The Valerius family carriage shook gently as its iron wheels rolled over the neat stone roads. Inside, Evelyn sat up straight. Her hands, covered in white silk gloves, held a small silver-embroidered bag. Behind the thick glass window of the carriage, Oakhaven showed its true face: a city full of progress, beautiful buildings, and busy, noisy people.
That morning, Evelyn was scheduled to visit a tailor in the Central District before attending a tea party at Baroness Moore's residence. This trip was one of the few moments where she could observe the world outside her thick house walls, even if only from behind the carriage window.
"Oakhaven feels more crowded today, don't you think, Martha?" Evelyn asked softly. Her eyes did not leave the view outside.
Martha, who sat across from her with a stiff back, glanced briefly out the window. "The construction of the new railway to the north dock is being sped up, Milady. His Grace the Duke said it's to increase coal exports to the capital. Progress demands space, and space always means crowds."
Evelyn was silent, absorbing that answer. Progress. A word often spoken by her father and the ministers at the dinner table. To them, progress was numbers on parchment and piles of gold in bank vaults. But to Evelyn, progress looked like black smoke coming out of giant factory chimneys—factories that never stopped pulsing, like a giant heart made of machines and steam.
Their carriage now entered the main road of the Commercial District. Here, the smell of horses mixed with the sharp scent of machine oil and steam sprayed from underground pipes. There were multi-story buildings with different name signs. Their windows were small and always shut tight to keep out the dust.
"Look there, Martha," Evelyn pointed to a clock shop on the corner. In its display window was a prototype of a new mechanical clock with complex brass arms. "Everything is now driven by springs and steam. Sometimes I wonder, will humans soon be replaced by machines as well?"
"A strange question, Milady," Martha replied flatly. "Machines are made to serve us. As long as we control the steam and coal, humans will remain the masters."
Evelyn smiled slightly—a secretive smile. She was smart enough to notice one thing people like Martha often forgot: machines need fuel, and fuel needs humans to dig the ground. A tiring circle.
As the carriage crossed Serpentine Bridge, Evelyn pressed her palm against the window glass. She could feel the vibrations of distant machines traveling through the carriage wheels, into the carriage, and finally to her fingertips. This world felt so mechanical, so orderly, and so… predictable.
There was no place for illogical things in a world ruled by steam pressure and the laws of production. But Evelyn's curiosity often made her notice small things others ignored—how shadows in Oakhaven's narrow alleys sometimes looked darker than they should, or how some old buildings in the ancient district had architecture that made no sense for housing modern steam engines.
"We are almost at Madame Claire's boutique, Milady," Martha's voice broke Evelyn's daydream.
Evelyn stepped down. She breathed in the Oakhaven air, which felt heavy in her lungs. Her silk dress swept across the sidewalk, creating a sharp contrast with the street dust. She looked up at the sky covered in a web of telegraph cables.
"Such a busy world," Evelyn murmured to herself, before stepping inside and leaving the city's noise behind her.