Louisville, KY

Journal Entry – September 16, 1871

The morning sky is a pale sheet of pewter, a dull hush settling over the town like the final note of a hymn. Damp cobblestones glisten beneath my boots, reflecting fractured pieces of a sun reluctant to appear. The scent of coal smoke lingers—soft, bitter—and mingles with the faint perfume of overripe pears spilling from a vendor’s cart.

I linger near the courthouse steps where clusters of men debate the merits of progress and industry. Their words carry the metallic clink of ambition, yet their eyes betray a hunger far older than any machine. Each glance, each murmured wager, tightens the unseen net around them.

The breeze shifts; it tastes of distant rain and whispered bargains. In the quiet, I trace my own reflection in the darkened windows, a fleeting silhouette that belongs neither fully to this town nor to the one I left behind. Every name I borrow grows heavier; every promise unkept a weight in my pocket.