, just enough to remind you that breathing is a physical act. You exhale and watch the vapor curl away from you, thin and temporary.

You walk.

The city receives you differently today. Not overtly. Not unkindly. Just… cautiously. Eyes flicker toward you, then away. Conversations pause as you pass, then resume with an altered cadence, like music played in a new key.

You wonder if they can see it.

You can’t, really—not unless you look closely. And you do. Often. Too often.

You pause near a shop window—not to admire the wares, but to catch your reflection in the uneven glass. Your face looks the same. Tired, perhaps. Slightly drawn around the mouth. You tilt your head, examining the planes of your cheekbones, the line of your jaw.

Normal enough.

You straighten and move on, annoyed at yourself for expecting something dramatic.

Inside, though, you feel different. There’s a subtle awareness humming beneath everything you do, like a low note sustained too long. You notice how your clothes brush your skin, how the wool irritates more than it used to. You shift your shoulders, adjusting the cloak, trying to settle into yourself.

At the market, you reach for bread and hesitate when your fingers brush another hand. The contact is brief, accidental—but both of you recoil as if shocked. The other person mutters an apology and steps back too far, too quickly.

You feel heat rise in your face. Embarrassment. Something sharper beneath it.

“I didn’t—” you begin, then stop. There’s nothing to explain that won’t sound like guilt.

You take your bread and move away, the weight of it oddly heavy in your hand. You tear off a piece and chew slowly, the crust crackling between your teeth. It tastes good. Real. You cling to that.

As you eat, you overhear a conversation you weren’t meant to.

“…better to keep away,” someone says. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

A pause. Then, quieter: “You know.”

You swallow hard.

This is how the illness moves now—not just through bodies, but through space. Through distance. Through the careful widening of gaps between people who once stood close.

You feel the urge to retreat, to pull inward, to minimize yourself. You comply without realizing it. Your shoulders round slightly. Your gaze lowers. You become efficient, quiet, forgettable.

By afternoon, you’re exhausted in a way that feels disproportionate to your efforts. Your limbs ache with a deep, persistent fatigue that doesn’t respond to rest. You sit on a low wall near the river, letting the stone leach warmth from your body, grounding you through contrast.

The water moves steadily, unconcerned. You watch light ripple across its surface, catching flashes of silver and gray. The sound is soothing—constant, reliable.

You rub your wrist absently.

The spot is still there.

You don’t look this time. You already know.

When you finally return to your room, you close the door with more care than usual. You set the latch gently, deliberately, as if the act itself might keep something contained. You lean your back against the wood for a moment and let your eyes close.

The room smells like safety—herbs, smoke, old cloth. You breathe it in deeply.

You undress slowly, methodically. Each layer removed feels like a small surrender. When your sleeve comes away, you glance down despite yourself.

The discoloration has deepened slightly. Still small. Still quiet. But unmistakably present.

Your stomach tightens.

You sit on the edge of the bed and let your hands rest in your lap. They tremble, just a little. You curl your fingers into your palms until the movement stops.

This is the moment you realize something important: knowledge, once acquired, cannot be undone.

You know enough now to be afraid—but not enough to be certain.

And that is the worst place to be.

You think about seeking help again. About stepping into a barber-surgeon’s shop and submitting yourself to their gaze. You imagine the smells—blood, metal, vinegar. The confidence with which they might speak. The certainty they might offer, whether it’s earned or not.

You also imagine the consequences.

Names stick.

Once spoken aloud, they change how others see you. How you see yourself. You’ve heard the stories—people turned away, isolated, whispered about. The disease may be slow, but stigma is efficient.

You decide, again, to wait.

Waiting has become your habit.

As night falls, you prepare your rituals with almost reverent attention. You warm stones carefully, testing them against your palm before placing them near the bed. You arrange your layers with precision—linen smooth, wool aligned, fur positioned to block drafts. You hang fresh herbs and crush them lightly, releasing their oils into the air.

You notice how these small acts soothe you. How control, even over trivial things, steadies the mind.

You light a candle and sit quietly, watching the flame. Its movement feels intimate, responsive. You lean closer, feeling the warmth on your face, then pull back before it grows uncomfortable.

You are learning your limits.

The cat arrives as if summoned by routine, leaping onto the bed and circling until it finds the perfect spot. It settles against your thigh, radiating heat and indifference. You smile faintly and stroke its fur, focusing on the texture beneath your fingers.

“Stay,” you murmur.

It does.

As you lie down, you feel the familiar ache settle into your joints. Your skin feels sensitive beneath the blankets, almost tender. You adjust carefully, minimizing friction. You become aware of your body not as an extension of yourself, but as something you inhabit—something with moods and secrets.

You stare up at the ceiling, watching shadows sway gently.

You think about how illness isolates long before it confines. How people begin to step back before anyone tells them to. How shame grows in the absence of certainty, fed by imagination and fear.

You wonder how many others are lying awake like this. Counting sensations. Cataloging changes. Negotiating with themselves in the dark.

Outside, footsteps pass, then fade. Somewhere, laughter rises briefly, then stops. Life continues, unevenly.

You pull the fur closer and take a slow breath.

In.

Out.

The cat’s breathing syncs with yours. Warm. Steady.

You are not alone—not entirely.

But you feel the perimeter of your world tightening, drawn not by walls or laws, but by glances and pauses and the unspoken agreement that something has shifted.

As sleep finally claims you, you understand that secrecy has become its own burden.

And tomorrow, it will weigh just a little more.

You decide, at last, to let someone look at you.

Not because you feel ready—but because waiting has begun to feel like its own kind of danger. The tenderness hasn’t gone away. The fatigue lingers like a low fog. And beneath it all, there’s a quiet certainty forming, slow and unwelcome, that whatever this is will not solve itself through denial.

You wake earlier than usual, before the city fully stirs. The room is dim and cold, the hearth reduced to gray ash. You sit up carefully, listening to your body. The ache in your joints greets you like an acquaintance you didn’t invite but now must acknowledge.

You dress deliberately. Fresh linen, clean wool. You choose your best cloak—not for vanity, but for armor. Appearances still matter here. Perhaps more than truth.

Before leaving, you wash thoroughly, scrubbing with a seriousness that borders on ritual. The water is icy, making your breath hitch, but you welcome the clarity. You dry your arms slowly and glance again at the mark on your wrist.

Still there.

You cover it.

Outside, the morning air is sharp and metallic, carrying the smell of damp stone and distant smoke. The streets are quieter now, occupied mostly by those with purpose. You move among them, each step steady, controlled.

The barber-surgeon’s shop announces itself with confidence. A striped pole. A basin hung near the door. The faint, unmistakable smell of metal and old blood mingling with vinegar and herbs.

You pause before entering.

This threshold feels heavier than most.

You step inside.

The space is warmer than the street, close with the smell of bodies and boiled water. Light filters in through a small window, catching on metal instruments arranged with deliberate care. Knives. Saws. Needles. Tools that promise intervention without reassurance.

The barber-surgeon looks up.

He’s older than you expected. Gray threaded through his beard. Hands steady, eyes sharp but not unkind. He studies you the way craftsmen study material—assessing, measuring, estimating.

“What brings you in?” he asks.

You hesitate, then answer honestly. “Something new.”

He nods, unsurprised.

You remove your cloak and roll up your sleeve. The air feels cool against your skin, and suddenly you are very aware of how exposed you are—not just physically, but socially. This is a moment that can’t be undone.

He leans closer, squinting slightly. He does not touch at first. Just looks. Long enough for the silence to stretch.

“Hm,” he murmurs.

That single sound does more to unsettle you than any diagnosis could.

He presses gently near the mark, testing your reaction. You flinch despite yourself.

“Sore?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He straightens and steps back, folding his arms. “And how long?”

You tell him.

He listens without interrupting, nodding occasionally, his expression unreadable. When you finish, he exhales slowly through his nose.

“There’s been much of this,” he says finally. “Lately.”

You search his face. “And?”

“And we do what we can.”

It’s not reassurance. It’s honesty.

He gestures toward a stool, and you sit. The wood is hard beneath you, grounding. He begins to speak, not as a scholar, but as a practitioner—someone who has watched bodies fail in familiar patterns.

“We believe the illness arises from corrupted humors,” he explains. “Heat and moisture out of balance. Sometimes stirred by excess. Sometimes by foreign influences.”

You nod, though the words feel slippery. You know enough now to recognize guessing when you hear it—but you also know this is the best available.

“There are treatments,” he continues. “Some unpleasant.”

You already know which one he means.

“Mercury,” you say quietly.

He raises an eyebrow, impressed. “You’ve heard.”

You have. Everyone has. Mercury rubbed into the skin. Inhaled. Swallowed. It’s whispered about with equal parts hope and dread. People say it drives the disease out through sweat and saliva. People also say it drives people mad.

“Does it work?” you ask.

He pauses. Just long enough.

“Sometimes,” he says. “And sometimes the patient suffers greatly.”

The room feels smaller.

You imagine it—your body subjected to a cure that harms as it heals. You imagine the metallic taste, the drooling, the trembling hands. You imagine emerging free of the disease… or broken in a different way.

“Is there another way?” you ask.

He shrugs slightly. “Time. Clean living. Avoiding excess. Prayer, if that comforts you. We watch. We wait.”

Waiting again.

You nod slowly. That, at least, you know how to do.

He applies a simple salve to the area—herbs and fat, cooling and faintly fragrant. The touch is professional, careful. You focus on the sensation: coolness spreading, easing the surface discomfort even as uncertainty remains.

“Keep it clean,” he says. “Return if it worsens.”

When you leave, the city feels louder than before. Sharper. As if everything has edged itself.

You walk slowly, absorbing the information, the implications. Nothing has been named outright. No word spoken that cannot be taken back. And yet, something has shifted. Possibility has hardened into probability.

At home, you retreat fully.

You pull the curtains closed even though it’s still light outside. You sit on the bed and breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The room smells of familiar things—your things. You cling to that.

The salve cools your skin, offering temporary relief. You flex your wrist gently. The tenderness remains, but softened.

This is the strange cruelty of early treatment—it reassures just enough to let hope in.

As evening approaches, you hear footsteps outside your door. A neighbor pauses, then continues. You wonder what they know. What they suspect. You wonder how long it will be before you start avoiding them preemptively.

You prepare your night carefully. Extra warmth. Extra layers. You add herbs said to cleanse the body—sage, thyme—arranging them with intention. The rituals matter more now. They are the last things you fully control.

You lie down and stare at the ceiling, replaying the barber-surgeon’s words.

We do what we can.

It echoes differently now.

You think about medicine in this time—not as science, but as negotiation. Between hope and harm. Between knowledge and belief. You think about how courage here isn’t about bravery in battle, but about submitting your body to uncertainty again and again.

The cat joins you, warm and insistent. You welcome the weight.

As sleep comes, it does not bring answers. Only rest. Temporary. Necessary.

You have crossed a line today—not into certainty, but into awareness.

And once awareness begins, it rarely stops.

You smell it before you fully understand what it means.

There’s a sharpness in the air this morning, metallic and faintly bitter, threading through the familiar scents of smoke and herbs. It lingers in doorways, clings to clothing, rides the breath of those who pass too close. You recognize it now—not from certainty, but from repetition.

Mercury.

The word has weight. Density. It settles in your chest like a stone dropped into still water.

You wake slower than usual, joints stiff, skin tender beneath the linens. When you move, there’s a faint soreness that seems to migrate, never quite settling in one place long enough to be negotiated with. You sit up and rest your hands on your knees, breathing steadily until the room stops tilting.

This is the stage where choices narrow.

You dress carefully, choosing softer wool, smoother seams. The salve from the barber-surgeon has soaked into your skin overnight, leaving a faint herbal smell beneath everything else. It’s comforting, even as you know it’s temporary.

Outside, the city hums with restrained urgency. People move with purpose, eyes forward, conversations clipped. You notice how many mouths look tight now, how laughter feels rationed.

At a public bathhouse—once a place of gossip and ease—you see steam rising, hear coughing echo off tiled walls. Someone exits quickly, face pale, mouth wet with saliva they can’t quite control. No one comments. Everyone notices.

Mercury has arrived in earnest.

You hear the arguments everywhere.

“It drives the poison out,” someone insists, voice hoarse with conviction.

“It drives the man out with it,” another replies.

You stand at the edge of these conversations, invisible and uncommitted, feeling the weight of the decision settle more firmly on your shoulders.

You return to the barber-surgeon’s shop by midmorning.

He looks up when you enter, nodding once. No surprise. He’s seen this pattern before. Waiting until waiting becomes unbearable.

“You’ve decided,” he says.

You nod.

He gestures you inside, closing the door against the street. The room smells stronger today—vinegar, metal, and that sharp, unmistakable tang. A small brazier burns in the corner, heating something you don’t want to identify too closely.

You sit where he indicates, heart beating faster now. You focus on the details—the grain of the wood beneath your fingers, the steady sound of water heating, the way light glints off metal instruments.

He explains the process, though you already know most of it. Mercury applied to the skin. Sometimes inhaled as vapor. Sweating encouraged. Salivation expected. The goal is to force the disease out by overwhelming the body.

You notice how carefully he avoids words like safe.

The first application is cool, then burning. The ointment smells sharp and alien, nothing like the herbs you’ve been using. Your skin prickles immediately, heat spreading outward in uneven waves. You grit your teeth, focusing on breathing.

In.

Out.

Your mouth begins to water almost at once. It’s not subtle. You swallow reflexively, then realize it won’t help. Saliva gathers faster than you can manage, thick and unpleasant.

Your hands tremble slightly.

“Normal,” he says, without looking up.

Time stretches.

You sweat. Profusely. Heat blooms beneath your skin, radiating outward, making your heart race. Your thoughts feel slippery, harder to hold onto. You focus on simple things—the sound of your breath, the weight of your body on the stool.

At some point, you realize you’re drooling.

Shame flickers briefly, then dissolves into exhaustion. There is no dignity in this, only endurance.

When it’s over, you feel wrung out. Hollowed. As if something essential has been siphoned away along with the sweat. The barber-surgeon wipes his hands and steps back, assessing.

“Rest,” he instructs. “Warmth. Fluids.”

You nod, unable to form words without effort.

Outside, the air feels too bright, too loud. You walk carefully, each step deliberate. Your limbs feel weak, your mouth tastes metallic, bitter, wrong. You spit discreetly into the gutter when you can’t help it.

At home, you collapse onto the bed fully clothed. The cat approaches cautiously, sniffing, then deciding you are still you. It curls near your feet, warmth a quiet blessing.

You drift in and out of uneasy sleep.

When you wake again, hours later, your sheets are damp with sweat. Your mouth is sore, gums tender. You sit up slowly, checking yourself with a detached curiosity. The mark on your wrist looks… unchanged. Perhaps slightly paler. Perhaps that’s wishful thinking.

This is how mercury works—it offers ambiguity as hope.

Over the next days, the treatment continues.

Each session leaves you weaker, wetter, more unmoored. You sweat until your skin feels raw. You salivate until your jaw aches. Your hands shake when you try to hold small objects. Sometimes, your thoughts feel oddly distant, as if you’re observing yourself from just outside your body.

You hear stories.

Someone swears the sores faded after weeks of treatment. Someone else mutters about teeth loosening, hair thinning, minds slipping. Both speak with equal conviction.

Your world contracts further.

You stop going to the market yourself. You avoid crowds. You keep your distance even from those who still try to approach you normally. Isolation becomes easier than explanation.

At night, you prepare your bed like a sanctuary. Extra layers. Fresh stones. Clean linens as often as you can manage. You hang herbs said to protect against poisons—though you’re not sure whether that includes the one you’re willingly ingesting.

You lie awake, listening to your own breathing, noticing how shallow it feels some nights. You wonder which discomfort belongs to the disease and which to the cure. The line blurs quickly.

Philosophically, you understand what’s happening.

Medicine here is not about precision. It’s about action. About doing something rather than nothing. In a world where inaction feels like surrender, even poison can be framed as hope.

You remind yourself of this when your hands tremble too much to thread a needle. When your mouth tastes wrong no matter how much you rinse it. When fatigue settles into you like a second skeleton.

Still, there are moments—small, treacherous moments—where you think it might be working.

The tenderness at your wrist eases slightly. The discoloration fades at the edges. You cling to these changes, magnifying them in your mind. Proof. Progress. Justification.

Then, one morning, you wake with a headache so deep it feels structural. As if your skull has been tightened overnight. Light hurts. Sound irritates. You lie still, waiting for the world to become tolerable again.

This, too, is normal, you’re told.

You learn to live in a state of constant assessment. Is this better? Worse? Different? You become fluent in your own discomfort, mapping it carefully, obsessively.

And slowly, insidiously, something else begins to change.

Your patience thins. Your thoughts fray. Small irritations feel immense. You snap at the cat once, then immediately regret it, pulling it close and murmuring apologies it doesn’t require.

You wonder—briefly, fearfully—whether this is the illness advancing, or the mercury doing its work too well.

There is no way to know.

You lie down one night, exhausted beyond measure, and realize that survival has become a series of calculated harms. You are choosing which pain feels more manageable. Which uncertainty feels more honest.

Outside, the city continues its quiet panic. Mercury smoke rises from open windows. People sweat and spit and hope.

And you, caught between disease and cure, drift into uneasy sleep, knowing that even if one leaves you, the other may not.

You begin to understand that change does not announce itself with urgency.

It unfolds instead with a quiet persistence, like water seeping into wood. You wake one morning unsure whether what you feel is improvement or merely adaptation. Your body has learned a new baseline, and that realization unsettles you more than pain ever did.

The room is dim, heavy with the smell of sweat that no amount of herbs quite erases anymore. You lie still beneath the layers, listening to your own breathing. It sounds thicker than it used to, as if each inhale has to negotiate its way in.

You sit up slowly.

Your head throbs—not sharply, but with a deep, structural insistence. You place your feet on the stone floor and wait for the dizziness to pass. It does, eventually, though it leaves behind a faint sense of imbalance, like standing on a dock that still remembers the motion of water.

You dress carefully, fingers less steady than before. Buttons test your patience. Ties take longer. You catch yourself holding your breath during small tasks, then consciously release it.

In the muted morning light, you examine yourself again.

The mark on your wrist has changed.

Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone else to notice at a glance. But you see it immediately, because you’ve been tracking it like a scholar tracks a star. The edges look less defined now, the color duller—almost as if it’s retreating.

Relief washes through you, quick and dangerous.

You cling to that small victory as you prepare for the day. Proof that the suffering has purpose. Proof that the poison is winning its battle against whatever else has taken residence in you.

Outside, the city feels distant, muffled by your preoccupation. You move through it like a ghost, aware but detached. Sounds blur together. Smells feel muted. Even the cold seems less sharp than it once was, though you know that’s not true.

Your body is changing how it reports information.

At the barber-surgeon’s shop, he nods approvingly when he sees your wrist.

“Better,” he says, simply.

The word lands with surprising force.

Better.

You repeat it silently as he prepares the next treatment. You endure the familiar burn, the sweating, the metallic taste flooding your mouth. You focus on the idea that this discomfort is temporary, purposeful. You imagine the illness retreating, cornered, driven out through pores and spit.

You leave feeling emptied, but hopeful.

That hope carries you through the afternoon. You even manage a short walk by the river, sitting on the low stone wall and watching the water move past. Light flickers across its surface, fractured but beautiful. You feel almost peaceful for a moment.

Then your jaw aches.

It starts as a mild soreness near the hinge, something you might ignore on another day. But as the hours pass, it deepens, spreading along your gums. When you touch your face, your fingers meet tenderness where there was none before.

You swallow, then wince.

By evening, your mouth feels wrong.

Not painful enough to demand action. Just… altered. Your tongue feels too large for the space it occupies. Your gums feel soft, almost spongy. When you rinse your mouth with water, you notice a faint pink swirl in the basin.

You stare at it longer than you should.

This is the trade.

You lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the embers pop faintly in the hearth. You think about the barber-surgeon’s nod, the word better, and how easily hope can distract from new warning signs.

Your body feels like contested territory now. Gains in one place. Losses in another. You wonder which ledger matters more.

Over the next days, the pattern continues.

The skin lesion fades further, becoming barely visible. People who see you don’t look quite as wary. A neighbor even lingers to chat briefly, careful but polite. You feel a small, dangerous lift in your chest.

But your mouth worsens.

Your gums bleed more easily. Your breath smells faintly metallic no matter how often you rinse with herbs. Your jaw aches at night, a dull throb that makes sleep shallow and fragmented. When you wake, your pillow is damp—not just with sweat, but with saliva you didn’t quite manage to swallow.

You begin to drool in your sleep.

The realization humiliates you, even though no one else knows. You wash your linens more often now, hands shaking slightly as you wring them out. Your reflection in the basin water looks thinner, more drawn around the mouth.

Your hands tremble more noticeably, especially when you’re tired. Fine movements require concentration. You spill water while pouring it, curse softly under your breath.

Still, you continue the treatment.

Stopping feels like tempting fate. If the illness is retreating, you don’t want to give it an opening. You endure the worsening side effects with clenched teeth, telling yourself this is the cost of survival.

At night, you perform your rituals with mechanical precision. Stones. Layers. Herbs. The cat still comes, though it seems less inclined to press close these days, as if the smell of mercury unsettles it. You miss its warmth more than you admit.

Your thoughts grow stranger, too.

Not dramatic delusions—nothing so obvious. Just a thinning of patience. A shortness of temper that surprises you. Small noises irritate you more than they should. You snap at the sound of footsteps outside, then feel foolish.

You catch yourself staring at nothing for long stretches, mind drifting without direction. When you pull it back, it feels sluggish, resistant.

You tell yourself you’re tired. Anyone would be.

One evening, as you rinse your mouth, you feel something shift.

You freeze.

Gently, experimentally, you press your tongue against one of your teeth. It moves. Just a fraction. Barely perceptible.

Your breath catches.

You press again, heart pounding. There’s no pain—just a subtle give where there should be none.

You sink onto the edge of the bed, basin clutched in trembling hands. The room feels suddenly too close, too warm. You taste metal and fear in equal measure.

This is what they meant.

You think about the stories you dismissed. Teeth loosening. Gums failing. Bodies paying the price of the cure in installments.

You lie back and stare at the ceiling, tears gathering without quite falling. You feel betrayed—not by the barber-surgeon, not even by the mercury, but by the cruel arithmetic of it all.

The disease may be retreating.

You may survive this stage.

But at what cost?

You realize then that the terrifying part was never the sores, or even the slow decline. It’s this—being forced to choose between harms, knowing neither choice leaves you whole.

You drift into sleep that night exhausted beyond words, jaw aching, hands trembling faintly beneath the blankets. Outside, the city exhales in uneasy unison, full of others making the same calculations.

And as you sleep, your body continues its quiet transformation, reshaped not only by illness, but by the desperate ingenuity of those trying to save you.

You notice that fear, once it settles in, learns how to pray.

Not loudly. Not theatrically. It prays in repetition, in habit, in the quiet rearranging of priorities. You wake with your jaw aching, your mouth tasting faintly of metal and herbs, and your first thought is not why, but please.

Please let it hold where it is.

You sit up slowly, careful not to jar your head. Light filters in through the narrow window, muted by cloud, turning the dust in the air into a pale constellation. Your body feels heavier today, as if gravity has made a private agreement with you. You move deliberately, conserving energy, choosing each motion like it costs something—which it does.

You rinse your mouth again. Gently. The water runs pink, then clears. You avoid looking too closely at your teeth. You already know what you’ll find.

Faith becomes practical now.

You pull on your layers—linen, wool, cloak—and notice how your hands shake just enough to make tying knots a small challenge. You take your time. There is no one to impress. No one to hurry for. You breathe through each task, grounding yourself in the rhythm of it.

Outside, bells ring for morning prayers.

You hadn’t planned to go. But your feet carry you there anyway.

The chapel is cool and dim, its stone walls holding the night’s chill. Candles flicker, their flames unsteady, responding to drafts you can’t feel. The smell of wax and incense settles into your lungs, familiar and oddly comforting.

You sit near the back, choosing a bench worn smooth by centuries of anxious hands. You rest your palms against the wood and feel its solidity. People file in around you—slowly, quietly—each carrying their own private negotiations with the divine.

You notice how many look tired.

The priest’s voice rises and falls, a cadence you’ve heard all your life. The words blur together, less important than the sound itself. You don’t listen so much as absorb, letting the rhythm wash over you.

You don’t ask for healing.

Not exactly.

You ask for clarity. For fairness. For the strength to endure whatever is already in motion. You ask for forgiveness, though you’re not entirely sure what for. The illness has taught you how easily guilt attaches itself to the body.

When you stand to leave, your legs feel unsteady. A woman steadies you briefly with a hand at your elbow, then pulls away too quickly, eyes downcast. The contact lingers longer in your mind than on your skin.

Outside, the city moves carefully around you.

You hear more prayers now, spoken aloud in doorways, whispered over meals. Small shrines appear on corners where none existed before. Candles burn in windows long after sunset. Faith spreads the way fear does—quietly, insistently.

Some people blame God. Others bargain. Others insist the illness is punishment, a cleansing fire meant to scour excess from the world. You listen to these theories with a strange detachment. When the body is under siege, philosophy feels ornamental.

Still, belief offers structure. And structure offers comfort.

You return home early again, exhaustion pressing at the edges of your vision. You sit on the bed and remove your cloak, then pause, hands resting in your lap.

You examine your wrist.

The mark is nearly gone now. Only a faint shadow remains, barely distinguishable from your natural skin tone. Anyone else would miss it entirely. This should feel like victory.

It doesn’t.

Your mouth aches persistently. When you probe gently with your tongue, you feel the unsettling give of a tooth that no longer feels anchored the way it once did. You withdraw, heart pounding, and sit very still.

You think of the prayers you just left behind.

You wonder whether survival is the same thing as salvation.

In the afternoon, you attempt small tasks to remind yourself of normalcy. You mend a tear in your sleeve, hands clumsier than they used to be. You stop halfway through, frustrated, then force yourself to continue slowly. You succeed eventually. The stitch is uneven, but it holds.

You feel an odd pride at that.

Later, you prepare a simple meal—broth and bread. You eat carefully, favoring one side of your mouth, chewing slowly. The taste is comforting, the warmth spreading through your chest. You focus on that sensation, letting it anchor you in the present.

At dusk, you light candles and sit quietly, watching the flames. They flicker in response to air currents you can’t detect, a reminder that invisible forces are always at work.

You think about how medicine and faith have begun to overlap here. Mercury is administered with almost ritual seriousness now. Sweating is encouraged like penance. Salivation becomes a visible sign that the body is doing something, which is enough to satisfy many.

You understand the appeal. Action feels holy when helplessness threatens.

As night deepens, you prepare your bed with familiar care. Extra layers. Hot stones. Fresh herbs. You choose lavender tonight, hoping for sleep that isn’t fractured by discomfort. You arrange the space carefully, narrowing the world to warmth and shadow.

The cat arrives late, hesitant, then settles near your feet. It no longer presses as close as it once did, but it stays. You accept this compromise without resentment.

You lie down and let the day fade.

Your thoughts drift to the future, though you try not to linger there. You imagine a version of yourself who survives this phase—changed, but alive. You imagine explaining your condition to someone else, choosing words that minimize, soften, reassure.

You imagine the relief of waking one day without pain.

Then you imagine the alternative: the illness returning, stronger, less subtle. You push that thought away. It isn’t useful tonight.

You focus instead on breathing.

In.

Out.

You listen to the night sounds—the distant clatter of hooves, the murmur of voices, the occasional cough carried through thin walls. The city is full of people praying in their own ways, bodies aligned toward hope whether they admit it or not.

As sleep approaches, you realize something quietly devastating.

The disease has changed how you relate to meaning itself. Survival has become the lens through which everything is filtered. Faith, once abstract, now feels transactional. You don’t know whether that’s a failing or a necessity.

You close your eyes.

Whatever gods are listening tonight, you hope they understand pragmatism.

And in the dark, with your jaw aching and your hands finally still, you let rest take you—not as a blessing, but as a temporary truce.

You learn how to be alone without being lonely.

It isn’t something you choose outright. It’s something that settles into you gradually, the way dusk replaces afternoon without ceremony. Invitations stop arriving. Footsteps pause less often outside your door. Conversations shorten when you enter a room, then resume after you leave, slightly rearranged.

Isolation doesn’t slam shut. It drifts.

You wake in the quiet and realize there is no expectation waiting for you today. No market to visit. No hands to shake. No casual errands that require explanation. The realization carries both relief and something like grief.

You sit up slowly, stretching beneath the layers. Your body responds with a familiar constellation of sensations—jaw soreness, stiffness in the fingers, a fatigue that feels baked into your bones. You greet these sensations like weather. Not welcome, not hostile. Just… present.

You adjust your position carefully, minimizing friction. You’ve become good at this—at inhabiting your body gently, strategically. You notice how survival has trained you in patience you never intended to learn.

The room feels smaller than it once did.

Not physically. Emotionally.

You’ve rearranged it over the past days without really noticing. The bed closer to the hearth. The chair positioned where light falls most evenly. Herbs refreshed more often, not just for their properties but for the ritual of tending them. You’ve created a private geography designed to support a single, fragile inhabitant.

You wash and dress with the same deliberate care. Linen. Wool. Familiar weight. Your hands still tremble, though less than before, and you take a moment to steady them against the table before tying your cloak. You exhale slowly until the movement subsides.

There’s no rush.

You sit on the bed and simply exist for a while.

This is new. Time without structure. Time where thoughts wander dangerously if you don’t guide them. You learn to redirect gently—toward sensory details, toward small tasks.

You prepare hot stones even though the room isn’t especially cold. The warmth comforts you anyway. You wrap them carefully, testing the heat against your palm. Predictability has become precious.

A knock sounds at the door.

You freeze.

It’s not loud. Not urgent. Just a polite, hesitant tapping that makes your chest tighten unexpectedly. You consider not answering. Consider staying exactly where you are, unseen.

The knock comes again.

You rise slowly and open the door just enough to see who waits on the other side.

It’s an older woman from two doors down. She keeps her distance, hands folded, eyes careful. She smells faintly of soap and rosemary.

“I thought you might need this,” she says, holding out a small bundle wrapped in cloth.

You hesitate, then take it.

Inside are fresh herbs. Sage. Thyme. Clean, fragrant, alive.

“Thank you,” you say, voice quieter than you intend.

She nods, relief flickering across her face. “You rest,” she says. “That’s important.”

She doesn’t ask questions. She doesn’t step closer. She leaves without lingering.

The door closes, and you lean your forehead briefly against the wood, surprised by the intensity of your reaction. Kindness, now, feels like something rare and fragile—something that must be handled carefully so it doesn’t break.

You place the herbs near the bed, inhaling deeply. The smell is grounding, green and sharp. You imagine it doing something helpful, even if you know the science is thin. Comfort doesn’t require proof.

As the day unfolds, you settle into a quieter rhythm.

You nap when your body asks for it. You wake without guilt. You eat simply and slowly, chewing with care, favoring one side of your mouth. You drink warm liquids often, letting the heat soothe your throat and chest.

You notice how your thoughts have softened. There’s less urgency now, fewer spirals of fear. Acceptance has begun to creep in—not as surrender, but as adaptation. You are learning how to live within narrower margins.

At times, the loneliness presses in unexpectedly. A sound outside—a laugh, a conversation—makes you pause, listening, imagining yourself among them. Then the moment passes, and you return to what you can manage.

You realize how illness redraws social boundaries.

People don’t withdraw because they stop caring. They withdraw because care has become complicated. Dangerous. The rules are unclear, and caution feels safer than compassion.

You try not to resent this.

In the late afternoon, you sit by the small window and watch light shift across the opposite wall. Dust motes drift lazily through the beam, unbothered by human concerns. You find this strangely comforting.

Life, it seems, continues in parallel lanes.

Your body feels quieter today—not better, exactly, but less volatile. The jaw pain remains, dull and persistent. Your hands are steadier. Your head feels clearer. You note these changes without celebration. You’ve learned how quickly hope can overextend itself.

As evening approaches, fatigue settles in again, but it’s a gentler exhaustion now. Less panicked. More… earned.

You prepare for night with familiar precision. Stones warmed. Bed layered. Curtains drawn to create that cocoon of fabric and heat. You crush the new herbs gently, releasing their scent, and place them near your pillow.

The cat arrives earlier than usual tonight.

It hops onto the bed and circles once, twice, then settles closer to your side than it has in days. You smile faintly and rest a hand on its back, feeling the warmth, the steady certainty of another living being choosing proximity.

You lie back and close your eyes.

You think about how isolation has stripped life down to essentials. Warmth. Food. Rest. Touch, when available. Everything else—status, reputation, ambition—has fallen away.

There’s a strange clarity in that.

You breathe slowly, syncing your rhythm to the cat’s purr. The sound vibrates gently through the bedding, through you.

You are not cured.

You are not safe.

But you are surviving this moment.

And for now, that is enough.

As sleep takes you, you realize something quietly profound: illness has taught you how to build a world small enough to hold you when the larger one feels uncertain.

In the narrowing of your days, you have found a fragile, stubborn form of peace.

You begin to feel the pressure of the world again, even from inside your carefully constructed quiet.

It starts subtly. A sense that decisions are being made elsewhere, without you. That the rules are changing, not because of your individual condition, but because too many bodies have begun to fail in similar ways. When illness becomes common, it stops being private.

You notice it first in the streets.

When you venture out briefly one morning—cloak pulled close, movements economical—you see notices nailed to wooden posts. Rough parchment. Heavy ink. Words written with authority rather than kindness. You don’t read them at first. You already know what they’ll say.

Warnings.

Restrictions.

Advice framed as command.

You pause anyway, standing just far enough back to avoid drawing attention. The words blur slightly as you read, your eyes slower to focus than they used to be.

Avoid excess.
Avoid contact.
Avoid the sick.

You feel a strange, hollow amusement at that last line.

The sick are everywhere now. They always were. It’s just that the illusion of separation has finally cracked.

You turn away and continue down the street, noticing how people move with new choreography. Groups form and dissolve quickly. Doorways become borders. A man coughs, and the space around him empties with remarkable efficiency.

Fear has learned how to organize itself.

Back in your room, you sit on the bed and remove your cloak, folding it carefully. Your hands still shake slightly, but you’ve learned how to compensate—how to slow down until precision returns. You rest your palms against the fabric for a moment, grounding yourself in texture.

You think about what it means to be managed.

Public concern, you realize, doesn’t feel like care. It feels like distance with justification. The city isn’t cruel—just overwhelmed. And when systems strain, they simplify. They categorize. They decide who must move less so others can feel safer.

You feel yourself sliding, gently but unmistakably, into a category.

You adjust your daily habits accordingly.

You go out less. When you do, you choose quieter hours. You avoid enclosed spaces. You don’t linger. You speak only when necessary, and when you do, you keep your voice calm, neutral—nonthreatening.

You are learning how to make yourself smaller without disappearing.

At home, your world grows more precise.

You organize your supplies carefully—herbs grouped by use, clean linens stacked within easy reach, water always warming near the hearth. You learn which movements cost the least energy, which positions minimize discomfort. You refine your routines like someone optimizing a machine.

There’s comfort in this, even as there’s loss.

Your body continues its quiet negotiations. Some days feel almost normal. Others remind you abruptly that normal is no longer guaranteed. The jaw pain persists, dull and constant, flaring when you’re tired. Your gums remain tender. You eat soft foods more often now, choosing warmth over effort.

You adapt without commentary.

In the evenings, you hear sounds from outside—arguments, prayers, the occasional sharp cry that ends too quickly. You don’t investigate. You’ve learned that proximity carries consequences.

Instead, you sit by the hearth and listen to the fire. Embers shift. Wood settles. The sounds are intimate, domestic, reassuring. You feed the fire carefully, mindful not to exhaust yourself.

Fire, you’ve learned, is a partner. Not to be rushed.

One afternoon, a knock comes again at your door.

You tense automatically, then force yourself to breathe. The knock is familiar. Measured. You open the door just enough to see the same older woman from before. She stands a little farther back this time.

“There’s talk,” she says, not unkindly. “About keeping the unwell… separate. For a while.”

You nod slowly. This doesn’t surprise you.

“Not exile,” she adds quickly. “Just… caution.”

Caution. The word feels heavy with implication.

“Thank you for telling me,” you say.

She hesitates, then leaves without another word.

You close the door and lean against it, eyes closed.

This is the next phase.

Not dramatic banishment. Not chains or guards. Just a gradual narrowing of acceptable movement. A shrinking of social permission. You realize how easily this could become permanent—not through malice, but through inertia.

You sit back down and let the weight of that realization settle.

Later, as dusk approaches, you notice a change in yourself.

Not physical this time. Psychological.

You feel less urgency to return to the world you’re being edged out of. Less longing. You still miss people, connection, shared space—but the desire to prove your belonging has faded.

You are tired.

And tired people choose peace when they can.

That night, you prepare your bed with even greater care. You place it fully within the warmest pocket of the room. You add another curtain, thickening the cocoon. You place herbs not just near your pillow, but near the door, an old habit meant to mark boundaries.

You lie down and listen.

The city sounds feel farther away now, muted by fabric and intention. You breathe slowly, deliberately, letting your body settle into the space you’ve carved out for it.

You think about control.

How little of it you truly have. And how much of it you can simulate through routine, through attention, through kindness toward your own limits.

You think about how societies respond to fear by drawing lines. How those lines are rarely erased once drawn. You wonder how many people before you have felt this same quiet displacement, this subtle reclassification from participant to problem.

The thought doesn’t anger you.

It simply exhausts you.

The cat joins you, pressing close, warmer than usual. You rest your hand on its back, feeling the steady rise and fall. This, too, is a form of belonging—uncomplicated, unconditional.

You close your eyes.

Outside, the world reorganizes itself around risk and rumor. Inside, you remain exactly where you are, breathing, adapting, surviving.

And for the first time, you understand that the most terrifying part of this illness isn’t what it does to the body.

It’s how quietly it teaches the world to move on without you.

You begin to notice how identity erodes long before the body gives up.

It’s subtle at first. Not something you could explain easily if asked. Just a faint sense that the shape of your life no longer matches the outline you carry in your mind. You wake one morning and realize that the person you were before the illness feels like someone you once knew well—but no longer inhabit.

You sit up in bed, slow and careful, joints stiff in their familiar way. The room greets you with the same quiet order you’ve cultivated: bed close to the hearth, curtains drawn, herbs drying gently from a beam. Everything is exactly where you left it.

And yet, something is missing.

You think for a moment, then recognize it.

Expectation.

There is no longer an assumption that the day will unfold outward—toward errands, conversations, decisions made in the presence of others. Your days now fold inward. They begin and end in the same place, measured not by bells or schedules, but by energy and pain.

You dress without ceremony. Clean linen. Soft wool. No adornment. You used to care about how you appeared—not from vanity, but from participation. Clothing was a signal: I am part of this world today.

Now it’s insulation.

You sit on the edge of the bed and rest your hands in your lap. They tremble slightly, then still. You wait until they obey you again. Patience has become a kind of muscle, and you’ve been training it daily.

When you look at your hands, you notice how they’ve changed. Not dramatically. Just enough to matter. Veins stand out more clearly. The skin looks thinner, drier. These are small observations, but they accumulate, each one quietly revising your sense of self.

You are becoming someone else.

You think about your name.

When was the last time someone said it aloud?

The thought surprises you with its sharpness. Names, you realize, require witnesses. Without regular use, they fade into abstraction. You are still you—but fewer people are required to remember that now.

You push the thought away and stand, moving toward the window. You pull the curtain back just enough to let light spill in. Outside, the city moves in partial view—people passing, carts rattling, life continuing at a safe, observable distance.

You watch without envy.

You feel… separate. Not superior. Not resentful. Just displaced, like a piece removed from a game still in progress.

Later, you attempt to write.

You find paper and ink and sit at the small table near the window. Your hand hovers uncertainly over the page. You’re not sure what you intend to say. A letter? A record? Proof that you existed beyond this room?

You dip the quill and begin anyway.

The letters come slowly. Your hand cramps sooner than it once did. The words feel oddly formal, as if you’re writing from a distance even to yourself. After a few lines, you stop.

The page feels inadequate.

How do you describe becoming less visible without sounding dramatic? How do you explain that the illness hasn’t taken your voice—but has made it less useful?

You set the quill aside.

In the afternoon, a memory surfaces uninvited.

You remember a time—years ago—when you were known for something. A skill. A role. A way of being relied upon. You can still feel that version of yourself in your bones, faint but persistent, like an old ache that returns with weather.

You wonder if that person still counts as you.

Illness has a way of stripping away descriptors. You are no longer the one who does this or the one who helps with that. You are simply the unwell one. A category that absorbs all others.

You feel the loss of that more keenly than you expected.

As evening approaches, you prepare a simple meal. Broth again. Soft bread soaked until it yields easily. You eat slowly, attentively, treating nourishment as something sacred. Each swallow feels deliberate. Each warmth spreads gently, reminding you that your body is still receptive to care.

Afterward, you rinse your mouth carefully. You avoid the mirror tonight. You don’t need confirmation of what you already know.

You sit by the hearth and let the fire occupy your attention. Flames rise and collapse, reshape themselves endlessly without ever questioning what they are. You envy that certainty.

Your body aches more tonight. A deeper weariness settles into you, less sharp, more pervasive. You adjust your position frequently, seeking relief, learning once again that comfort is a moving target.

When you lie down, the cat joins you almost immediately, curling against your ribs. Its weight is reassuring, familiar. You rest a hand on its back and feel the steady rhythm of breath beneath fur.

This simple contact feels grounding in a way words no longer do.

You think again about identity.

About how much of it is reinforced by reflection—by seeing yourself mirrored in others’ reactions. Without that, you begin to fade at the edges, becoming quieter, simpler, harder to define.

And yet.

There is a strange freedom in this narrowing.

Without roles to perform, you are allowed to just be a body in need of care. You are allowed to rest without justification. You are allowed to stop striving.

This realization doesn’t erase the grief—but it softens it.

You breathe slowly, feeling the ache in your jaw, the stiffness in your fingers, the warmth of the cat. You catalog these sensations not as enemies, but as information.

You are still here.

Not as you were.

But as you are.

And for now, that will have to be enough.

You begin to notice the illness reflected back at you from unexpected places.

Not mirrors—those have become unreliable narrators—but art. Words. Gestures. The small, sideways expressions of a society trying to talk about something it cannot yet name without fear.

It starts with a pamphlet.

Someone has slipped it beneath your door, careful not to knock. The paper is cheap, the ink uneven, the illustrations crude but deliberate. You sit on the edge of the bed and unfold it slowly, feeling the texture beneath your fingers.

A figure is depicted there—thin, hunched, face half-shadowed. The details are exaggerated: a slack mouth, sunken eyes, limbs that look slightly misaligned. Above it, a caption warns of moral decay, of excess, of consequences made visible on the body.

You stare at it longer than you intend to.

This isn’t information. It’s instruction. A lesson disguised as observation.

You fold the pamphlet and set it aside, hands trembling faintly. The ache in your jaw pulses, steady and familiar. You breathe through it, grounding yourself in the smell of the room—herbs, smoke, warm wool.

Art, you realize, is becoming a boundary.

Painters and writers are beginning to encode the illness into their work—not openly, not yet—but symbolically. A figure in the background of a painting with a bandaged hand. A character in a poem whose beauty fades inexplicably, blamed on character rather than chance. Satire sharpens its teeth, finding humor in decline so it doesn’t have to acknowledge fear.

You remember passing a fresco weeks ago, barely noticing it at the time. Now the image resurfaces in your mind: a group of revelers, faces flushed, bodies pressed together. In the corner, a solitary figure sits apart, their posture subtly wrong, their skin painted just a shade too pale.

At the time, you thought it was composition.

Now you wonder if it was commentary.

Your body shifts slightly, seeking comfort. You adjust the layers around your shoulders, grateful for the weight. The cat lifts its head, blinks, then resettles, its trust uncomplicated.

You think about how societies tell stories when truth feels too dangerous.

They turn bodies into symbols. They moralize symptoms. They flatten complexity into cautionary tales. It’s easier that way. Cleaner.

You rise and move toward the window, pulling the curtain back just enough to let light spill in. Outside, the city moves with constrained energy. You notice a group gathered near a street performer—a man reciting verses with exaggerated gestures. Laughter ripples through the crowd, sharp and brief.

You can’t hear the words from here, but you don’t need to.

You know the type.

The performer will be mocking excess, foreignness, decay. He will turn illness into spectacle so his audience can feel safely distant from it. They will laugh not because it’s funny, but because laughter builds a wall.

You let the curtain fall back into place.

Inside, the room feels calmer. Smaller. Yours.

You sit again and think about how the illness has begun to write itself into culture faster than into understanding. People don’t yet know what causes it, how it spreads, or how to stop it reliably—but they know how to talk about it. They know how to use it.

You feel a familiar, hollow ache in your chest—not pain, but recognition.

You have become part of a narrative you did not consent to.

Later in the afternoon, you attempt to distract yourself by reading. The book is old, its pages softened by many hands. You settle into the chair near the hearth, arranging cushions to support your aching joints.

The text is philosophical, dense with ideas about human nature and balance. You read slowly, letting the words sink in. Some passages resonate more deeply now than they would have before. Discussions of fragility. Of fortune. Of how easily order slips into chaos.

You pause often, resting your eyes, massaging your jaw gently when it tightens. The tenderness is constant now, a low hum beneath everything else.

At one point, you catch yourself wondering whether future readers will look back on this era and see the illness everywhere—in paintings, in plays, in marginal notes—recognizing signs that were invisible to those living through it.

You imagine someone centuries from now studying a portrait, pointing to subtle asymmetries, to the stiffness of a pose, and saying, There. That’s it. That’s what it was.

The thought is strangely comforting.

To be seen—even retroactively—feels like a kind of justice.

As evening approaches, you prepare your meal slowly, carefully. You’ve learned which motions strain your hands least, how to pace yourself to avoid the worst fatigue. You eat in silence, savoring warmth and texture. Soft bread. Thick broth. Familiar flavors that ask nothing of you.

Afterward, you sit quietly, listening to the fire settle. The room glows softly, shadows dancing along the walls. You feel tired, but not defeated. There is a difference now.

You think about legacy.

Not the grand kind—names carved in stone, achievements recorded—but the subtle one. The way your experience might ripple outward through stories, through warnings, through art that hasn’t been made yet.

You think about how the terrifying fate you’re living isn’t just personal. It’s instructional. It will change how medicine is practiced, how bodies are understood, how blame is assigned and—eventually—withdrawn.

You lie down earlier than usual, exhaustion settling deep into your bones. The cat joins you almost immediately, curling into the familiar hollow near your side. You rest a hand on its fur and breathe slowly, letting the warmth steady you.

Your thoughts drift as sleep approaches.

You imagine artists struggling to depict what they see without naming it. Writers choosing metaphor over medicine. A society learning, painfully, how to look at suffering without fully understanding it.

You realize that you are both subject and symbol now.

A body living a private reality.

And a quiet mark on the collective imagination.

As sleep finally takes you, you feel the ache in your jaw soften slightly, dulled by fatigue. The world fades to shadow and warmth and breath.

And somewhere beyond your room, the story of this illness continues to write itself—on canvas, on parchment, in whispered lines that will outlast you.

You stop counting days at some point.

Not because time loses meaning entirely, but because it becomes unreliable—stretching in some places, collapsing in others. You wake unsure whether it’s been weeks or months since the first mark appeared on your skin. The calendar, such as it is, no longer governs you. Your body does.

Morning arrives quietly. Pale light seeps through the curtain, softened by dust and distance. You lie still for a while, cataloging sensations the way you’ve learned to do. Jaw: aching, but manageable. Hands: stiff, slower to respond. Fatigue: present, but not crushing. This, you decide, is an acceptable configuration.

You sit up slowly.

The room feels familiar in a way that borders on intimate. Every object has been placed with intention. Every surface carries memory. You know where the warmth pools, where drafts sneak in, how the air smells at different hours. You’ve built a map of survival here, detailed and precise.

You dress with practiced efficiency. Linen, wool, the softest cloak you own. Your fingers hesitate at knots, then comply. You don’t rush them. You’ve learned that impatience costs more than time.

When you glance at your wrist now, the mark is almost entirely gone. A ghost of itself. You note this without celebration. Experience has taught you caution.

What replaces it is less visible, but more pervasive.

You feel it in your bones. In the way standing too long drains you. In the heaviness that settles behind your eyes by afternoon. The illness no longer announces itself—it inhabits you.

The decline is not linear.

Some days, you feel almost steady. You manage small tasks without needing to rest afterward. You even catch yourself humming once, surprised by the sound of it. Other days, you wake as if you’ve already lived a full day before opening your eyes, exhaustion pressing down from the first breath.

Hope becomes conditional.

You learn to phrase it carefully in your mind. If today remains like this. If it doesn’t worsen. If I don’t push too far.

Pushing, you’ve learned, is the enemy.

You no longer seek treatment regularly. The mercury sessions have tapered off—not because you’re cured, but because your body has reached a threshold. The barber-surgeon was honest about that. Too much more, and the cure would finish what the disease started.

So now, you exist in the long middle.

Not dying quickly. Not recovering cleanly. Just… continuing.

You sit by the window in the afternoons and watch the city shift through seasons. You notice changes others might miss—the way foot traffic thins in colder months, the way certain faces disappear and never return. You don’t ask where they’ve gone.

You already know the answer has many forms.

Your world has grown quieter.

Not empty—but muted. Sounds arrive softened, filtered through walls and curtains and your own inward focus. You hear bells, but they feel distant. You hear voices, but they rarely address you directly.

When they do, they’re careful.

“How are you feeling?” people ask now, when they ask anything at all.

It’s a question without a right answer.

You usually say, “The same.”

It’s true enough.

Your body continues to change in small, unignorable ways. Your jaw tires easily. You avoid hard foods entirely now. Your gums remain tender, occasionally bleeding despite your care. You rinse with herbs, with salt, with anything said to help.

Some days, your hands feel clumsy, as if the messages between thought and motion arrive slightly delayed. You adapt. You choose tasks that don’t require precision. You rest before exhaustion demands it.

You are becoming very good at listening to limits.

At night, sleep is uneven. You drift in and out, waking to discomfort, adjusting layers, repositioning stones. You’ve learned exactly where to place warmth so it soothes without overheating. You’ve learned which herbs calm your mind when your body refuses to cooperate.

Lavender for rest. Mint when your head feels thick. Rosemary when memory feels fragile.

Memory, you notice, is changing too.

Not disappearing—just rearranging itself. Some details blur while others sharpen unexpectedly. You recall small moments with intense clarity: the sound of a market vendor’s laugh months ago, the weight of a coin placed in your hand, the exact tone of the barber-surgeon’s voice when he said, Better.

You wonder if the mind, like the body, is choosing what to preserve.

There are moments—quiet, treacherous moments—when you imagine improvement. When the fatigue lifts slightly. When the ache recedes enough for you to forget it for an hour. These moments are dangerous.

They make you want to plan.

You resist.

Planning belongs to a different version of you.

Now, you live by presence. By what this hour requires. By what your body allows.

One evening, you realize you haven’t left the room in several days.

The thought doesn’t alarm you. It simply registers. You’ve learned that survival isn’t always active. Sometimes it’s about minimizing friction, conserving energy, reducing exposure.

You open the window briefly, just enough to let fresh air circulate. Cold brushes your face, sharp and clarifying. You inhale deeply, feeling it sting your lungs, then exhale slowly.

That’s enough.

You close the window and return to your warmth.

The cat remains a constant.

It ages alongside you, subtly. Its movements are slower now, its naps longer. You share a similar rhythm. You understand each other without effort. When it curls against you, you feel a sense of mutual recognition—two bodies navigating decline with quiet dignity.

You think often now about duration.

About how terrifying it is not to know how long this will last. Not knowing whether this long middle stretches into years or collapses suddenly into something worse. Uncertainty is its own exhaustion.

And yet.

You are still here.

Each morning you wake, adjust, adapt. Each night you rest, however fitfully. The body, flawed and faltering, continues its work. Breath in. Breath out.

You think about the word fate.

It implies inevitability. A clean arc. A conclusion that makes sense in retrospect. What you’re living feels messier than that. Less poetic. More human.

Your fate, you realize, isn’t a single moment.

It’s this prolonged negotiation. This slow erosion. This careful maintenance of a self that keeps changing shape.

And in that realization, something settles.

Fear loses some of its edge when it’s forced to coexist with routine. Terror cannot sustain itself indefinitely. Eventually, it exhausts itself and gives way to something quieter.

Acceptance, perhaps.

Or simply endurance.

You lie down one night, more tired than usual, and feel a heaviness in your chest that’s new. Not pain—just weight. You shift, propping yourself more upright, breathing carefully until it eases.

You make a mental note.

The notes are becoming more frequent now.

Still, you don’t panic. Panic requires energy you no longer waste.

You focus instead on the small comforts. The warmth pooling near your hands. The familiar smell of herbs. The steady presence of another living being beside you.

You think about how this illness has stripped life down to fundamentals. How it has taken almost everything except the bare fact of existing.

And you realize something quietly astonishing.

Even now—especially now—you want to keep going.

Not out of hope for cure.

But out of a stubborn attachment to sensation. To warmth. To breath. To the simple fact of being conscious inside a body, however compromised.

You close your eyes.

The long decline continues.

But so do you.

You discover that care, when it arrives late, arrives quietly.

Not as rescue. Not as reversal. But as presence.

It begins with small intrusions into your solitude—gentle, almost apologetic. A bowl of broth left outside your door. A bundle of firewood stacked neatly against the wall. No knocking. No conversation. Just evidence that someone has noticed you still exist.

You accept these offerings without ceremony.

Gratitude, you’ve learned, doesn’t always need performance.

Your body feels heavier now, movements more deliberate. The ache in your jaw has settled into a constant companion, dull and familiar. Some mornings, your hands feel weak, as if strength has leaked out overnight. You flex your fingers slowly, coaxing sensation back into them.

You don’t rush.

Rushing belongs to people who expect improvement.

You dress and sit quietly, listening to the house wake around you—the soft creak of wood adjusting to temperature, the faint hiss of embers stirred back to life. The smells of smoke and herbs linger, layered over weeks of repetition.

You feel tired, but not distressed.

That, you realize, is new.

There’s a knock at the door later that morning. Softer than usual. Slower.

You rise carefully and open it just enough to see a young woman standing there. She keeps her distance, eyes kind, posture uncertain.

“I was asked to check on you,” she says. “If that’s all right.”

You nod.

She doesn’t step inside. Instead, she sets a small basket on the floor. Inside are eggs, a bit of cheese, a folded cloth. Practical things. Useful things.

“I can come again,” she offers. “If you like.”

The choice matters.

“Yes,” you say, surprising yourself with the ease of it.

She smiles, relieved, and leaves without another word.

You close the door and lean against it briefly, breathing slowly. Allowing care feels strangely vulnerable. It reminds you that dependence is not the same as failure—but the distinction takes time to believe.

Over the following days, this pattern repeats.

Different people. Similar gestures. Someone draws water for you. Someone else brings fresh herbs, already cleaned. No one stays long. No one asks questions you can’t answer.

They do not try to fix you.

They simply support the structure that allows you to remain upright.

You begin to understand that caregiving in this time is cautious by necessity. Too much closeness risks contamination. Too much distance risks guilt. People walk a careful line, balancing compassion against fear.

You respect that.

Your world expands slightly, not outward, but inward.

With basic needs met, your energy shifts. You find yourself more present in your own body—noticing subtle changes without panic. Some days feel worse. Others stabilize unexpectedly. You stop interpreting every fluctuation as prophecy.

You are learning to coexist with uncertainty.

In the afternoons, when fatigue presses down hardest, you rest without resistance. You lie near the hearth, wrapped in layers, letting warmth seep into your joints. The cat settles nearby, its breathing slow and deep, a reminder that rest is productive in its own way.

You think about how humans and animals share this instinct. When strength wanes, conserve it. When pain persists, minimize movement. There is wisdom here that medicine hasn’t yet named.

Your jaw remains sore, but you’ve learned how to accommodate it. You eat softer foods. You sip warm drinks slowly. You massage gently when the ache deepens, not expecting relief—just acknowledging sensation.

At night, sleep comes in fragments, but you no longer fight it. You accept waking. You adjust stones. You reposition layers. You breathe until discomfort loosens its grip enough to allow rest again.

This is not defeat.

It’s adaptation refined into an art.

One evening, as you lie listening to the familiar sounds of the house settling, you realize something subtle but profound.

You are no longer waiting to be cured.

The waiting has dissolved into living.

Not fully. Not freely. But intentionally.

The illness no longer defines every thought. It occupies space, yes—but not all of it. You still notice warmth. Still appreciate quiet. Still find comfort in routine.

You are not the person you were.

But you are still a person.

Care, you realize, has given you that back.

Not through medicine or miracle—but through continuity. Through the assurance that your existence still warrants effort from others, however measured.

You think about the difference between being treated and being tended.

Treatment aims at resolution. Tending aims at endurance.

You have crossed from one into the other.

As you drift toward sleep, you feel the weight in your chest again—heavier than before, settling lower. You adjust your position, breathing carefully. The sensation eases slightly, enough to rest.

You make another mental note.

Your notes are quieter now. Less anxious. More observational.

Outside, the city continues its cautious reorganization. Inside, you remain held within a network of small, deliberate kindnesses—each one a thread reinforcing the fragile structure of your days.

You close your eyes.

You are still here.

And for now, that is being cared for.

You begin to sense how much the world does not know.

Not in a dramatic way. Not as revelation. But as absence. As negative space around your experience. The longer you live inside this altered body, the clearer it becomes that everyone—physicians, priests, neighbors—is working with fragments. Guesses stitched together with confidence.

You lie awake one night, breathing shallowly, chest rising just enough to be comfortable. The room is quiet except for the faint ticking sound of cooling stone near the hearth. You listen to it the way others listen to clocks, measuring time not by hours but by intervals of relief.

You think about the illness—not as curse or punishment, but as something physical. Something with rules. Something that behaves consistently even when humans fail to understand it.

You don’t know the word bacteria.
You don’t know spirochete.
You don’t know immune response.

But you know patterns.

You’ve lived long enough inside this body to recognize that the disease moves in stages. That it advances, retreats, pauses, then returns with altered intent. That it is not moral. Not personal. Just… methodical.

That realization settles into you with strange calm.

In the mornings, you wake and assess. Not emotionally—clinically. Jaw: tolerable. Chest: heavy but steady. Hands: weak today. You adjust your plans accordingly. You no longer interpret symptoms as messages from God or fate. They are signals. Information.

This is your private science.

You notice how the barber-surgeon’s explanations no longer satisfy you. The talk of humors, of imbalance, of excess feels thin now—decorative rather than explanatory. Useful only insofar as it gives people permission to act.

You don’t resent him.

He works with the tools his time allows.

Still, you sense that the truth exists somewhere else—smaller, quieter, invisible to the naked eye. You imagine something inside you, coiled and persistent, moving deliberately through tissue, ignoring prayer, indifferent to blame.

The thought is unsettling.

But it’s also clarifying.

You think about how future generations might understand this illness differently. How they might name it. Measure it. Trace its path through blood and nerve and bone. You imagine them shaking their heads at the mercury, at the suffering piled on top of suffering.

You wonder if they’ll be kinder.

Or simply more efficient.

In the afternoon, you sit near the window and let sunlight warm your face. It feels weaker than it once did, filtered through cloud and season. You close your eyes and focus on sensation. Warmth on skin. Air moving in and out. The quiet assurance that you are still receiving input from the world.

This matters.

Your thoughts drift toward the concept of progress. How humans imagine it as a straight line, moving always forward. Living like this—inside the gap between cause and understanding—you realize progress is more like a series of blind reaches. Some land on solid ground. Others don’t.

You are living in one of the missed grasps.

The disease is not rare now. Not even particularly shocking. It has become a background presence in the city—a risk people account for, like fire or winter. You hear less panic in voices. More resignation.

That frightens you more than fear ever did.

You know resignation’s cousin.

At night, the heaviness in your chest returns more often now. You sleep propped up slightly, arranging layers and stones so that warmth supports your breathing. You’ve become expert at positioning—at finding angles that reduce strain.

You listen to your breath carefully. Too shallow feels wrong. Too deep feels exhausting. You find the narrow channel between and stay there.

This is knowledge.

Not written. Not taught. Earned.

You think about how much of human understanding comes from bodies that endure long enough to notice patterns. How many discoveries will someday be named after people who survived long enough to describe what others couldn’t.

You will not be one of those names.

And that’s all right.

You feel no bitterness about it. Only a quiet acceptance that insight doesn’t require recognition to be real.

One evening, as you sip warm broth brought by the young woman—now familiar enough that her presence no longer startles—you ask her a question you haven’t voiced before.

“Do many recover?” you ask.

She hesitates. Just a fraction.

“Some,” she says. “For a time.”

You nod.

That answer contains everything.

After she leaves, you sit quietly and let the implications settle. Recovery, you realize, is not the same as resolution. The illness can sleep. It can wait. It can return altered, more deeply rooted.

Your body feels like it has entered into a long negotiation—terms revised periodically, never finalized.

You wonder whether the disease is learning you as much as you are learning it.

The thought is oddly intimate.

You return to bed early, exhaustion pressing in behind your eyes. You lie still, hands folded loosely over your chest, feeling the rise and fall of breath. The cat curls against your side, a warm, solid presence.

You focus on what you still have.

You have sensation.
You have awareness.
You have the ability to adjust.

You are not cured—but you are not ignorant anymore.

That knowledge doesn’t save you.

But it dignifies you.

As sleep approaches, you think about the future—not yours, but humanity’s. About how long it will take before someone looks at this disease and understands it as an organism rather than a judgment. As a process rather than a verdict.

You imagine a world where suffering like yours is shorter. Less confused. Less lonely.

You hope that world arrives.

Not for you.

But because no one deserves to live in the dark this long.

Your breathing slows. The room fades into warmth and shadow. And as you drift toward sleep, you hold onto the quiet certainty that even without answers, your experience matters.

You are part of the long, painful accumulation of knowledge.

And someday, that will be enough.

You sense the change before anyone else does.

Not as fear. Not even as pain. Just a quiet rearrangement of effort. Breathing asks a little more of you now. Standing requires planning. The space between intention and action feels longer, as if the signal has farther to travel.

You wake one morning and remain lying there, not because you can’t move, but because moving feels unnecessary. The room is dim and gentle, wrapped in early light. The air smells faintly of herbs warmed by the hearth’s last memory of fire.

You listen to your breathing.

It’s slower. Shallower. Careful.

Each inhale feels deliberate, chosen. Each exhale takes something with it—heat, tension, effort—and doesn’t fully return it. You note this without alarm. You’ve become very good at noticing without panicking.

You sit up eventually, propping yourself with pillows, arranging layers until warmth supports you rather than weighs you down. The ache in your jaw has softened into something distant, like a sound heard through a wall. Your hands rest lightly in your lap, thinner now, veins more visible, but calm.

The cat is there, as always, curled near your hip. It lifts its head when you move, blinks slowly, then settles again, its trust unbroken. You rest your hand on its fur and feel the steady rhythm beneath your fingers.

This steadiness comforts you more than words ever could.

You don’t feel dramatic. There’s no sharp pain to announce anything. No sudden terror. Just a growing clarity that your body is simplifying its priorities.

You no longer feel hunger the way you once did. Warm liquids appeal. Broth. Tea. Things that don’t demand chewing or effort. When you eat, it’s slowly, carefully, savoring texture and warmth rather than fullness.

Someone comes to check on you midmorning. They move quietly, respectfully, as if the room itself has asked for softness. They don’t ask many questions. They don’t need to.

You see it in their eyes—the recognition, gentle and unspoken.

You are tired.

They help you adjust the bed, add fresh stones wrapped in cloth, replace herbs that have lost their scent. Practical kindness. No urgency. No false cheer. You appreciate that deeply.

After they leave, you rest.

Time behaves strangely now. Minutes stretch. Hours blur. You drift in and out of sleep, waking briefly to sensation—warmth, breath, the faint sound of the city beyond the walls—then slipping back again.

When you wake, you don’t always remember when you fell asleep.

This doesn’t frighten you.

Your thoughts come more slowly now, but they are clear. Focused. You think about small things. About the texture of linen against your skin. About the way sunlight shifts across the wall. About how your breathing feels best when you don’t try to control it.

You think about your life—not as a story, but as a sequence of sensations.

Warm bread. Cold stone. Laughter carried on wind. The weight of wool in winter. The smell of herbs crushed between fingers. The comfort of an animal choosing to stay close.

These are the things that rise to the surface now.

Not regrets. Not achievements. Just experiences.

You realize that death, when it comes this way, does not feel like falling off a cliff.

It feels like the tide going out.

Your chest feels heavier in the afternoon. You adjust your position again, propping yourself more upright. Breathing eases slightly. You make a small sound of relief without meaning to.

Your body has taught you this language. How to listen. How to respond.

Someone returns near dusk. They sit quietly nearby, not intruding, simply present. You sense them more than see them. Their breathing, their warmth, the faint sound of cloth shifting when they move.

You appreciate the company, though you don’t need conversation.

Words feel unnecessary now.

You feel no rush to say anything final. No speeches gather in your throat. If there are things left unsaid, they no longer feel urgent. Meaning, you realize, does not depend on closure.

The light fades gradually.

Shadows soften. The room becomes a place of shape rather than detail. The hearth glows faintly, embers pulsing with low, steady warmth. The smell of smoke and herbs feels comforting, familiar, like a well-worn blanket.

Your breathing grows quieter.

You notice longer pauses between breaths, not as alarm, but as rest. Each pause feels… fine. Acceptable. Even pleasant.

Your hand still rests on the cat. You feel its purr begin, slow and deep, vibrating gently through you. The sound seems to anchor you to the present moment.

You are not afraid.

There is no sudden revelation. No rush of images. No dramatic regret.

Just a deepening stillness.

Your body, after months of effort, seems to have found an equilibrium it approves of. It is conserving energy. Letting go of what it no longer needs.

You think—briefly—about the illness.

About how it brought you here not with violence, but with patience. How it taught you endurance, adaptation, attentiveness. How it stripped life down until only essentials remained.

You realize that the terrifying part was never the end.

It was the long uncertainty before it.

Here, now, there is clarity.

Your breath comes again, shallow but steady. Then another pause. Longer this time. You don’t try to fill it.

You are very warm.

You are very tired.

And you are deeply, profoundly calm.

The world does not end.

It simply grows quieter.

Your final awareness is not of loss, but of relief—of effort released, of weight set down at last. The room, the cat, the warmth, the faint sounds of life beyond the walls—all of it holds steady as you drift.

And gently, without drama, without struggle, you let go.

You are no longer inside the body that carried you here.

That realization doesn’t arrive with shock. It arrives the way understanding often does—quietly, retroactively. As if the world has already adjusted, and you are simply noticing the change.

There is a stillness now that feels different from rest.

Not heavier. Lighter.

The room remains much as it was: the bed carefully arranged, curtains drawn to hold warmth, herbs hanging gently from their strings. The hearth glows faintly, embers pulsing with the last memory of heat. The cat remains where it was, curled and breathing, unaware that anything essential has changed.

But you are no longer bound to sensation.

You notice this first in the absence of effort. There is no need to adjust your breathing. No need to find the right angle for comfort. The ache that once defined your awareness—jaw, chest, joints—has dissolved without ceremony.

You observe without inhabiting.

The person who comes to check on you later moves slowly, respectfully. They stand in the doorway for a moment longer than usual, sensing something before understanding it. They step closer, touch your hand gently, then withdraw.

There is no outcry. No urgency.

Just a quiet acknowledgment.

Word travels the way it always does in this city—by footsteps, by pauses, by glances that linger a second too long. Your room becomes stiller, not from neglect, but from respect. Movements soften. Voices lower.

You are spoken of carefully now.

Not as the sick one.

As the one who lasted a long time.

That distinction matters.

You watch as your body is tended to for the last time—not as a problem to be solved, but as something that deserves care even now. Cloth is smoothed. Herbs are refreshed, more out of habit than necessity. The space is kept warm, as if warmth itself is a form of honor.

You feel no discomfort at this.

Only a distant curiosity at how much meaning humans place on the final arrangement of things.

Outside, life continues.

Bells ring. Carts pass. Someone laughs too loudly in the street, then quiets themselves, embarrassed. The city does not pause—but it does absorb. Another story is added to the unspoken ledger of this illness.

You are not the first.

You will not be the last.

And that, strangely, comforts you.

In the days that follow, your absence creates ripples. Small ones. Manageable ones.

The older woman who brought herbs lights a candle and says nothing. The young woman who carried broth mentions you once, briefly, to someone else—then stops. The barber-surgeon hears and nods, expression unreadable. He will remember you the next time someone asks whether the treatment is worth the cost.

You become part of his calculus.

Artists continue their work.

Somewhere, a painter adds another figure to a crowded scene—slightly hunched, slightly withdrawn. Somewhere else, a writer chooses a metaphor for decline that feels truer now than it did before. Somewhere, a physician makes a note in the margin of a text, uncertain but persistent.

These are your echoes.

You are not remembered as an individual tragedy.

You are remembered as data.

Experience.

Evidence.

This illness—this terrifying, patient thing—will continue to shape the world long after your body is gone. It will force conversations about contagion, about intimacy, about responsibility. It will push medicine forward unevenly, painfully, built on the backs of those who endured without answers.

You were one of them.

That matters.

You sense time passing—not as minutes or days, but as consequence. Public policies adjust. Bathhouses change their customs. Physicians argue more fiercely. Mercury falls in and out of favor, leaving scars on bodies and reputations alike.

Centuries from now, someone will finally name what lived inside you. They will see it under a lens. They will map its movement through nerve and bone. They will develop treatments that work not by overwhelming the body, but by understanding the enemy.

They will speak of the Renaissance epidemic with clarity you were denied.

And they will owe that clarity, in part, to you.

Not by name.

But by accumulation.

You think—briefly—about how strange it is that suffering can become useful without ever becoming fair. That knowledge so often arrives too late to help those who generated it.

You do not resent this.

Resentment requires a self still invested in outcome.

What you feel instead is a gentle release from relevance.

The world no longer requires anything of you.

Your story has been absorbed into a larger one—a cautionary tale, a data point, a shadow in a fresco, a footnote in a medical text. That is how progress is built: not on heroes alone, but on countless quiet lives that endured long enough to be noticed.

You drift further now, less attached to place.

The room fades. The city blurs. What remains is a sense of continuity—that even terrifying fates contribute to something beyond themselves.

Your life, reduced to essentials by illness, has expanded again in meaning.

Not because it was dramatic.

But because it was real.

And somewhere, someone rests more easily in a safer bed because you lived when answers did not yet exist.