Ever After Happy (audio story)

Ever After Happy was the first story in the Bernice Summerfield box set The Story So Far: Volume One.

Publisher's summary
Bernice Summerfield is a young rebel, living in the grounds of a military Academy. The enemy fleet's looking for them, there are strange lights in the sky, and a terrible new gardener called Wintergreen.

Plot
Living illegally on the grounds of the Academy, Benny gives a lesson to a group of students and meets a new gardener, Wintergreen. She keeps an eye on her, believing her to be a spy, and shares her suspicions with her friend, Simon. Simon is sceptical, but Wintergreen approaches him and tells him not to betray Benny to the Academy as it would break Benny's heart; this makes Simon think that Benny does not trust him despite his efforts to keep her safe and he storms out.

The Principal stops tolerating Benny's presence on the ground and sends out a search party which burns her camp. She hides and bumps into Wintergreen, who says that in attempting to rebel against the Academy she is actually helping them by serving as a safety net to keep the other students from leaving. She tells her that she has to not only help herself instead of others and to find out what the Principal is up to before taking her to her hut, on the way to which Benny notices disturbed ground. Benny starts to examine it.

Simon denies having anything to do with the search party and asks Benny to return to the Academy, which has become a strict and toxic place to be after two students were caught signalling the enemy. When she visits Wintergreen, who is living with a werewolf, an enemy scout attacks the asteroid and kills several students, including a friend of Benny's who is left with a two-person gun that she cannot use. Benny joins her and, after her friend's death, Wintergreen helps her destroy the scout.

to be completed

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Young Bernice - Emily Laing
 * Simon - Ché Francis
 * The Principal - Robbie Stevens

Continuity

 * Younger Benny mentions how the enemy killed her mother and father. (PROSE: Love and War)
 * Older Benny mentions working for the Braxiatel Collection. (PROSE: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Doomsday Manuscript)