Kiira was lying on a blanket spread on the ground, under a canvas covering.

She was supine, with her arms crossed below her brunette head.

The young girl was engaged in her thoughts, regretting her just lost commercial fortune.

Almost ten years at the head of a commercial empire that extended throughout all the continent, providing supplies and weapons to all the reigns and kingdoms, from the coasts', to the mainland's, till the most remote ones castled against the mountain sides.

The center of all her trading was in the territories in the south. A poor bunch of wretched villages, standing on self-consumption based on fishing, agriculture and animal farming. Miserable people, sunbaked due to the great efforts done to try to make a live and survive, in the lands of the eternal summer, where the weather was good only for some not edible, or however not useful to fill the stomach, crops, such as tea, coriander, thyme, flax, mulberry.

A poor educated population, not able to take advantage of the precious resources they had to improve their livings, to achieve a major wellbeing.

She, instead, had all the mental resources needed to understand the benefits of such a rich land and to make them yield a return.

She was wandering, traveling to see the whole continent, when she came in its meridional part. She was there hosted with warmth. That was the attitude of the southern peoples: peaceful, hospitable and always pretty cheerful even in their misery.

The brunette was soon seen as one of them, thanks to her appearance too. She had indeed olive skin, brown, wavy hair, dark, big eyes, sharp lineament, tall, skinny. She had that savage I don't know what, recognizable in the southern inhabitants, so that she mingled very well in a very brief period.

The girl learned the various southern languages pretty fast and, in the same short amount of time, got used to traditions and customs and soon got the right to speak up in order to improve their condition and to gain a profit from such aid.

She managed to build a trade web through the continent, employing almost all these folks, giving them lighter work and well paying them.

In addition, due to the lack of governance, she had full discretionary power in making her business from scratch, supported, time by time, by the peoples she incorporated in it, who chose to trust her their children, their parents, their partners… So, their everything!

Every decision, even outside the commercial field, was submitted to her judgment, from the smaller argue to bigger matters, such as inheritance transfers.

If she had asked, they even headed to war within a couple of days.

But then, one day, came the news of an army marching on the southern territories, conquering, destroying, ravaging everything.

The survivors started flowing into the still free lands and Kiira had to try to organize a defense line, even with her little knowledge on the topic.

The trust built in the years didn't waver, yet the defense was not strong the same, and it was vanquished right away.

Fortunately, the girl thought on time to an escape way, sure about the defeat, and led all the people she managed to collect in a narrow gorge. But they were reached by the first soldiers during the getaway and so she stood in first line to fight a way out.

While they were struggling down, above them, to a sign of their female leader, some southern people threw down some huge rocks, managing to block the passage and get a safe escape to the people already passed.

Taking advantage of the chaos caused by the rocks' fall, Kiira made her allies climb the gorge walls with some ropes lowered from above, while the ones still on the ground protected their rise. 

They all climbed to the top, yet, in the meantime, part of the enemy's army composed itself and followed them. They were searched for days along the road for the nearest kingdom, hiding among the trees or taking secret paths they only knew. This way, even with ulterior losses, at last they reached the limit of a kingdom in the mainland.

That kingdom was warned of the suspicious movements in the south and the army was spread along the limits to prevent the invasion.

They were rescued by a patrol and entered the reign, while the enemy battalion clashed with a more numerous battalion from that reign.

They were later accommodated in a nearby village, to rest. In fact, they expressed the desire to start a journey, in a few days, to reach their fellows and families, to reunite and to ensure their safety and conditions.

And she was now there, waiting for dawn to leave with her comrades. 

She knew she had to sleep, that the journey wouldn't have been a nice walk with some friends, but a difficult and perilous research, anyway, she wasn't able to close her eyes. 

Her thoughts crowded her head, every memory, dream, hope gathered to keep her awake.

She was filled with an ambiguous regret: she wasn't able to protect her business from an enemy. She should have learned before how to defend a country: she knew all those people would trust her for such an important matter. She was aware they were peaceful shepherds, they didn't have any war experience, that her business wasn't safe in such a condition.

Anyway, there was no benefit in overthinking such venomous thoughts. The reality was she had lost almost everything and she could now only hope to regain the last pieces of that fortune to save something from complete ruin.

But, doing so, her mind focused on an even worse thought. She, indeed, always thought of those people only from an interested angle. She wasn't able to differentiate them from the money they made her gain, yet the awareness of being unable to feel real, deep affection towards human beings, that accepted her as a daughter of theirs, made her feel even more depressed.

Regret, maybe, was less scary of such a dark reflection.