10 September, 1893 — Magical Portrait Gallery

Oz was at the portrait gallery that afternoon because he was tired of being out and about in public, honestly, but had been advised that it would hurt his campaign if he holed up in the laboratory at the Dempsey estate for days on end. He had also been advised that no one cared as much about the rumor that he was a slipshod inventor as he did, and that putting his efforts into proving them wrong with a flurry of new patents would not result in any more votes come October, but that was what he actually wanted to focus on. The portrait gallery was as close to solitude as one could get while still being sociable, interspersing conversations with sauntering walks and stretches of peering silently at art in apparent contemplation. If he was spending more brainpower thinking through the ins and outs of his weather-adjusting coat (which still had the unfortunate habit of melting when the temperature changed too abruptly, its final fatal design flat he had still to fix) than the paintings, no one was the wiser.

He'd been meandering for only ten minutes when he overheard a comment — something along the lines of but why doesn't he have children? Ozymandias might not have thought the women were referring to him — the oddities of his marriage to Thomasina were old news as far as most were concerned — but they looked away hurriedly when he glanced their direction, which was the surest sign that they'd been caught in the midst of gossip. He frowned, puzzled. He glanced at another person nearby who he suspected had heard the same thing he had. "Was that in relation to the election?" he wondered aloud. Given that there had been rumors circulating about his skills as an inventor it was perhaps unsurprising, but he had rather anticipated that more of the criticism directed at him during his political campaign would be — well, political.

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