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After he weaves through the grateful crowd, reaching toward their new rulers and drinking, at last, plentiful, Max walks for hours and miles on Fury Road. He’s looking for something. He's looking for an unmarked grave.
He comes across it in the middle of the night, ready to collapse in a fitful sleep. He falls, and the sandy ground feels wrong underneath him. He can feel it’s been displaced, disturbed - sand and dirt once buried under the epidermis of the Wasteland now sitting on top of it. His last thought before he sleeps spread-eagle, unprotected in the cool desert night is I’ve found it.
Max becomes a sentry for the Citadel, riding circles around it as far as the collapsed pass - now the Metallic Graveyard - and returning every so often for food, for water, for shelter. Though he is just one person, merely a man, the denizens of the Citadel feel safe knowing he’s there, watching and waiting.
Before his first ride out, Max requests a pole wrapped in the finest, most vibrant blues. “What for?” Cheedo the Fragile asks as he addresses her, seated at her loom.
“F’r out there,” he grunts, jerking his head toward the open Wasteland.
Cheedo, quick with her hands, presents to him two days later a wooden pole of four feet, made of a branch and sanded to soft, smooth perfection. It is wrapped in fine thread in blue and in teal, cyan and turquoise. Max is thankful, and bows his thanks to Cheedo. He sets off two hours later, pole sitting in the backseat.
Max’s first stop is the unmarked grave of the Splendid Angharad, where he uses all his strength to force the pole right into the sand. Now every time he passes, the brilliant blue pole greets him and says farewell when he rides past.
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After weeks and even months of patrolling in the Wasteland, Max begins to notice the Baluster of Angharad is growing green at the base. The first time he sees the greens, he parks his car and gets out to examine them. The greens that grow at the foot of the Baluster are just like what The Dag grows in the Citadel - bright, healthy, beautiful green. The second time he sees them, they are growing bigger. The third time he sees them, Furiosa is in the seat next to him. “There?” she asks, pointing toward the Baluster on the horizon. Max nods, pressing his foot harder into the gas.
They get out and Furiosa inspects the green, staring solemnly at the Baluster and running her fingers through the sand. She frowns. “This is just like what The Dag has in her Growing Chamber,” she says.
The next day, they bring The Dag out to the Baluster. When it comes into sight, The Dag throws her hands up and lets out a watery wail. When she stumbles onto the sand, she wails again, triumphant, and does a strange dance around the Baluster. Her body, lithe again after the birth of her daughter, looks weightless.
“Her people were worshippers,” Furiosa whispers to Max, who watches with confusion.
“The Splendid Angharad has blessed the Wasteland!” The Dag cries, throwing herself to the ground and burying her face in the greens, breathing in their scent. “The Splendid Angharad is giving birth to the world!”
The Dag takes news of the green to the Citadel, to the Sisters. None of them can believe it, and they demand Max take them to see it themselves. Max takes every sister out to the greens, leaving Furiosa behind to watch over the Citadel. Cheedo shrieks and cries, joining The Dag in her chanting and dancing. Toast the Knowing stares in quiet awe, unable to cry and unable to speak. Capable is in a similar state, holding herself and staring, chewing on her own mouth, gently rubbing her swollen belly.
The greens grow fast. And they grow wide, and all over everything. And one day, a tiny spout of water begins to trickle out of the ground.
Instead of reaping the Baluster, Furiosa and the Sisters decide to settle it. They take War Pups and War Boys and some of the Wretched out to the Baluster, and the Sisters tell of the Splendid Angharad as though she were always a goddess. The Pups and the Boys and the Wretched all listen with intense attention, and soon enough they are worshipping the Splendid as the All-Mother, the Giver of Life.
They trade stories of their own creation, wherein the Splendid Angharad was pregnant with the Earth and the evil Mortanjo tore it from her belly. The Midwives of the Splendid - The Wise One, The Seed Keeper, The Fragile, The Compassionate, as well as The Fury Queen - kill Mortanjo and spread the Splendid Angharad’s body over her child, the Earth, her hair and her hope enough to wrap around the world three times.
The Wretched - now calling themselves the Blessed - build a great stone statue of their image of the All-Mother, holding her perfect, spherical child in her arms. The statue is set behind the Baluster. As the greens grow, so do stone paths. A fountain is made around the statue and the Baluster, and the water that sprung so pure form the Earth is wired through the land by way of great, hulking aqueducts.
The Baluster of Angharad becomes its own town, a peaceful metropolis, a crossroads for wanderers. In the beginning, they try to take it - those from Gastown, the Bullet Farm, the Buzzards. But Max and Furiosa are there to stop the attacks, and soon, those people learn to share the bountiful beauty and supply of the Baluster.
The Dag relocates herself and her daughter, Sprout, to the Baluster, and Cheedo takes over her garden at the Citadel. Capable, with her miracle child Star, the son of the god they call Chrome, the first man let into the green Valhalla of the Splendid Angharad, becomes the leader of the Citadel and writes the stories of the Splendid, binding them with Cheedo’s spun thread and giving them to the Blessed by the handful. Toast becomes a markswoman, and she shows the Splendid Pups and Boys, and Girls, how to defend themselves and the places they hold dear. Max and Furiosa ride, traversing the Wasteland and protecting the people they hold dear.
The Baluster of Angharad comes to be known by many names. The Oasis of the Splendid, The Grave of the Goddess, The Mother’s Breast. But to The Dag, and to Cheedo, and Toast, and Capable, and Max, and Furiosa, it is known simply as the place they all once sought as an escape from the vicious Wasteland. Simply The Green Place.