Every Day in May (grand prize winner) ✔

Epilogue

FP20, October 5: Jeffers shows up at Dissent headquarters and attempts to start a spat with Graden.

FP21, November 2:  Jeffers becomes the newest member of the Leader's personal guard.  

FP21, April 26: Graden celebrates his 21st birthday amidst plans to take down the Tower.

FP21, May 1:  Theo receives Merryn's first letter.

FP21, May 31: Francesca leaves on her biannual trip to visit her parents in the country.

FP21, June 1:  Several loud explosions awaken citizens in the pre-dawn hours.  When they leave their homes to investigate, they discover a column of smoke and debris where the Tower once stood.

New Era0, June 1, late afternoon: Graden Vale, standing on a hastily erected stage in the city's largest park, declares to the crowd that the Unending Line of Leaders has ended after all.  Flanked by his two highest ranking officers, Arthur Jeffers and Sukie Walker, Graden relays the events that transpired that morning. 

The Dissent, a group previously believed to be defunct, entered the Tower at 3:00 a.m.  The few servants present were cleared out by a Dissent spy who had been working within the Tower for several years.  Led by Graden Vale, Dissent forces, having studied the detailed maps made by Arthur Jeffers, showed what seemed to the Loyalist guards to be a surprising knowledge of the layout and inner working of the Tower.  They anticipated the defensive tactics of the Tower soldiers and, while still suffering their own losses, were able to keep the guards distracted long enough for another band of Dissenters to install a number of explosive devices. 

Jeffers, still acting in his role of personal guard, took the Leader down a back staircase under the guise that he was being evacuated to safety.  At the bottom of the stairwell, Jeffers killed the guard accompanying them and then grabbed the Leader from behind.  In an act historical scholars would later describe as poetic justice, he slit the dictator's throat. 

The body of the dictator was removed before the bombs were detonated so that it could be displayed as proof of death.  Meanwhile, those Tower guards not killed in the rebel usurpation were offered an ultimatum: to accept defeat and leave the Tower as prisoners or stay Loyal and let the walls crush them. Few chose to remain.

After recounting the death of the dictator and the destruction of the Tower, Graden Vale goes on to inform the people that the Dissent wishes to see a new system of government set up in which the ruling body will be voted into power by the people.  The crowd continues cheering for him long after he leaves the stage. 

During the entire forty-five minute speech, no mention of the dictator's Heir is given.

NE0. June-August:  Fighting continues throughout the Land as pockets of Loyalists attempt to resist the Dissent.  Their numbers dwindling and with public support heavily on the side of the Dissent, most Loyalists are captured or killed before the summer ends.

NE0. August-December:  Red Camps are liberated.  Jonas and Emelia Hammond Vale are located in early November fifty miles from the Northern border.  When they return to the city a month later, they inform Graden Vale that it was their daughter who found them at the make-shift hospital the Dissent had opened for Camp survivors.  She urged them to travel to the city as soon as they were able in order to be with their last remaining son, whom they had not seen in over eight years.

NE0. November-January:  Trials for Loyalists begin, each one's guilt and subsequent punishment determined by a jury of former Red Camp prisoners.

NE0. February 19: Arthur Jeffers is voted the commander of military operations in the Land, succeeding Graden Vale who wishes to return to civilian life.

NE0. April 4:  The first democratically held election occurs. Graden Vale, after refusing to run for President, is elected to a congressional post.  Without Vale to run against her, Francesca Martin easily wins the highest office with her pledge to be everything her husband was not.

NE1. July 5:  President Martin receives a postcard bearing a stamp from a country far to the east. She smiles as she runs her fingers over the rows of careful script before clasping the card to her heart.

NE4. September 30: A young couple knock on the door of Representative Vale's home in the city's Eastern Quarter. The woman shifts her sleeping baby in her arms as the door begins to open. 

Graden Vale's hand freezes on the doorknob. It takes him several long seconds to swing the door all the way open and accept that what he sees in front of him is real. 

He listens as the woman tells him that (except for several months spent searching the Red Camps for her parents) they have spent the last four years exploring the lands beyond the horizon. 

Now they've come home.  The man is eager to get to know this place and the woman is eager to show it to him.  The man shakes Vale's hand firmly and looks him in the eye.  Vale detects no hint of anger in him, no lingering grudge.  Within himself, though, emotions do linger.  Sorrow and guilt for driving her away from him are now accompanied by the joy of her return. 

He is afraid to blink, afraid that if he does, she will disappear again.  The young woman places his baby niece into his arms. 

"I'm glad to see you, Graden." She smiles at her older brother, remembering a time long ago when he lead her into battle armed with nothing but stick swords. Now he leads with words instead of weapons, something she's come to realize she is also capable of doing.   "Now that we're back, I have some ideas on how you can improve things here.  Are you going to listen to me this time?" 

~~~END~~~