The Kingdom of Trade

She had spent seasons trying to disprove his myth—without ever naming her own.

There was, and there was not, a kingdom made not of stone, but of momentum.

It moved like a river in flood—fast, forceful, and unconcerned with what it carried away. The Kingdom of Trade, they called it. Though some whispered other names in secret: The Machine, The Clockwork Empire, The Great Yield.

The Raven once lived there.

She had worn a lanyard like a talisman. Learned the language of metrics and models. Folded her wings to fit within meeting rooms lit by fluorescent suns.

And for a time, she had believed in it.

She had believed in collaboration as power, in feedback as flight. She had believed in the noble hum of the system—its goals, its rigor, its promise of progress.

But now, perched far beyond its walls, the Raven could see what she could not before.

The Kingdom ran not on trade, but on exhaustion. Not on insight, but on velocity. It prized clarity, but only if the clarity aligned. It praised autonomy, but punished deviation. It spoke of ownership, but measured only output.

She remembered how carefully relationships had to be managed—like glass bridges built over shifting ravines, beautiful but brittle, held aloft by tension and the promise of balance. Affection was called influence. Presence was performance. To care was to be careful.

And myths—the Kingdom had many. Not told by bards, but by leaders cloaked in deliverables. Myths of meritocracy. Of scalability. Of belonging through contribution alone.

The Raven remembered the Grey Squirrel’s words, spoken with the shine of certainty and the edge of agenda. How easily his version of her had been accepted.

She had spent seasons trying to disprove his myth without ever naming her own.

Now, outside the Kingdom, she saw it all clearly:

How the tower was always hungry.
How systems reward those who echo, not those who question.
How speed can mask harm.

How a kingdom can be admired, even as it forgets the names of those who built it.

She did not hate the Kingdom. It had given her sharp wings and strong instincts. It had taught her to speak precisely, to act decisively. It had shown her where the edges lived.

But it had also asked her to stay silent.

And she would not do that again.

She turned from the glass towers and let the wind rise beneath her. She did not need a meeting to mark her leaving. No document to approve her clarity. No metrics to measure her worth.

The Raven had learned something the Kingdom could not teach: That to rewrite a myth, you must first step outside of it.

And she had.

© 2025 Sarah Dooley. Story and images by the author. All rights reserved.