The plains outside Eldridge rippled gold beneath the first summer wheat, and along the new cedar track a lone bard pedaled toward the city gates. His cycle—painted a riot of blues and crimsons—had once been a discarded prototype. Now its chain chimed in rhythm with the harp strapped across his back.
At every hamlet the bard—Jeren of the Open Lute—stopped to trade music for supper. He sang of iron-spoked miracles and cedar roads that hummed beneath the moon, his chorus catching like thistle seeds on the wind:
> *Roll, little wheel, roll free and light,* > *Carry the dream through harvest night;* > *Where horses tire and wagons groan,* > *Your humming spokes bring daylight home.*
By the time Jeren reached Eldridge, entire taverns rang with the tune. Smiths pounded anvils to its beat; washerwomen found their scrubbing strokes matching the rhythm. Children chalked wheel-glyphs on alley stones beneath the refrain: *Roll, little wheel, roll free…*
Sharath heard the song first as a distant echo through an open workshop window. It startled him more deeply than any royal decree, because it meant the cycle had jumped from columns of cost-savings into the marrow of culture.
That night he and Mira slipped into Southgate Square where Jeren performed under lantern light. When the chorus rose, three hundred voices lifted into the warm dark—farm hands beside magistrates, guildmasters beside gutter urchins. The invention was no longer his; it belonged to everyone who could hold a tune.
Sharath stepped forward only after the final chord faded. Jeren bowed low, startled when the young lord embraced him like an old friend. "Your song," Sharath whispered, "is the wind my wheels were waiting for." He pressed a silver chime into the bard's palm—payment not for flattery, but for carrying hope farther than any ledger could.