Author's Note: All I own of this is my storyline and the characters' names and personalities. Everything else is probably owned by Jade Dynasty/Perfect World. Actually, when in doubt, assume everything here is owned by them. Because it probably more or less does and I'm ultimately just a monkey at a typewriter.

Anyway, this is my first fic. Please enjoy, or try your best to - and if you had to try, please leave me a review telling me how to get better! Goodness knows I need a couple of good critiques. The only thing worse than a bad writer is a bad writer that doesn't know how to get better.

Prologue

I remember that ever since I was old enough to see anything, Ruyi had been my closest friend and loyal companion. He had been one of my few playmates in those early days, chasing me almost as often as his own tail. He was my older brother that protected me from bullies, the younger sister that tried to do everything I did. Oh, and he also made quite a nice pillow.

So it'd only make sense that I was nothing short of hysterics when Ruyi had gotten his paw stuck in a rosebush one day.

I was about five when it happened, and we had been playing hide and seek in the garden. I had been on a winning streak, and so he had tried to find a place in which he had never hidden before, which turned out to be inside our rosebush. It had been easier to get into than out of, and by trying to free himself from the bush, he tore open the skin on his paw.

"Mama! Mama where are you?" I had asked, searching the halls of our estate frantically. Ruyi's white fur on his left paw had been dyed a deep claret by then, which to the me was the most frightening thing ever. His usually smooth fur had been mangled and in clumps, and his whining was the most earth-shattering sound and I couldn't bear to hear.

"Mama!"

I turned a corner to find my mother in the study.

"Minyah, what's wrong?"

My mother quickly got up from her chair and glided gracefully towards me. Despite her worried look, she made no excess movements as she brought out a handkerchief - one of her nice embroidered ones - and started wiping at the tears that wouldn't stop coming out of my eyes.

"Ma…Ruyi! Ruyi…he's bleeding!" I managed, my words like hiccups through my tears which were only intensifying after seeing my mother.

"Oh, my…that's terrible! Here," she said, as she bent down slightly to pick me up. "Let's go see what we can do to fix him, shall we?"

"Mama! You can cast a healing spell on him, can't you?" I asked my mother.

My mother looked at me with a soft expression.

"I'm afraid our healing spells won't work on Ruyi," she explained patiently, "because animals' bodies don't work like our bodies do. So we're going to have to heal him the way people did before their powers got strong."

"How did they do that?"

My tears began to subside with the prospect of healing Ruyi, and new knowledge.

"With medicine," said my mother, giving my nose a tweak. And then, over her shoulder, she called to one of her servants.

"Lianhua, here…"

My mother floated back over to her desk, where she picked up her brush and scribbled a few characters onto a slip of paper. Well, not quite scribbled. It was still neat by my standards.

"…can you please take this to the kitchens and ask for these ingredients? The cook knows where they are in the vegetable garden. Oh, and ask for lots of the notoginseng, if you'd please. We'd need a lot of that, and half of it needs to be steamed, the other half raw."

"Yes, Madame," said the maid, as she floated away down the hall.

I stared in wonderment at my mother.

"You know about…medicine?"

The word felt uncomfortable coming out of my mouth.

"Well, I wasn't too good at playing the zither when I was little. So I decided I had to learn to keep up with everybody," answered my mother. "Now, can you show me where Ruyi is?"

She set me down, where I found my way upright about a small dog's height off the floor and stayed there, levitating. Then, gesturing at my mother to follow, I sped through the hallways and into the flower garden, where my poor white tiger was about to give up on trying to escape the rosebush.

"Oh heavens…"

My mother kneeled down, still not touching the ground, but at a low enough level where she had access to the rosebush. Her delicate fingers found the thorns that dug at Ruyi's paw, and deftly pried them away, making sure that he didn't get any splinters in the process.

"Ruyi, these flowers don't like to be touched, you know?" she said to the tiger after she freed him. "They're very shy. So if you try to touch them, they get scared. That's why they have thorns, see?"

Ruyi drew his paw back gingerly, and licked at it in acknowledgement. I stroked his back gently, trying to soothe him. My small hand seemed to get lost in the thickness of his fur.

"Ruyi's still small," said my mother. "When he gets bigger, thorns as small as these will only tickle him."

I looked down at Ruyi, who was already at least twice my size.

"I don't want him to get bigger, Mama!" I said, hugging as much of Ruyi as I could. "Then he would be too big to play hide and seek with me!"

My mother gave me that look that back then I could never figure out. It wasn't condescending in the slightest, but still managed to imply there was something that she knew that I didn't. But it still frustrated me, because I wanted to know what she knew!

"Minyah, but that is the course of nature," she said, her voice once again patient. "Ruyi is a tiger, and his fate is to grow big and strong, so that he could protect those that he loves. And you, as well - one day, you will grow too. Your fate is to grow into a beautiful and worldly lady, so you can protect the ones that you love too."

The look I gave her at that time was skeptical, and made her laugh.

"Ah, perhaps you are still too young to understand," said my mother, as Lianhua floated back in with a tray in her hands. "But one day you will."

"Thank you very much," said my mother to the girl, as the girl curtseyed slightly.

"Would you need anything else, Madame?"

"No, everything's fine for now. I'll call you if I need you," answered my mom as she began to set the tray in a place where she could reach it - it was inconvenient for us, who always floated in midair, to reach for things that were on the floor, after all. Not that it was impossible, just inconvenient.

She at first picked up each individual ingredient to check to see that it had been prepared according to her instructions, and wafted each of the ingredients' scents to her nose to make sure that they were of medicinal quality. Then - to me, it looked like she was cooking - she began to mix certain ingredients together into a bowl, and then started grinding them into a fine, white powder. It seemed amazing to me how roots and leaves of different shades of brown and green could all end up being white, but I had been too fascinated to ask why.

Presently, the medicine was ready, and my mother went over to Ruyi with the bowl, a wet cloth, and a bandage.

She asked for Ruyi's paw, which was proffered with utmost reluctance. She then dabbed away the blood that had been tainting his white fur, and then applied the powder to his wound. And then, ever so carefully, she wrapped the bandage, layer by layer, around his paw.

"There, Ruyi. Don't go playing by the roses again," she said, getting up.

I watched this entire scene in wonderment, at how Ruyi was so magically healed even though it didn't include our magic in the slightest. He had now stopped whining, and was hobbling over underneath a shady tree to take a nap, pretty contented with himself aside from the fact that he had been bleeding profusely just moments ago.

"Mama, will I be able to heal like you one day?" I asked. "Does healing people make them happy?"

"You will," answered my mother, "once you learn how to play your zither well. And then you can make lots of people happy."

"But playing the zither is hard…"

My distaste for the zither would eventually subside, but what never went away was the desire to become a great healer - zither or no zither. From then on, I knew I wanted to make people feel better - happier.