Day 150,
Morning thought: One hundred fifty. Does that count as a milestone? It’s a multiple of fifty. And a nice clean-looking number. But after hitting one hundred, making note of smaller intervals just doesn't hit the same. But it still hit enough to make me notice?
Eh, that’s enough of that thought. I need to get ready for class.
Lin stopped by today. Sounded like she’d been having a stressful time lately and needed a day to unwind. I let her have the run of the archive while Cass and I taught class upstairs. There was some minor distraction when she first showed up and when she came back up to chat during the lunch recess. She certainly gets along well with kids. No sign of the usual facade of detached professionalism she puts on around people. It feels condescending to say, but for a moment I found myself thinking that she seems to fit in better with them than other adults. Maybe it’s just comfort from not feeling the need to put up pretenses around them.
Once class was over for the day and the children had gone home we got more of a chance to talk and catch up with one another. Apparently an old woman living in the outskirts had taken ill recently and so most of Lin’s time these days was spent trekking out to attend to her, alternating shifts with her father. It seems that there’s usually some elder or another who gets sick during the rainy season, and Lin admitted to having grown to dislike the season for that. A depressing time of old folks realizing they aren’t long for this world and needing a doctor to make their last days comfortable.
I off-handedly observed that that seemed to track with my recent observations about dates of death; i.e. most deaths happening at the end of a rainy season or start of a dry season, meaning that the worst part of the decline would have been during the rainy season. Eager for a change in topic, Lin pounced on that comment and started asking questions about my extrapolated census project. What it was, why I was doing it, if I’d found anything interesting - that sort of thing.
I explained that it had started with me being curious about birth rates based on the class size feeling small to me, and from there it just sort of expanded due to me wanting something different to do. I mean, I guess theoretically there might be a practical use for it, but at the moment it really is just a pet project for the sake of keeping my mind occupied.
Lin asked what I meant about the class size being small, and I explained what I believe I’ve written about before regarding my own memories of birth rates in my past world and there seemingly being too few children of any given age given the size of the Village, the abundance of food and resources, and the general lack of disease and dangers. From there I apologized for coming back around to the original topic she was wanting a break from before bringing up how odd it was that the death rate so evenly matched the birthrate. That, if I recall correctly, for just about the entire history of my old world - save in localized instances in times of disasters like war, plague, or famine - rates of birth vastly exceeded rates of death and for there to be essentially net zero population growth like here in the Village for an indefinitely sustained period would be nearly unheard of.
With that leadup I went ahead and asked the question I’d been thinking of for the past couple of weeks: Had she, as the Village’s future doctor, noticed a correlation between births and deaths, and did she have any thoughts as to the why of it?
Lin’s mood dampened at that. Not the shift to cold professionalism she puts on with most people, but that tiredness I’ve seen a handful of times that makes me wonder if her playful demeanor around friends (and apparently children) is just as much of a mask. Of course she’d noticed a connection. Most people probably have, although whether or not they consciously realize it or would be willing to admit it is a different matter. Lin’s own thoughts on the matter are that it all goes back to the Catacombs, and that being a sort of taboo topic is part of the reason no one talks about it. That and it being a normal enough part of life that no one gives it a second thought as to the why. But here, down in the archive with just the two of us (Norman and Marva were expecting Cass to help with dinner so she’d already left by this point) a little bit of taboo breaking seemed indulgently rebellious.
Lin prefaced the following by saying that this was all just her own thoughts and theories on the matter and she’d never really talked to anyone about it to get another perspective. No detailed investigation. And certainly no proof of anything. Just what made sense to her personally as a way to explain what she’s observed. Lin’s idea is that, save perhaps for outsiders (or perhaps especially outsiders; she goes back and forth on that depending on the day) we’re all shades from the Catacombs. Or rather, that we’re spirits or souls or ghosts or whatever from the Catacombs that have gotten lucky and managed to get a turn at being alive and having a body, and the shades are the ones that have got impatient at waiting their turn so they come up to the surface when they get the chance. They try to drag us back to the Catacombs to make room up here so they might have a chance at getting a turn to be alive.
Somehow (and she’s not sure how) the Blossom Field and its being a requirement for fertility is probably connected to the Catacombs. At any rate, it’s Lin’s belief that women getting pregnant triggers the elderly to fall terminally ill once those pregnancies get far enough along. That it’s not the rains that make them sick, but the coincidence that most couples try to time their conceptions to make the birth happen near the start of a dry season. Sure, there are more cases of mundane sickness during the rainy seasons as a result of people being more cold and wet on a regular basis, but those are rarely more than mild coughs and sniffles. No, it’s her theory that the new spirit trying to enter the world of the living starts forcing an old one out.
After a pause of getting up the nerve of what to say next, Lin confided that was one of the two big reasons she wasn’t in a hurry to get married and have children, despite her age and her parents’ pushing. She can’t stand the thought that by having a child she’d essentially be killing someone in the process. With a sigh, she said she envied everyone else for their ability to just carry on blissfully unaware. She assumes unaware. Better than the alternative thought that they might not care or write it off with a platitude about that being the way things are.
Hoping to maybe comfort her, I pointed out (with the preface that I wasn’t trying to change her mind on life decisions) that maybe the weakening of old souls’ hold on the world happens first to enable conception with the help of the Blossom Field and that it just takes a while for the symptoms of that to set in.
She said that makes sense, but doesn’t explain the timing as well.
A fair point. And her theories do neatly explain a number of things, despite there not really being a way to prove them.
After a brief pause, Lin made a (forced?) chuckle and added that wouldn’t change the other of the two big reasons for not wanting to find a man to marry and have kids with.
I felt a twinge of a grin on one side of my mouth and said that I’m sure Maiko is thankful for that second reason. Lin gave me a look. I defended myself by stating that I possessed working eyes and ears.
From there we shifted to lighter topics. Mostly dinner. There are actually a handful of establishments in the Village that are something like restaurants. No menus though, just whatever the cook is making that day. Being mostly paid in food, I rarely patronize them, but this evening they served our purposes well enough.
I brought up the idea that if she’s going to the outskirts a lot these days, she’d be welcome to stop by the house whenever. Unfortunately, her patient is on the other road out of town. Alas. The recent get-together left me with a taste for more socialization.
