Akhira didn't often pick up people on the side of the road. She saw plenty, usually after she left town, peppered along to pick up scrapes from any leaving visitor or merchant. Whether by force or begging. She would give them something she had spare and move along, never invite them with her. You were different.

Rid of any valuables by the bandits that attacked you and abandoned in the midday sun on the Hiseon dunes, she stumbled upon you when watering her oxe. Seeing that the day was hot and she was tired, she decided to tend to you rather then turning and dropping you back at the village she just left. She tended to the injuries and put a tent over you so the shade would cool your overheating body. She rolled back your sleeves to check for bruises and paused as the thin, brown tattoos of a soldier came into view. She'd seen these plenty of times, soldiers were to be had just about everywhere. Oftentimes they would scatter into the desert villages after a battle to see their families - majority of them coming from these towns. Looking at your face, she would guess the same of you. She wondered how a bandit managed to make such a mess of a soldier.

Thankfully plenty of weary travellers were happy to buy from her as they passed along the winding dirt road that lead into the city. Her's was a dying craft, as villages packed up and left the hard life the desert offered for the fertile farmlands and cities. But she found plenty of work in the villages left, and in the travellers that made this road their pathway.

Two mornings after she found you, she dressed quietly, wrapping a scarf around her to protect her hair when she heard the telltale groan of someone waking from injuries. She rounded her wagon, oxes braying to her left and approached the tent, only to have a dagger thrust at her face when she bent to look.