I don't own it, but I can't seem to let this go. Companion to On the Way, occurs after that story.
From the start, Furiosa runs her city efficiently. She knows exactly how much water is used per day, how much food, how much guzzoline. She works tirelessly, hearing petitions and cleaning up messes and figuring out how to bring a mass of people from half-dead to mostly-living. Furiosa worries. She worries about attacks, she worries about running out of supplies, she worries about how she will ever manage to run New Citadel, as it has become, in the long term. And, now and again before she drifts off to sleep, she dares to worry about Max. All of this, however, she pushes to the back of her mind. Worrying, like hope, is unproductive. The one worry she can't avoid is about the wives, and how they will fare in this new world. As it turns out, that one is entirely unnecessary. They find their own ways in time.
The Dag has the easiest time finding her place in New Citadel. She has the seeds that Grower left her, and she works to turn the desert into a green place. She designs aqueducts and finds books about hydroponics and she cares for the plants with the help of the Milking Mothers and the Wretched-no, she corrects herself, the people-who choose to join her. When her belly is too swollen and she cannot be in the dirt herself, she walks among the gardens and does what she can on her feet. As soon as her daughter is born, she brings the child with her. Angharad the Second never, ever lives in a vault. Angharad the Second knows sprawling fields of green.
Toast the Knowing, among other things, knows how to fire a gun. One of the remaining Vulvalini was once head of her people's troops. The remaining War Boys are in hardly better shape than the wretched, but it is obvious that this will only give more incentive for Gastown and the Bullet Farm to attack. There are scavengers in the wastelands who will jump at any opportunity for supplies. Toast and the Vulvalini take over the army. Men and women, large and small, those who volunteer and are able to fight are taken. Toast organizes, efficiently sorting bullets and guns and people. She discovers a ruthlessness within herself that gives her perhaps more joy than it should. But whenever there is an attack, she is fiercely proud of the army and of the self that she has built.
Capable mourns Nux, quietly and in solitude. Then she honors him, in silence and surrounded by people. The other Vulvalini who survived the Fury Road is an expert mechanic, and Capable, true to her name, learns quickly. They lead the mechanics, no longer just War Boys in waiting if they don't want to be. They take any of the former Wretched who want to join as well, building machines that can fight, but also different ones, ones that can tear through the ground at their feet. These, they give to the Dag, who uses them to help make her gardens grow. They take to the wastelands after battle to see what they can use, and Toast throws fierce grins whenever they find something of particular use. Sometimes, after a particularly hard or productive day, Capable grins too, because even Nux's black thumb couldn't have done that.
Cheedo takes the longest to find her place. She had no before, which left her vulnerable during. After, that timidity continued to hold her back. Eventually, however, she finds her place with those as quiet as she. The children, hidden by their parents and relatives, having spent their whole lives in the same mix of terror and innocence that gripped her for most of hers, gravitate to her, sensing she is one of their own. She takes the books that are stashed in rooms around the citadel. Reading, she could do. That, she did in the vault. So she teaches what she knows to the children, first to read, and then what they are reading. They follow her the way the adults follow Furiousa. As more and more young ones come out of the shadows, or are birthed by newly healthier parents, she takes on the best as her assistants, and she leads. Slowly, Cheedo the Fragile becomes Cheedo the Strong.
A long time after he leaves, Max hears on the wind of a far off place. A place where those who wish to build are welcome, and those who wish to destroy do not stand a chance. It is run, the wind says, by women. One pale as moonlight, and her daughter with eyes like the sky, who make the arid desert give birth. One who is dark, who knows war and keeps peace. One with hair like a flame who builds some things that no one can outrun and the rest that all can follow. One who is quiet, but guides the future with firm, sure hands. And one who watches from within, unquestionably in charge but never above, undeniably powerful but one with her people. The wind does not describe her, but Max has long had her committed to memory. Five years after he has left, Max turns his bike in the direction that the wind tells him. In a place like that, he might find redemption.
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