"I don't know what you already know! Perhaps all mushrooms are delicacies where you're from." She spends a few minutes explaining local forage. The flora of the reach is, apparently, boisterous and erratic. Fungus is generally to be treated with great caution, not even approaching too close. And one should not gather or carry honey unless one wishes to deal with the dangerous dog-sized hypnotically singing Chorister Bees.

A couple hours after dawn the next morning she spots a speck trailing smoke round the corner of one of the islands, alerts Thorn, grabs her hood and starts making her way down to the waterfall base. She shifts into a slightly mysterious and confidently knowledgeable persona on the way down.

The locomotive is a flying engine larger in all dimensions than any that have ever pulled cargo across tracks on most Earths, but Primrose identifies it as one of the smallest varieties. There are scars and dents on the hull, and a couple of outright holes. There is a bridge with three figures at controls, translucently covered by orangeish stained glass. It ejects steam out of rear nozzles as well as the top chimney and appears to be halfway ignoring gravity. It pulls smoothly up to the large clearing and sets down, seeming weightless until the last moment, inaudible over the falls.

A small parade of middle aged folk tromp out, chatting and ambling towards the falls, followed by a few younger folk in uniforms who proceed to check around the exterior of the engine, fussing over the holes.

Thorn lags behind a bit getting her bedroll stowed, but catches up after a few minutes. As they near the base of the falls, she pulls Primrose aside and offers her a palm-sized gold coin. It's stamped on both sides with the letters OTC in a hexagonal grid. 

"For all your time, care and consideration. Gold's valuable most places; hopefully this is more than enough to cover any trouble I've caused."

"-More than enough, yes. I'm not sure how to verify gold, but I'll graciously accept it. Thank you and good travels."

"Good luck." 

She waves goodbye to Primrose, and approaches the locomotive. Should she just march up and speak to the officers? That would be presumptuous. So: she'll stop at a respectful distance from the locomotive, looking through the orange stained glass at the likely-officers, and wait to be noticed.

They're doing some kind of shutdown procedure by the looks of it. One of them waves to acknowledge her.

A minute later someone trying fairly hard to present as androdgynous, wearing a bowler hat and close-trimmed coat with a scar across their throat and a revolver at their side, steps out. They scowl at the damage, then turn towards Thorn.

"Captain Rothwell. Need something?"

"Thorn, or the Runed Wanderer by 'nym. Passage Londonwards as far as you'll take me." 

Captain Rothwell raises an eyebrow and looks around feigning confusion. "Huh. I seem like your only option. Interesting. Did your ride out here leave you behind?"

"I may be a bit stranded at the moment, but it's by my own choice. And I didn't come unprepared; I have gold to pay my return ticket."

She holds up another palm-size gold coin. 

They purse their lips. "Kowalski! Go get my scales, please."

How much does the coin weigh? Can it be bent a bit like a soft metal should?

It weights, measures and bends as .917 gold, because that is what it is. 

"...Hmm. This will get you to Port Avon, those fine ladies and gentlemen's origin, and fifty Sovereigns. Or to New Winchester which is closer to Port Prosper and the Transit Relay, and thirty-five. I'm not heading any closer to London after that."

"New Winchester and thirty-five, and thank you for the change. I'll board along with your other clients when they return?" 

"Welcome aboard the good engine Bramble. You may as well get settled now. There's two empty cabins." They scowl again. "If you're wondering about the holes, they're from a scrive-spinster. I was offered a substantial payout to hunt one. I've reconsidered the risks. We're going to patch her up as best we can in a few hours, she'll hold together if we don't get into any fights."

"I'll leave myself in your capable hands, Captain." 

She comes aboard and lets herself be directed to an unoccupied cabin, where she plunks down her pack and settles in to wait.

Through a pale red window she can watch the crew fell and chop up a tree, then apply some of the fresh lumber to the exterior of the engine as "better than nothing". The captain sends someone to ask if she'd like meals in her cabin or in the canteen.

They're off again in the early afternoon. The other passengers are loudly occupying the canteen.

She takes her meals in her cabin, preferring the solitude it gives her. Occasionally she journals, using a black metal ballpoint pen and a simple faux-leather-bound journal. She looks at the stars only briefly, remembering Primrose's warning. 

Looking at the stars, those dazzling points of distant light and law... Doesn't seem to do anything if she keeps it short.

The locomotive chugs through the air for several days, navigating valleys and crags. There is a brief stoppage for some kind of mechanical problem and things get a bit chilly as they scramble to fix it, but then the journey resumes and the air is warmed by steam pipes again. The falls were the most beautiful sight to see - The landscape they pass through, while still verdant, is more wild and not quite as deliberately pretty. They pass two different swarms of Chorister Bees and slow down until they're long gone, but apparently nobody here has enough honey to provoke an attack. They also pass a burnt-out wreck floating in midair, pause to investigate (apparently to signal to any survivors with the headlight), and then quickly move on.

Some bored off-duty crewmembers invite her to drink and play cards on the second day. They're likely to get to Port Avon on the third, and New Winchester late at night on the fourth.

She's supposed to be keeping to herself. If the crew find out about her origins, that could be disastrous. 

On the other hand, the crew likely have some good stories to tell of far places. So it could help her gather vital intelligence. 

Ultimately, boredom makes the decision for her. Evas don't take well to understimulation. 

"I'll play, but I won't drink. Dulls the nerves."

That's so valid. They want their nerves dulled, travelling for too long rather frays them.

She can learn to play a complicated card-passing game and hear stories about fighting (then fleeing from) huge wooden librarians (Scrive-Spinsters) and terminally angry isopods (Cantankeri), about how bucolic Port Avon was and maybe they should vacation there, about the strange Correspondence-engraved obelisk near Polmear and Plenty's circus, about the constant low-level skirmishing between the independence-minded Tacketies and Windward Company Stovepipes, about how they miss the Neath's mushroom wine and grape wine just isn't the same, horror stories of sky-mad explorers whose glass windows were all blown out and not repaired in time for them to stay who they used to be, news of the trade in Unrefined Hours and the Tacketies' threat to stop exporting them back to Albion...

Despite herself, Thorn finds herself smiling from ear to ear. This is an interesting world, and a lucky one. She even volunteers her story of being hunted by the squid-millipede-dog in Traitor's Wood. 

Yep, that sounds about right for Traitor's Wood. She's lucky she didn't run into something that stole her voice or took away her sense of direction or whatever. (Nobody here has actually been into Traitor's Wood).

They discuss more. Homesteaders are reasonably common here, as are pirates and marauders - but they're one of the least dangerous things. One guy laments that Chorister Honey is banned on this engine. It does wonderful things to one's voice. Another wonders just how Bronzewood trees actually work and is told that's folly to investigate without being some kind of academic, just cut them out and sell the gleaming wood for a tidy profit. The Blue Kingdom comes up as some kind of afterlife one can yet travel to(?), but the topic is quickly and loudly changed to different varieties of alcohol and food.

She settles in to listen to the sky stories, and after a few rounds more she bids the sailors farewell and heads back to her cabin.

Port Avon is a cheery, quiet little place. Cabins with gardens, a wide village square with a Maypole fair, a homey little pub, apple orchards and cricket fields, a white stone church, all surrounded by vistas of old stone ruins of mysterious purpose sized for titans, which the locals seem to mostly ignore.

They stop just long enough to disembark the middle-aged bathers, who cheerfully ramble about their 'adventure' to their neighbors, considering it great fun to have been in the locomotive while it was battered about and nearly destroyed on the way out, and pick up a small cargo of frankly enormous seeds tied together in heavy bundles. Then they're off again into landscapes that are much less ridiculously overgrown.

She can overhear speculation on who she is and why she's travelling. The leading theories are 'spy from one of the factions in Eleutheria', 'bard or artist of some sort going undercover', and 'involved with the Devils somehow'. (The last one is on account of her tattoos.)

She smiles to herself a little over the speculations; they tell her what sorts of people the locals suspect of duplicity and cunning. "Bard or artist undercover" is a good story, though. She might be able to lean into that one. 

She takes more time over journalling, and starts writing little fictitious accounts of encounters with Chorister Bees and Scrive-Spinsters patterned off the tales she's heard the sailors telling, marking each with a simple star so they're not confused for honest reporting if this journal should ever be retrieved by another her. She plays cards, listens to the sky-stories, and on occasion she asks a crewman with a particularly good story if she can write it down in her journal. 

Other overheard speculations include:

Spy from Her Majesty's Intelligence Service
Half-child of something higher on the Great Chain of Being, maybe a Scorn-Fluke
Wait, definitely not a Scorn-Fluke, their children are the Rubbery Men and she's not Rubbery at all
Explorer with a shady past and a new name
Former pirate with a shady past and a new name
Child of a rich and important Establishment figure who ran away from home to have an Adventure
Tackety or Stovepipe scout keeping tabs on distant areas of the Reach for the war effort
Priest or devotee of the Burrower Below

She can write their stories down, sure. They wonder if she can sing or play music, or maybe do poetry? Or is it just stories she likes?

The first sign of their destination is a tall lighthouse beaming out in all directions in the distance. The next sign is a huge locomotive - more the size of a naval destroyer than a mere engine - passing by in the other direction on a patrol, with two large visible cannons and a blue-painted hull.

New Winchester is a sprawling and small (by OTC standards- with maybe one or two hundred thousand people at a guess) early 20th century city built on a dozen mountains in the sky, laced with bridges and spars like a highly unsymmetrical spiderweb. Large sections on the edges seem to be overgrown and abandoned, and the rumble of refineries and clanging of forges and machine shops and steam whistles echoes off the stones.

The Bramble passes by two small landing zones in front of important-looking buildings and pulls in to a central station with six landing rails. The Captain comes to meet her, hands over seven small five-Sovereign steel coins coated in brass, and thanks her for being a quiet passenger.