CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A bright horizon
‘Our brachiosaur nation of Dexter Islands would not be going extinct’, the soothing voice of the local station’s broadcaster, Taila Jenkins said the very next day after the big war. ‘No pun intended’, she added and it would pass for a really good joke by then.
Life was back to normal for everyone. Khelain had returned home and got out from the underground, Tristan gave Samantha a long kiss and proposed to her immediately he returned home making her mother get so joyous that she cried. The same couldn’t be said for Dale.
He had received treatment for his damaged left palm that only three full fingers left on it and had to cope with camera lenses that popped up everywhere he went to. On the third day after the end of Quppis, Dale joined a group of one hundred thousand citizens, dressed in gloomy clothes, at the Gollogher main cemetery – which was all the ground where all the military men of Dexter who had died in The Big Slaughter were laid – for a last-respect honour for all the fallen men during the battle, where he made a quick speech, thanking all the foreign governments that came to their aid, speaking about a new dawn for the country, sending condolence messages for all the families that lost someone in the war.
The people of Hustarbull finally had their prayers answered and their psalmist’s cries answered to. It was good for Dale to move in the streets – in tinted-window Jeeps – and see people out there, in carnivals, dancing and singing about a new dawn. Even more evocative was when he looked up at the tall billboards and saw himself on it: Reece Bailey for president. Barry, who was with him most of the time, would say: ‘Seems like we are going to have our first president with no First Lady’
Tristan, Barry and Dale returned to Crawdown to perform for the final time. Nothing made Gollogherans any happier. It was still that Dale but it only took a year to transform him from the scrawny kid with a small voice and deft hand tricks, to Reece Bailey with the hand tricks still intact but with more microphones to amplify his voice. While one year was a whole lot time slower than his Transformation trick, it was enough to save their country.
Dale later revealed that he was going to be running for president and just like every utterance he pronounced – since the time he spoke on Dexter Call – the whole country would go agog. All the protests of all the years past were morphed into clamour for the rulership of the 22-year-old kid whose life had spontaneously changed. It turned out that Dale wouldn’t be needing to be running for president because there was no contestant against him. Different hashtags, different clamours, different captions, one same candidate. One same kid. The kid from Crawdown’s Humour Sect.
Thankfully, Dale’s hand had healed up before he needed it to hold up The Presidential Staff of Honour. By then, winter had descended fully, spreading from the far south Hustarbull to Baskers. It was done with the disguise and come down as heavy gales of snow pouring down the canopies at the swearing-in. Unlike the past time, Dale ordered that it be done in the country’s capital, Tifftam rather than a Reckdette where only the powerful people resided.
Everyone deemed it fit to arrive there, waving their miniature Dexterran flags and chanting his name at every chance they got. Even the skylark had flown all the way to see the man he had seen too many times behind a screen.
Dale had waved at the crowd while riding in the presidential vehicle, just after being announced President. He shook and hugged as many people as he could.
‘I guess this is the last important thing my eyes need to see before it gets finally useless’, Samantha’s mother had said to him with her palms on the president’s face.
However, Mark wasn’t that lucky. He died the day before from sustained injuries and was buried in his home at Gollogher.
The presidential dinner took place eight hours after that. Dale was dressed in a smart suit with a white inner shirt and a blue tie, looking cooler than he had been. A lot cooler than the orange clothes worn at Boorbunk.
At the end, Dale filled his goblet to the brim with red wine and raised it up along with every other person for a toast. ‘We have this toast against The Order of The Quppis’, and everyone echoed in appraisal. ‘We have a toast to no more enemies. Therefore, we have a toast to peace and a bright horizon’, he said and the glasses clinked together before they raised it to their lips.
A toast to no more Death Toasts.
THE END