Chapter 46 - CH 45 -The Quiet Reconnection

The passage of time after a cataclysm is a strange and mercurial thing. The initial, deafening roar of collapse gives way to an eerie, ringing silence, which is then slowly, almost imperceptibly, filled by the mundane sounds of life stubbornly continuing. Weeks bled into a month, and the sharp, jagged, headline-grabbing edges of the Vale scandal began to be worn smooth by the relentless, grinding wheels of routine and the slow, patient, and often excruciatingly dull turning of the legal process. The world's voracious attention, having feasted to satiation, moved on to fresher dramas, leaving behind a fragile, tentative normalcy. It was a new normal, a landscape permanently altered, but one upon which the survivors were now learning to build.