Black Butterfly Knot

Chapter 1: A Taste of Fear

[ NOTE: the term 'jing' will be plural (kind of like 'rice' is always plural) unless I add an 'a' or 'the' in front of it. Same goes with the term 'xian' both terms I will actually go over in more detail in the story, so if you haven't figured out what they are, that's fine^^ ]

- - - - -

In this secluded patch of the world, it is unmistakably the middle of fall. Sunlight filters in between every warm shade of red, orange, yellow and brown imaginable. 

The crisp sound of leaves breaking underneath hurried footsteps accompany the rhythm of harsh breathing. It's probably not an animal since animals most likely won't make this much noise getting around in this area.

Someone is in a hurry. Perhaps the rapid heartbeats are even loud enough to hear. A rainfall of leaves protest to a sudden disturbance.

A swath of canary yellow stumbles into the clearing. It's a young girl and she stops to catch her breath, putting her hand at her chest as if it'd help calm down her racing heart. Her waist-long black hair spills over her shoulder as she bends down. Her shoes are nearly ruined, she notices with an unhappy grumble. There are dirt stains all over the bottom of her clothing and her usual neat and charming appearance is completely lost. Her teacher would scold her if he could see her right now, but she's certain that if she told him why she was looking like this, he'd understand. He'd understand, but he'll still scold her. 

Ying Ru straightens up and dusts herself off, throwing her chin over her shoulder to peer behind her. Her breathing is slow and calculated, her eyes narrowed. Anyone can tell that she was waiting for something to jump out from behind the mass of trees. Yet at the same time, dread is written all over her face. She prefers that nothing is going to come running out from there.

A shaky hand reaches into the small leather bag at her side and grasps around for a thin slip of paper she knows is sitting there. She really doesn't want to use this. It's the last one, so please, please tell her that mad thing lost her trail in the forest. It's not that she doesn't want to hurt it. She'd kill it and rip it into a million pieces if she could, but rather... she's not all that good at this combat kind of thing. She messes it up half the time so as expected, she'd deplete her stack of talismans twice as fast. It's a miracle she's not dead yet. Someone up there must be looking out for her because as bad a caster as she is, the spell always works out when she's certain that she wouldn't be able to escape the fate of being anotherjing's dinner (a jing is an animal that has achieved a human form but can revert back into their animal form). 

  Ying Ru shouldn't keep testing her luck like this.

Ah, you're probably wondering. 

What in the world are jing, you ask? Normal people don't encounter jing on a daily basis. Ying Ru is a special person, but she doesn't know why she is. She would rather not be special. All a sixteen year old girl should be occupied with at this age, the last thing should be running for her life. A normal sixteen year old girl would probably not know a jing even if it were right in front of her (jing can look just like humans unless they choose to go for a hybrid appearance, but that will make them obvious), but Ying Ru is different. She's run into enough to want to dig a hole and hide in it forever. She doesn't have time to write an entire book about them, but there really isn't much to say about them. She would even say that jing hold humans on a higher level, like they're afraid. Jing are animals after all. They're simple beings and normally don't become aggressive like this, like Master's dog Fu Fu doesn't get upset unless Ying Ru does something to upset it. Now if someone could explain to her why she always manages to trigger the worst of these otherwise passive creatures, that would be enough for her if she ends up dead by the hands of one.