To clare_dragonfly‘s prompt for here, my dailyprompt prompt “end of an era.”
This is set in the Steam Era of my Reiassan setting, with new characters.
The Icon (in DW) is of another character in that setting/era, an artificer/Engineer, Diryid.
“It’s not the way things have been done.” Lebboozh stared at the engineers and workmen standing at the edge of his goat-field. “Barges and carts, Tinryo, those gave my father business, and his mother, and her father, back as long as there have been people on this mountain.”
“It’s the end of an era, Leb, that’s all it is.” The wagon-maker patted his shoulder. “It happens, you know. Remember your father when they made the new goat-harnesses?”
“That’s different.” Lebboozh grumbled because he did not want to think about his father’s face, all those years ago – either when he’d first seen the new harnesses that balanced the load more efficiently, or when he’d seen how much happier the goats were in the new gizmos.
He did not want to think about what Tinryo’s father had said then, either.
Remember what your mother said, when they started to put springs in the wagons?
“It’s the end of an era,” he muttered. “Let’s see where they’ll fit the goats in to it, why don’t we?”
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So what is it? The beginning of the end of goat power?
The arrival of steam trains? (I am trying to imagine goat-driven trains, but can’t immediately think why that’d be better than goat-drawn wagons. And yet mad tech clearly demands goats in giant hamster wheels powering trains … or maybe not.)
Giant hamster wheels! Yeah, I was thinkign steam trains. I do not know if it will ever be the end of the goat era, because the Calenyena are so goat-proud.
Steam trains grow no wool, give no milk, are not good to eat, and cannot handle last-mile delivery away from the train tracks. There will keep being goats.
Hah, yes. And leather. Steam leather is no good.