Before she had met her Shifu, Ying Lan was like a lonely ghost in Jiao city; a ragged shadow that drifted among the teeming masses who gave her no glance, no pity. Her only anchor in this world was the half lotus jade pendant that she had always kept dangling on her neck.
During the endless nights when she had sought refuge in the city's shadowed corners, her body wracked by hunger and cold, she would clutch the pendant close to her heart and, in hushed whispers, she would speak to it.
"You are my beacon,"she would say. "Someday you will guide me to my family. To my father. To my mother. Perhaps even brothers and sisters. And then…then I will never be hungry, or cold, or alone again."
But then Shifu had come into Ying Lan's life and, like dawn breaking over a darkened landscape, everything had changed. Shifu had become Ying Lan friend, her family, and in the warmth of this newfound bond, Ying Lan forgot about the pendant.
But then Shifu had died.
Ying Lan was not left helpless — Shifu had given her the skills and the courage to brave life alone, but having tasted the warmth of family; having loved and been loved, Shifu's death left Ying Lan with a loneliness that was deeper than before.
Ying Lan had moaned day and night; crying until her eyes were dry and sore. She had sought solace in the jade pendant once more. It had eased her grief; it had given her hope; it had whispered of another family; it had promised to guide her to them one day.
But now the pendant was gone.
Without it, Ying Lan felt adrift in an endless sea of emptiness. She longed for the comforting weight on her neck; she longed for the pendant to fulfill its promise.
She ignored her soaked clothes; she ignored the hunger that gnawed at her belly; she ignored the weariness that weighed on her limbs. She followed the river upstream, cutting through the woods and the bushes that lined its banks.
She needed to return to the place where she had fallen into the river.
She hoped they were gone by now, those arrogant and senseless nobles; she hoped that maybe, just maybe, the pendant had slipped out of Miss Ding's hand when the haughty Miss tumbled off the carriage; she hoped that it was laying there, on the ground, waiting for its rightful owner to take it back.