A Challenge to the Convention

The Ship of Dreams

Since the breaking of dawn on the 10th of April 1912, people of all shapes and sizes, young and old, First-Class and Second and Third, began to flood the dock at the Port of Southampton until it felt as though one could not move an inch without bumping into another.
Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces of black and gold and burgundy, glinting like diamonds in the early morning light, carried the aristocrats, the elites and the well-to-dos to the Titanic while those of the Third-Class, standing in line, waiting for depressors to be shoved down their throats and combs yanked through their hair in search of lice, watched on in amazement.

It was one of these automobiles, one of startling ivory and black and adorned with gold, from which a white leathered hand was presented to the chauffeur at the opened door. It was a hand that moved slowly, evenly, lacking any sort of excitement at the destination or eagerness, one that simply moved as if it were a machine and this were its sole duty, much like the crank on the car in which such a hand sat ensconced. And from this machine-like hand appeared a lady, adorned in a white pinstriped suit, and a plum-colored wide-brimmed hat cantilevered over a face far older than that of her mere seventeen years.

She was unimpressed by the enthusiasm surrounding her—both the wild, untamed jumping and hooting of that of the steerage passengers and the sober, straight-backed, turgid praise of that of the higher classes—and even with a look upon the magnificent ship, the fastest, largest and most luxurious of her kind, her expression and opinions remained the same and steadfast, as fiery and stubborn as the hair piled upon her head.

Not a moment later, her fiancé, a sober, imposing man, brimming with a simmering temper hidden just beneath his skin, bedecked in a grey suit and hat, stepped forth from the automobile and smiled up at the liner, a rare form of amazement in his eyes that she was always shocked to see when it possessed him, for Jayce usually took every advancement of man and machine no matter how great or pivotal with complacence as if it were a birthright for him to witness. And because of this, the spirited lady before him could not bear to let the opportunity to provoke him pass her by.

"I don't see what all the fuss is about," she said, pointing her chin up and turning to Jayce, straightening her back and looking into his eyes. "It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauretania."
The man rolled his eyes, his happiness unaffected, and thus she burned within. "You can be blasé about some things, Caitlyn, but not about Titanic!" he pointed at the ship before them in question with his walking stick. "It's over a hundred feet longer than Mauretania and far more luxurious."
He turned to the car where his fiancee's mother, pale and bluehair as her daughter, was stepping into the chilly April morning, and said, "Your daughter's far too difficult to impress, Cassandra," to which the woman only laughed with a poorly-concealed annoyance.

Caitlyn rolled her shining blue eyes and walked from the man, closer to the bow of the magnificent Titanic. In truth, her artistic heart burned at the sight of her in all her glory, steam flowing from her smokestacks with pride, so happy to take on passengers for the first ever time she figured she could almost see Titanic beaming. She saw not a ship, not a means of transportation but a work of absolute majesty, hammered and wrought together by the hands of brilliant and skilled and steady men until she was formed, ready to take on distance and anything that was thrown her way. Caitlyn was fascinated by the ocean liner, she wanted to know everything about it, everything down to the tiny iron rivets holding her together. But she pushed this feeling down as women in First-Class were supposed to push down all feelings, for anything by which Jayce was impressed was something Caitlyn wished to hate.

"So this is the ship they say is unsinkable," Ruth mused, sashaying in the perfect example of an upper-class woman, hands folded daintily within her fur muff.
"It is unsinkable!" Jayce chimed from behind. "God Himself could not sink this ship!"
Caitlyn turned her hatted head, hearing lowly the bribing of the White Star Line employee by Jayce, who shoved a handful of bills in his face in exchange for the workload to be taken off him, spoiled brat that he was, and onto others he deemed more worthy of such duties. She felt bad for the man being forced beyond his job, but she felt no sympathy for Victor, Jayce's right-hand man, his servant and thug and spy, slimy and brash as the man himself, and she secretly rejoiced at the frustration he would endure with their luggage.
Oh, the small joys in her monotonous life.