6:00am

In her house at Xian, gentle Feizhi waits dreaming.

6:05am

The screen door to her room slides open with such force that it almost shatters the wooden frame.

"Get up, Feizhi!" Master Feh growls, his overgrown mustache quivering. "You're a lazy lotus, that you are!"

Feizhi responds by burrowing under her blanket, hiding from the light of day and the wrath of her father.

Feh walks over and grab a hold of the blanket, intending to yank it off...only to be met with equal resistance from the other side. "You will never become a great warrior if you do not wake when you must!" he says.

"I will never be a great warrior if I do not get the rest I need," Feizhi murmurs sleepily, her eyes closed. A corner of the blanket is firmly grasped in her slender porcelain hands: the girl is stronger than she looks.

"Then you should have gone to bed when I told you to!"

"I was not finished with my training."

"You should have been!"

"You are much too loud, old man. The sound of a rusted doorhinge creaking is more pleasant to listen to."

Grumbling, Feh gives another experimental tug on the blanket.

Feizhi holds fast.

Another tug.

A stalemate.

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

6:08am

With Feizhi still stubbornly clinging to it, Master Feh drags the blanket to the center of the family training hall, right next door to the Feh residence. He lets it go and leaves.

Feizhi curls up. She bunches the blanket under her head as a pillow.

Moments later, Feh returns with a bucket of cold water and tosses the contents onto his daughter.

SPLASH!

She promptly sits up and helps a word that a proper Xiannese lady like herself shouldn't know.

CLUNK!

The bucket promptly makes contact with her skull – an admonishment from Feh.

"What is the meaning of this?" Feizhi demands, rubbing at her head with one hand and wiping the water from her fact with the other. "These are very expensive pajamas! They may be ruined now!"

"Pah! What do warriors need of luxurious clothes? As long as they are durable and they fit, warriors will wear them, they will!"

Feizhi frowns. "Yes, but Father, you bought these for my birthday! They are my favorite set!" She takes off the top, revealing a mint green undershirt, and begins to squeeze the water out of the silk.

"A true warrior should not complain so much about the loss of material comforts." Feh kneels before the red wooden shrine in the eastern wall of the hall, lightning an incense stick to honor the family ancestors – as well as to ward off the stink of sweaty students that gather in the hall every day for his kung fu classes. He stands up and dusts off his hands. "It is well and good to enjoy the world, but – "

"A true warrior ultimately transcends the world and all its trappings," Feizhi finishes wearily. "Yes, Father, I know. You have said this more times than I care to count."

"Perhaps if I made you count the times I said it, it would stick in your head better, daughter of mine. Did you know that your great-great-grandmother Shiyi, she was so forgetful that – "

"May I get dried before we begin the morning exercises?" Feizhi asks, not wishing to hear what is sure to be an hour-long digression about the legendary quirks of her numerous ancestors. True enough, it may delay her training until the first community kung fu class begins and leave her to return to sleeping if she so desired (which she does at the moment), but she knows from prior experience that her father will simply work her three times as hard as night, when she is already exhausted from the daily grind. No, best to get things over with as quickly as possible.

Feh smiles proudly at Feizhi. "You appear to be learning, little hummingbird," he says. "Be swift. I will tend to the spill here while I wait."

6:13am

Back in her room, Feizhi is drying off with a towel. She stands in a clean set of underthings, while her kung fu uniform awaits wearing on her bed. The uniform consists of a sleeveless button-up top in storm gray silk and a pair of loose-fitting white pants.

Father is merely worried, she reflects, squeezing the last of the water droplets from her long hair. There have been many monstrous attacks on people traveling to and from here. He wants to make sure I can defend myself, and that is why he is pushing me harder than ever on my training. This is what he says. She purses her lips. But...the monsters I have seen...could kung fu alone truly work against them?

Feizhi hasn't seen these monsters for herself, not yet. But she has listened to the horrific stories that their victims tell when they stumble into town, broken and bleeding, and to her growing unease she frequently recognizes the descriptions of the monsters in the dreams she has only days prior to the incidents. Though truth be told, she doesn't quite know what to make of her prophetic visions anymore: they had been strong and clear at first, not long after she had been hit in the head with a gem that fell from the sky, but ever since her vision of Hsu in danger, her visions have been more like stray thoughts from someone else's daydreams – or nightmares. Feizhi sometimes tries meditating to bring those thoughts into better focus, but they slip out from her mental fingers, laughing and twirling.

Truly, this ability is a great burden if I cannot control it at will! she thinks, tossing her damp towel onto the floor and reaching for her uniform top. She swiftly slips it on and buttons it up. Master Hama gave me the knowledge of my having the ability, but not the knowledge of how to use it.

Feizhi can't ask Hama for help now, though. According to a temple acolyte who responded to a letter of hers, the master has left Lama Temple to travel the land, and no one knows when she will return.

Perhaps it is best if I no longer have these visions, she muses, putting on her pants now. She pulls the drawstring on them as tight as she dares (of course she isn't trying to make herself look slimmer than she actually is, whyever would anyone think that?) before tying a neat knot to keep her pants in place. They do nothing but make everyone – including myself – worry. The things they show are things we cannot fight against, with or without kung fu. What is the point of seeing them, then?

Feizhi steps into a pair of black slippers as she heads over to a mirror to fix her hair. From a shelf, she takes a beautiful lacquered hairbrush – a memento of her late mother – and carefull sweeps her hair into a ponytail, fixing it into place with two white ribbons. She surveys herself in the mirror, making sure that she looks presentable, before returning to the hall.

6:20am

Feizhi doesn't get three steps into the hall before she stops in her tracks, surprised and delighted. "Big sister?" she exclaims.

Chunmei turns from speaking with Feh and smiles at Feizhi. "Little sister!"

Feizhi sprints over and throws her arms around Chunmei in a tight hug, grinning.

Chunmei Lao isn't actually related to Feizhi by blood, but the two of them have been close since childhood, despite the fact that Chunmei constantly accompanies her father – a traveling merchant – on business trips around the world. Feizhi has always admired Chunmei, who is five years her senior with the poise to prove it and has always been full of interesting stories about the world outside of Xian. Chunmei is also one of Master Feh's most talented students.

The young woman is tall for a Xiannese, with deep green eyes and dark violet hair pulled into a side ponytail. Her kung fu uniform is styled similarly to Feizhi's, but the top is dark yellow instead of gray. Her fingernails and toenails are tinted black with ink, in the style of some of the more fashionable women of Xian. She radiates confidence, bravado, and fearlessness – distinctly unfeminine traits for the Xiannese.

"Master Feh has just been telling me about current happenings here," Chunmei says when Feizhi pulls away. "Is it true that you have begun seeing visions of the future?"

Feizhi nods. "But, they are no longer so clear," she says with a touch of regret. "They no longer make sense to me until after everything has already happened. What good are visions like those?"

"What good, indeed." Chunmei pats Feizhi on the shoulder. "Do not worry, little sister. I will help you with that."

"What? Really?" Feizhi can't believe her luck.

Feh looks less than pleased. "I am not so sure if that is such a good idea," he says. "Those visions are good for nothing, they are."

"Oh?" Chunmei's tone is frosty. "How so, when they predicted the danger that Hsu was in? When they predicted the flooding of Altin, the growth of Mogall Forest? No amount of logic could have foreseen those things!"

"And how long was that in the past?" Feh says. "They have predicted nothing useful now, and even Feizhi herself admits it, she does! This 'gift from the gods' as some have called it has been used up. It would be foolishness to pursue this any further, it would."

"And yet yourself teach that a kung fu warrior must always be prepared," Chunmei counters, putting her hands on her hips. "Surely knowing the future would count as 'being prepared'?"

"It is a distraction!" Feh paces the wooden floor now. The training hall rings with his irritated voice. "It is not so good to be walking around all the time in one's mind, it is not! What good is worrying about the future when one forgets about the present?"

"Big sister," Feizhi interrupts, not wishing to hear the reiteration of a rant she has heard many times from Feh ever since she first gained her ability, "why have you come back to Xian? You last letter said it would be at least another month from Dao-Se-Shu before you returned, no?"

"Ah, yes. We did not stay in Tolbi as long as we thought we would. There appears to have been some sort of incident that has halted the construction of Lord Babi's lighthouse, which means that our plans to sell him blocks of Contigan granite have been forestalled for the moment."

"That sounds...unfortunate," Feizhi says, though she has no idea what Chunmei is talking about.

"Enough talk," Feh grumbles. "Much time has been wasted already, it has. Let us begin!"

Feizhi and Chunmei stand side-by-side in perfect stances, ready to dance through the many forms of kung fu at Master Feh's command.

6:40am

It's in the middle of the tiger-in-tall-grass form – twenty-fourth in a series of forty-six – that Feizhi suddenly collapses into unconsciousness.

She wakes up again almost immediately...and realizes that she does not recognize the place around her at all.

Disoriented, Feizhi gets to her feet. She stands on a ledge of what appears to be a tower of lilac-colored brick. She is so high up that the lower levels of the tower disappear into mist. In the sky, an unnatural storm rages among the dark clouds, and Feizhi's skin prickles with the storm's power and her own fear. She shakily steps away from the edge, and forces herself not to think about what it would be like to fall from this height.

"Hello?" she calls, and her voice echoes, splitting the heavy silence like an axe through wood. It startles her to realize that it is the only thing she can hear in this place. There is no rumble of thunder or whisper of wind that accompanies the storm.

There is no rhythm of footsteps that accompanies the group of people she sees approaching her.

"Warrior!" Feizhi gasps.

Indeed, it's the warrior Isaac with his three friends. Feizhi would recognize them anywhere. What are they doing here?

"Isaac, it is me!" she says, running over to meet him.

But Isaac completely ignores her – despite the fact that he is staring directly at her. He walks straight through her, and Feizhi understands now that she has fallen into a vision, one that is even clearer than the one she had of Hsu. She stands completely still, her ghostly clothes ruffling as Ivan, Garet, and Mia too pass through her body. Feizhi shivers, wondering what this is a vision of. What is she supposed to learn? Is this something she can use to change an unwanted future? Or is she being mocked again for her helplessness?

Feizhi turns around. She watches them cross a bridge in the near distance to another part of this unfamiliar, frightening place.

...she frowns.

"Warriors!" Feizhi calls frantically, despite knowing that it will do no good. "Do not step there! It does not look – "

The bridge suddenly falls out from beneath the four warriors. Isaac and Ivan are close enough to the other side to scramble to safety, but Garet and Mia are not so lucky. Mia crashes into a small platform directly below the bridge; Garet almost falls past it, but shoots out an arm to grab its edge, and he dangles and sways like a paper lantern in a strong wind.

Horrified, Feizhi runs over, but of course there's nothing she can do to help, and she stands as helplessly as Isaac and Ivan do, watching the delicate Mia trying to pull Garet back to safety. She can see them talking and shouting, but she can hear nothing except her own thumping heartbeats.

Two more people approach Isaac and Ivan. One is a scythe-wielding young girl in a midriff top, a miniskirt, and boots whose tops reach to her thighs; the other is a tall, well-built man in layered armor. Both look absolutely monstrous to Feizhi, with their scaled skin, pointed ears, and the savage markings on their face. Certainly the aura they give off is anything but friendly. She does not know where they come from, but they look similar to another equally-frightening pair that passed through Xian a few months ago.

Isaac and Ivan have noticed them now. The four begin exchanging words like blows in a fight, though what they are saying is nothing that Feizhi can make out.

Then – quick as a cobra strike – the scaled girl rushes forward and swings her scythe at Isaac, catching him off-guard and cutting into his arm.

"Isaac!" Feizhi cries, her hands flying to her mouth in horror.

Isaac retaliates with a burst of golden energy, which misses the girl but distracts her enough to allow him to step out of her reach. Undeterred, she whips around and lashes out with a wave of flames that sears into Isaac's back.

Meanwhile, Ivan jabs at the man with a staff that sparkles with violet lightning. The man dodges, takes one step, grabs Ivan by the cuff of his shirt, and actually hurls Ivan into a wall with just one arm.

Feizhi shakes her head slowly, barely comprehending the scene that unfolds before her. It is painfully clear that Isaac and Ivan are outmatched. This cannot be! she wails silently.

"Feizhi." Chunmei's voice rings through the sky like a shrine bell. "Little sister, it is me. Please wake up."

"Not yet!" Feizhi screams, unable to tear her gaze away from the fight. "I must help Isaac!"

"Little sister, wake up."

"No!"

Lightning flashes so bright that it blinds Feizhi to the world.

6:47am

Feizhi wakes up in Chunmei's arms with a jerk. She is shivering and clammy all over. "I-Isaac..." she whimpers.

Chunmei holds her closer. "Everything is okay now," she soothes, patting Feizhi's back. "It was only a vision."

"He is in danger," Feizhi whispers. "Or he will be."

"Who?" Chunmei asks.

Feizhi only cries quietly into Chunmei's shoulder.

Chunmei helps Feizhi to her feet, slipping an arm around her waist to steady the distraught girl. "You will have to excuse us, Master Feh," she says with a touch of imperiousness. "It appears that Feizhi will need time to recover from this."

"If you must, you must," Feh says, frowning. "Certainly her current state is not one that is conducive for kung fu, it is not. The morning class will be starting soon. If you wish, you may join it."

6:50am

In Feizhi's room, Chunmei waits patiently as Feizhi explains to her, in short spurts of stuttered words and half-sobs, what she had seen in her vision and why it bothers her.

"And you do not know when this vision happens?" Chunmei asks.

Feizhi shakes her head and rubs the tears from her eyes. "When I had the vision of Altin being flooded...and of Mogall Forest...it was a few weeks before those events came true for me. But when I saw Hsu in danger, it was the day that it happened. So I do not know." She sniffles. "I am very worried, big sister. Isaac and his friends are very strong, but they are many dangers in traveling, and strength will not be enough."

"Strength is not enough sometimes," Chunmei agrees. "What they really need is luck."

"L-luck?"

Chunmei nods. "Strength and luck are what warriors need to survive." She smiles. "We will make a good luck charm to bring to your beloved warrior, to protect him."

Feizhi is bewildered. "I do not know how to do that," she says, "and I do not know where he – "

"We will make the charm out of one of your belongings, preferably something that can be worn," Chunmei continues, her gaze hopping all around Feizhi's room. "It will have more power that way. What do you want to use?"

Feizhi gets up and walks over to a cabinet. She reaches inside for a jewelry box and rifles through it. "Here," she says, pulling out a golden ring. "I do not wear this very often."

"Good." Chunmei holds out a hand, and Feizhi places the ring in her hand. "Ah...do you have your calligraphy set? I will need to draw something."

Still unsure of what Chunmei means to do, Feizhi takes a box covered in red decorative print from the same cabinet that held her jewelry box and hands it to Chunmei.

Chunmei opens the box to reveal sheets of paper, an inkpot, and different types of brushes. She pulls out a piece of paper and sets it on the floor before placing the ring on top of it. With a thin brush and the pot of ink, she paints a circle of strange symbols around the ring, moving in deliberate but elegant strokes.

"What is that, big sister?" Feizhi asks.

"It is something I learned when I was visiting Imil," Chunmei explains. "The Mercury Clan is well-known for their healing and protection magick. One of their members showed me how to do this." She smiles wistfully. "He is far more talented than everyone thinks, that one is," she adds in a quiet, almost awed voice.

Feizhi's eyebrows arch upwards a little. "Does big sister have a warrior that she cares for, too?" she asks, suppressing a giggle.

Chunmei winks at Feizhi. "Perhaps." She finishes the rest of the symbols and carefully sets the brush aside. "Now put your hand on the ring, and think about keeping your Isaac safe, and I will do the rest."

Feizhi obeys. She gently touches the ring with the tips of her fingers, mindful not to let the sleeves of her kung-fu uniform smudge the still-wet ink on the paper. She thinks of the unsettling vision she has just seen, and wishes with all of her power – what little of it she may have – that it does not come true.

Chunmei waves her palms over the ring and begins speaking a language that Feizhi doesn't understand. She performs a few simple hand motions before looking at Feizhi. "There. Your good luck charm is finished."

Feizhi picks up the ring and holds it in her hand. It does not feel any different, she thinks, clasping it. But she trusts in Chunmei, and she bows deeply in gratitude. "Thank you, big sister."

"It is the least I can do." Chunmei hugs Feizhi again. "Do you feel better now?"

Feizhi nods happily, smiling. She is relieved, and excited too; she can't wait to bring this to Isaac! She wonders what he will think of it, and hopes he will find it useful and reassuring. True enough, she still doesn't know where he is. It has been a while since he and his friends left Xian, after all.

But to see the look on his face after receiving this gift from her, along with the knowledge that she could prevent tragedy from befalling him, would make any kind of journey worthwhile.

"Let us return to the training hall," Chunmei says. "Your father is waiting."

7:00am

The training hall hums with a bit more life now, as a few more of Master Feh's students do warm-ups on the floor or talk amongst themselves. When Feh notices Feizhi and Chunmei, he nods at them and then claps his hands loudly to mark the beginning of classes.

Feizhi and Chunmei stand side-by-side in perfect stances, ready to dance their way through life together.

O-O-O

Lao Chunmei is actually a character I created for a different story than WrotD. You can see a somewhat old sketch of her here: http(:)/tempest-of-the-dawn(.)deviantart(.)com/art/Chunmei-Lao-GS-80301140. (Though obviously the outfit she's wearing in that isn't the outfit she's wearing in this chapter.)