I’ve been following this thread with great fascination! I started thinking about what would happen if the loops begin much earlier and only happen when specific conditions are met, and realized it starts resolving backstory questions in interesting ways. Here is an opening bit:

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The first time Furiosa runs away from the Citadel is seven days after her mother dies. She doesn’t have any time to prepare, she just sees her chance, kicks a war boy in the crotch, and fangs it for the horizon. On foot, no water, no weapons. She sprints through the crowds of the wretched, faster than the war boy, trying to plan. She has no supplies. Even if she can outrun them, she can’t survive in the desert without a few tools.

She trips over a wretched woman and they both go sprawling, and the answer presents itself - the woman has a knife tucked into her belt. She grabs it, jumps up, and runs on, ignoring the woman’s yell. The wretched have very little - she may have just taken a survival tool that meant as much to that woman as it now does to her. She doesn’t let herself think about it.

She takes an empty water bladder from another wretched. Furiosa knows how to collect water in the desert from dew or from plants, all Vuvalini do, it’s slow but she can do it.  She runs into the desert until she hears motorbikes - the war boy and friends, coming to find her. She scrapes frantically at the side of a dune and curls up where the wind will pile more sand against her, and it works. They go past her.

That afternoon, a storm blows in. With no water supply and no shelter, she does not expect to survive it. I’m coming to find you, Mother. She thinks as the dark sand closes in and her world shrinks down to her body, her knife, and the water bladder. She’s not sure if it’s sleep or death that takes her.

She wakes up in the breeder’s pens in the Citadel. She blinks, confused, and then shakes her head vigorously. Hell of a dream, Fury.

The day plays out exactly like her dream, as best she can remember. The same war boy - she remembers the motorcycle chain carved into his skin - takes her from the breeder’s pen and past an open staircase that leads down. She can smell fresh air coming up it, and she almost kicks him again.

She doesn’t. Her mother’s last words were that she would protect her, even after death, and Furiosa isn’t going to disregard her warnings. The war boy takes her on to the healer, a man with a shock of white hair who laughs at his own jokes and looks between her legs. No-one’s looked there since she was old enough to bathe herself. She bites her lip and reminds herself to wait. The storm hits the Citadel that afternoon.