Bound- Red Threads of Fate Jaya AU

Prologue

Note: Hi! Welcome to my new book. This has been in the works for a looong time, and finally I don't have any other books to finish, and I can focus on this one! I have several chapters written already, so I'll probably be doing weekly updates for at least the next month or so. I do have finals at the end of this month, so... we'll see how busy I am.

I feel like I always say this, but I hope the characters still seem like themselves. This one's a bit more fantasy/adventure than my other stories, so hopefully they'll grow into their good old adventurous selves. But for the first half they are obviously going to be a bit different due to circumstance.

Also, the prologue is from Nya's pov, but the rest is in third person. I got a little tired of first person present tense...

I've always been able to see the threads. When I was little, I didn't know that I wasn't normal. I thought everybody saw them. Until I was five years old. One day, I mentioned the threads to my mother, and she rushed me to the thread-mage at the time, an ancient woman named Mei Tao.

"My daughter tells me that she can see the Red Threads." My mother said.

Mei Tao nodded. "Yes. I thought so."

"But how could you have known? I haven't brought Nya to you yet, she's only five years old!"

"I know. And I can feel another thread-mage. I can feel it in my bones."

My mother took a deep breath. "What do we do now?"

"I will do my best to train her. But she must discover how to control her gift on her own." Mei Tao replied. "And it is of utmost importance that she remembers these three things." The elderly mage knelt before me.

"One, your Sight is a gift, child. Never a curse. Two, you must keep your gift a secret. No one can know until you're older. Three, you will choose when to do a reading on yourself, if ever. It is not a choice that can be taken back. Do you understand?"

I nodded, but I didn't understand. So she explained it all to me. How we were the only two people in all of Ninjago who could see the Red Threads of Fate. And how when she died, I would become the next thread-mage.

As you can imagine, it was a lot for a five-year-old child to process. But I tried to understand, and tried to live by the rules she had laid out for me. I tried to live a normal life. While my brother learned blacksmithing from my father, I visited Mei Tao more and more often as I grew up, and learned from her all I could. She was old and ailing, and often tired, but I tried not to mind. I taught myself how to follow the threads, how to ignore them, and how to call upon them for guidance. And of course, how to keep them a secret.

When I was ten, I lost my parents. One day when my brother Kai and I woke up, they were gone. There was food on the table as usual, so we assumed that they'd started the day early. But when we went out to the shop, they weren't there.

We searched all day, asked all the farmers and villagers, and Mei Tao and I even tried to track their threads. But no one knew where they were. For a year we waited, holding vigil in the house, scraping by, just by selling what was already in the shop, and doing simple repairs. My brother was a less-than-gifted blacksmith, not to mention only twelve, so we had few customers. After a year, we knew we couldn't go on this way. So Kai took a job in the rice paddies, and I went to live with Mei Tao, nursing her and doing the housework. She was often bedridden by then, and even on the better days, sick and feeble. But she fed me and gave me a home and as much training as she had the strength for.

I lived with Mei Tao for three long years. They were not happy years, though she was kind. I was tasked with caretaking for both of us, cleaning the beautiful house and tending to the extensive grounds, and managing the people who came to have their threads checked, along with the tears, tirades, gifts, and gratitude that came with them.

Then, when I was fourteen, Mei Tao died. I was devastated at the loss of my mentor and companion, and hid in my tiny room, crying, for days. I refused to attend the funeral, stopped eating, and only drank enough to fuel my tears.

Eventually, I came to my senses. I was still shattered from grief and pain, but slowly I regained the will to live. The people needed me. Who would train the next thread-mage but me?

With trembling hands, I cut half of my raven hair short, as Mei Tao had told me to do, to symbolize my withdrawal from normal society. I took off the faded blue farmer's clothes I'd worn for so many years, and put on the pressed, black harem pants and red silk kimono, embroidered with many human forms, that were the uniform of the thread-mage.

Then I burned the hair and clothes, taking the vows my mentor had taught me as I watched the linen robe and trousers burn. I vowed to find and train the next thread-mage, to honor the legacy of the ones before, to always be truthful, and to refrain from all love affairs until my death passed on my duties to the next mage.

Did I keep those vows? Well, you'll see...