When the rains may come (Science Fiction)

72.1 Since we stopped the war

Excerpts from Cathy's Journal

Six months since the war ended.

Now seems to be about the right time to start writing things down. Not just cuz I have more free time on my hands but I feel like I have better things to write about now.

That's probably the reason why I never kept a journal in the past decade. I would've had ten books documenting nothing but all the terrible things that happened to me and my family. That sounds miserable.

Honestly, it's also kinda sad since I don't really remember much about my parents. Or my school. Or my city. Or even just my home.

But things may change. I sometimes get glimpses of my past when I sleep. All of them aren't all that dismal.

I guess that's a sort of improvement. I'll take what little hope I can find. I don't wanna be sad forever.

***

Okay, so where do I even begin? The past six months have been...really something. Let's start with Erik and Gemma.

The siblings are back together! I am happy for them. It's a lucky thing to have a family. I'm glad they cherish it.

We also heard from the Harrises. Apparently, they made it out of Kingsville just fine. Clint became Eli Hodges' favorite doctor somehow and helped them wait out the war at some secret safehouse of his.

I met with them before we came back to Mathesdale. They were with another woman named Daisy and her daughter Aaria. They said they were gonna stay at the safehouse for a while longer till the after effects of this war start to wear off. Good for them, they found a place where they felt safe. I can understand why they'd wanna be there as long as they could till everything became stable.

***

Okay, that's all for the "good" stuff that happened. This is where things get serious now. We had our first general elections in the past decade.

We rigged it.

I know it sounds shady but none of the more knowledgeable people among us (Luce, Erik, Command, Watcher, Lisa) could trust the commoners with selecting the leader because the last time we had elections, they elected Julien Varon. And we all know how that went.

Gemma was against that opinion. But she was also massively outvoted. We wanted to make sure she got in the Seat of Authority no matter what. So we got a dummy opposition. Watcher ran for the election against her. (Also I learnt Watcher's real name is Warren Astor. I think that's a much cooler name than his codename).

The strategy was pretty simple. Watcher won't campaign too hard. And we'll really sell Gemma's kind heartedness and her work in Mathesdale to convince everyone she is such an awesome leader.

The citizens of Mathesdale helped a lot in spreading the word about how cool she is. She even got help from her cousin Eva Koehlwin.

Also the fact that she had convinced Leo Albrecht to keep peace with her played a big role in her getting elected.

So yeah she won the elections. There was some deceit involved. But it wasn't anything as messed up as the lies that Julien Varon fed us for the past decade.

But that's about it. Once Gemma was in the office, she didn't let anyone interfere with her work as the First Leader.

The first thing she did was sign the peace treaty with Moudrin and pass a retreating order to the troops that had been occupying Moudrin throughout the war. Then she got Ardvenia into the International Peace Forum. That certainly helped with better trade and a much needed economic boost.