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Lady Siana of Brookrise, twenty-five and long resigned to carriage confines, watched the passing courier girls with a hunger she couldn't name. When her brother laughed—"Not proper for a lady"—she waited until moonset, borrowed a stable boy's cycle, and wobbled into the orchard alone.
The first glide—dress hem billowing, hair unpinned—felt like a gate swinging open inside her bones. She returned at dawn mud-spattered and radiant. That morning she ordered a drop-frame model from Riverbend, painted the blue of storm-lit twilight.
By harvest, Brookrise estates swarmed with women riders: dairymaids delivering cream, midwives reaching cottages before first contractions, noble ladies chasing sunsets along ridge roads. Seamstress guilds unveiled **split riding skirts** of linen-silk blends; cobblers introduced **pedal boots** with reinforced soles.
Predictably, sermons erupted. High Priest Luron thundered of "modesty undone by rolling scandal." Yet temple attendance dipped as village women chose sunrise rides over pews. Lady Darsha counseled calm: "Grant them motion, and their faith will follow."
Sharath responded with data. Accident reports showed female riders suffered fewer injuries than male couriers—caution trumping bravado. Economic ledgers revealed dairy profits up ten percent from faster deliveries. Numbers spoke louder than dogma.
At autumn's Moon-Fest parade, the Queen herself rode flanked by Elina and fifty women of all stations. Wheels glittered under torchlight, and the crowd erupted. In that roar tradition cracked—not shattered, but reshaped like hot iron.