Why are you not re-blogging? You think the fandom is dead, that no one’s interacting anymore, no one’s doing anything, no one’s writing, no one’s posting. ‘Everyone was so hyperfixed on that character, Where is the writing?’
People are writing. People aren’t reblogging. People aren’t giving some good feedback to motivate the writers that are putting their hard work, time, effort into making this piece that you were reading.
‘oh, it’s just too much work. You don’t wanna click that button and then click a few tags.’ Then you’re gonna have to suffer and not see a lot of writing from a lot of people because the only way this fucking app works is if you reblog.
I see so many pieces of work with 59 likes and 1 blog, I just saw one that had 690 likes and it had 9 reblogs. Even 1,000 likes and only 59 reblogs too. It’s devastating to see for the community of Tumblr. And I’ve been here for like five years, the way this app works is if you re-blog.
There’s so many people that are writing. There’s so many amazing things that I see and I try my best to reblog every single one that I read. That’s what I love doing because sharing someone’s piece of work is just beautiful because it allows me to show it to more people.
I reblog. And the beauty of it is;
I get notifications that this person liked it and this person liked it, and then that post continues to get more views, more likes and reblogs. All just because one person, reblogged it.
so please, if you are a part of Tumblr and you love reading your favorite writers fics, or love reading about your favorite character, please do your job and reblog it.
And if you don’t like re-blogging because you don’t want to do that on your account, then you can make another account and put all of the things that you read on that account. You can do separate things, like fic recs.
You can figure it the fuck out if you want people to actually be writing for a character you love. The writers are writing, you ain’t helping them share their work.
Synopsis, Spider wasn’t the first human born on Pandora, but he was the first to grow up on it. You had Neytiri’s heart long before Jake came along, and you’d have both of theirs long after. The problem is, humans weren’t meant for Pandora. Even so, Eywa saw you, and it seems like she accepted you. Maybe that's why, even after being without you for so long, they saw you again.
WC: 10.5k (oh wow)
inspired by @jsooly taken in by the sullys series!
A/N: I wrote this quite literally at 5 am, and it's drastically different from my usual writing style, but I like it! Very bittersweet! and written with the assumption that whoever is reading this knows about Sylwanin and her lore.
You were born to a soldier on Pandora, a Seargant who seemed unbothered by her pregnancy during her term. The RDA wasn’t progressive, not at all, but they weren’t so cruel (at least to their own race) that they’d force a pregnant woman into work. Your mother simply made the decision to keep working, no matter how unsafe it was.
After she gave birth to you, she seemed… inattentive at best. She took maternity leave for the required period of time and got back into the action once she was cleared, leaving you essentially alone. It wasn’t long after her redeployment that she was killed in action along with the rest of her squad. An unfortunate accident in the dangerous wilds of Pandora
So, motherless and unclaimed by a father, you were orphaned. Too young for Cryo, they let you stay. Your mother's room became yours and yours alone.
Of course, the RDA base was no place for a child. Ill-equipped and non-accommodative. The higher-ups reasoned that you’d best be left to the scientists and doctors. They’d know how to take care of a kid best, right?
Of course, no one really paid much attention to you. Giving the minimum attention necessary to keep you alive, lest they carry the guilt of neglecting an infant to death.
Grace wasn’t sure what to think of you when you were put in her care. She was a scientist, not a babysitter. Her focus was on the Na’vi, their way of life, and the organisms living on Pandora. She didn’t have time to look after a kid.
You were shucked off onto some lower-level scientists and assistants. She didn’t hear much from you other than your crying, which was always met with swift confinement to your room with your current caretaker.
Eventually, though, you became autonomous. You were quick, slippery, and curious. The ones in charge of you didn’t pay much attention, which led to you sneaking around. Once, finding your way into Grace's lab.
She found you at her desk, standing on her chair in only an ill-fitting t-shirt and diapers, leaning over and staring at the projection of various pictures she had up.
Grace wasn’t cruel; she may not have wanted to be responsible for you, but she held the same fondness for kids that most did.
Carefully, she picked you up, sitting you in her lap, and asked you what you were doing.
“Pic!” Is all you blurted out, head turned around, and staring at her with your wide and curious eyes. Grace chuckled, nodding as she hummed and affirmed your babbles.
You spent the rest of that day in her hold, watching as she scrolled through the pictures and videos she had in the database, explaining, in the most child-friendly way, the ones you were interested in.
Being just over a year old, you weren’t still in her lap. Wriggling around, grabbing at her and objects, even standing up in her lap and jumping up and down, which she swiftly stopped. Despite all this, Grace was patient with you. Perhaps it was your curiosity for Pandora that softened her, the fact that you were interested in something she’d devoted her life to researching.
A new brain to fill, maybe.
So, you made frequent trips to the lab after that. Slipped past your caretakers and crawling into Grace or Max’s laps, whoever was available, and babbling on and on. You weren’t the center of attention or a priority, but you became somewhat of a soft spot for Grace and her fellow scientists. Not as much of a burden, anymore.
It wasn’t long before you started picking up on the Na’vi phrases being used, especially once you discovered the parts of the lab dedicated more towards the avatars and culture of the Na’vi. Grace, ever the enabler of your interest in Pandora, started speaking to you in almost strictly Na’vi.
Being so young, you picked up on it incredibly quickly, nearly at the same speed as English, which you’d only really started learning a month or two prior.
It was cute to them, having a little human baby babbling in Na’vi and focusing so intently on the fauna and flora you saw in catalogs. Some even joked that your bedtime book should be the one Grace wrote.
They called you the LabRat around the base. A term of endearment, of course. Many knew about you, the loose kid on base who scurried around and spent almost as much time in the lab as the scientists. You were cute. But really, that’s all you were to them, a cute kid.
But to Grace? Somewhere along the way, she grew more fond of you than she’d expected. She ate with you at breakfast, watching you messily eat out of the corner of her eye as she held conversations with the other scientists. You stuck to her side, only ever really leaving it when you wanted to be with Max or go to sleep. Even then, she often had to carry you to your room multiple times throughout the day when you fell asleep in her lap.
You spent a lot of time with Max, too. Whenever Grace was in her Avatar, which was often, you found yourself with him. He was always a little softer with you, having been more fond and sympathetic with you earlier on.
He treated you more like a kid than most others. He didn’t really try to feed your curiosity with Pandora, instead focusing on the fact that you were a deprived orphan child. He was the most suited to take care of you, probably.
At some point, you found your way into the Avatar lab, watching through the windows. No one really saw it coming, but you escaped. With your little mask that was slightly too big for your face, you ran out the door, gunning right for Grace’s Avatar.
They didn’t really think you’d recognize her, but you did, and you wanted to see her. Of course, you were a little intimidated by her drastic change in appearance and height, but at this point, you knew about the Na’vi and Avatars, so you didn’t have much of a problem.
Grace, in her Avatar form, was perhaps even more loving towards you. Maybe it was the youth of the body, or the fact that she had her own internal favoritism for it, but she seemed happier. Something you picked up on quickly.
You loved being outside. No longer were you content being cooped up in the lab, you wanted to see the forest! Of course, they weren’t exactly ok with the idea, but your crying eventually convinced them.
Grace decided to take you to the school. She’d made excellent progress with the Omaticaya through the school, maybe it would be good to start introducing some direct human contact… through you. And she figured it could be good for your development, meeting beings that weren’t just inattentive scientists and soldiers.
With your mask on and sporting your cutest clothes, Grace took you to the school. The Na’vi kids were unsure about you at first, with their adverse feelings about Skypeople, but eventually they opened up.
You were small, so incredibly small. Even the young children had no problems holding and cradling you. You were cute in your own, human, way.
They were intrigued by the fact that your Na’vi was as good as your English. Granted, neither were particularly good, seeing as you were a toddler, but it's the fact that they were at the same level that they admired.
Sylwanin was especially interested in you, often taking you in her arms, cooing and coddling you.
“Sa’nok, she’s so small!” She’d exclaim to Grace, who’d laugh in response.
“Well, she’s human. You’re probably at least 2 feet taller than my human body, and I’m an adult.” She leaned over Sylwanin, smiling down at the scene. “She’s just a youngin’, not even 2 years old.”
From then on, you were a regular addition to Grace’s school and a personal favorite of Sylwanin and Neytiri. The two sisters absolutely adored you. Cooing over you and your babbles, sitting you in between them or on one of their laps during the lessons.
Often, they’d sit in the back with you, giggling at your tiny body and antics, brushing your hair, or watching as you fiddled with whatever toy or objects you could get your hands on.
Between your time in the lab and out at the school, you were the first human to be culturally raised Na’vi. It was fascinating to Grace.
Tsu’tey was cautious of you at first, unsure of how to handle how small and frail you were. But out of everything, you were also incredibly persistent and curious. Somehow, you found yourself worming your way into Tsu’tey’s arms, waddling up to him and demanding he pick you up through body language.
Sylwanin found this utterly adorable, how you’d stand there and “Hmf!” until he reached down and picked you up. He didn’t really know how to hold you, hands tucked under your armpits, torso and legs dangling in the air, but you crawled your way around him, finding yourself sitting on his shoulders. Well, shoulder, to be exact. You could comfortably sit on one, granted it was with one of his hands on your legs to keep your balance while you grabbed onto his braids.
“Tey-Tey” “Wanin” and “Tiri” you called them, not really able to pronounce their full names. They, of course, didn’t care, cooing at the babble of nicknames you gave them.
In turn, they started to call you “Syulì'ang”, a butterfly-like insect that was known for its characteristic claws that latched it onto whatever it landed on. A fitting nickname, they all thought.
Their sweet Syulì'ang. Tsu’tey was more or less simply amused by you once he was comfortable. He wasn't as doting as Sylwanin or Neytiri or some of the others; he liked you, but it was more or less than he was entertained by you.
Of course, that changed the more you stuck around. By the time you’d learned to walk well enough to walk to the school yourself, with Grace accompanying you, of course, he was always waiting by the doorway. He’d give a simple nod to Grace when the pair of you came into view, and he tried to remain stoic as you ran forward, your small body knocking into his tall legs and calling out his name, but Grace, and just about anyone else who really knew him, could see through it.
You spent your developmental years at the school, growing up so quickly that the Na’vi kids didn’t know what to do. When they first met you, you could barely walk, and all you could really do was babble and string together words, but years passed, and you began holding conversations and moving around fairly fluidly.
Of course, you were still small and babyish, still just a toddler, but toddlers grew and changed fast.
You were like their baby sister. Tsmuke, they called you. To them, you were really no different from another Na’vi kid. You spoke fluently, you were young and saw the world in a manner that seemed to reflect their own cultural point of view, perhaps from your exposure to it.
Grace couldn’t really place when she started to love you. Maybe it was when you first called her “Sa’nok”, copying the kids at the schoolhouse. Maybe it was when that transformed into “Sa’nu”, or when it became “mama” when back in the lab. Maybe it was that day you first caught her attention, having snuck into the lab and into her heart.
She never corrected you when you called her those things, even when she got odd stares from the others around when you did. They just didn’t get it. They were too wrapped up in their own world. And yeah, so was she, but at some point, you became a part of her world.
She didn’t really think of herself as your parent, but she didn’t mind if you thought of her as one. She wasn’t really the nicest; she was definitely more of a ‘tough love’ kind of parental figure, but that wasn’t really all that bad.
Pandora wasn’t suited for you. You weren’t supposed to be there, and it wasn’t a good place for you by any means. You weren’t given proper attention or affection, and when you were, it wasn't consistent. Grace and Max, and the Na’vi kids weren’t role model family figures, but they tried, and they loved you, no matter how… odd it was.
At some point, you’d met Mo’at and Eytukan. Likely, they’d heard of you from their daughters and Tsu’tey. It was hard to tell what they thought of you, after all, they had their own reservations about the humans, only allowing the school to function due to Sylwanin's request.
But they liked you enough. You were a kid, a toddler, innocent in what was being done to their planet. You didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of any prejudice they held towards the humans. You spoke the language and learned beside their children. You seemed to love the forest as if it were your own home.
Formally, you met Mo’at when you fell down and scraped yourself while running out of the school, being chased by Sylwanin. You cried, of course, but Sylwanin, as calm as ever, simply scooped you up and told Grace she was taking you to her mother to get fixed up, running off before she could object.
You watched the Tsahik in awe as she worked on you, rubbing a salve on your wounds, her jewelry and beadings clinking together as she did so. You watch her in silence, Sylwanin giggling at your entranced demeanor. At the end, climbing back into Sylwanin’s arms, you turned and told Mo’at she was magnificent. A big word for your age.
Mo’at had to admit, you were a charming little kid.
Neytiri was especially charmed by you, often taking you from anyone else's arms to hold you in hers. It became a running joke that she’d adopt and steal you away if she could. She never denied it.
You could always be found fiddling with her hair or necklaces, pulling at them or putting them in your mouth. Neytiri, despite not liking your actions, was patient with you, simply giggling as she pulled it from your grasp and pointed your attention elsewhere.
Some people on base started to voice complaints about you being out too much. Being gifted jewelry and pieces by Sylwanin and Neytiri, and one piece from Tsu’tey, you began dressing in them every day.
Of course, the complaints went nowhere, being no more than off-hand comments made by people who had no role or responsibility in your upbringing. As loved as you were, you were still overlooked more often than not, just an orphan kid who wandered in and out of the base. Outside of Grace, Max, and a few other scientists, no one really cared.
You had your routine. Getting up, spending time with Max before running out with Grace to the school. The school was your favorite place, you often told Neytiri and Tsu’tey in giddy whispers. You felt free and loved. It was your place.
When Sylwanin stopped showing up, you were sad. You missed her. Really, she was your favorite.
You didn’t understand why you stopped going to the school, why Grace started arguing with a bunch of the soldiers more often, and why you were no longer allowed outside of the base. You cried a lot, saying you wanted your Tsmuke’s and Tsmukan. You wanted to go to the school, you wanted to see Neytiri and Sylwanin and Tsu’tey and the others.
You cried when a scientist, tired of your whining, told you they probably didn’t want to see you.
Grace had a hard time comforting you. She didn’t know what to say, struggling with her own grief and guilt in the whole situation. All she could do was hold you and tell you that things were going to be okay.
It was a while before you stopped crying so much. You still whined about wanting to go outside, but you learned to stop when asked. You spent your nights fiddling with the gifts from Neytiri and Sylwanin, the jewelry they crafted for you, the toy Mo’at gifted you once, and the Ikran Tsu’tey carved for you out of wood. They were your most treasured pieces.
You worked on your own gifts for them, on and off, through the two years you spent without them.
You were six by the time Jake came around. You became attached to him very quickly.
He’d just made it to base and was getting filled in by Norm. His introduction to Grace wasn’t going well, bordered by her hostility towards him being there in place of his brother. Before he could say anything else, you bounded into the room.
“Sa'nu! sa'nu! 'ur 'upe oe run!” Mama! Mama! Look what I found! You yelled, stopping at her feet and shoving an insect you were cradling in your palm into her face.
She glanced at the bug and tilted her head, raising a brow at you. “ Y/n, nga kame nga're ke tung wrrpa, ‘itetsyip.” You know you’re not allowed outside, little one.
You pouted, stomping your foot. “Oe ke wrrkä! tsal pamähem ne oe.” I didn't go out! It came to me. You insisted. Grace merely rolled her eyes with a grin as she ruffled your hair.
Jake looked at Norm, confused, who translated a lazy “she’s showing her a bug.” for him.
As if you just noticed their presence, you awkwardly glanced at the two, shyly shuffling behind Grace. Jake glanced between you and Grace before leaning in.
“What’s that you got there?” He asked, smiling as he watched your facial expression change. Before he knew it, you were launched into a whole explanation about the bug. It's name, both scientific and Na’vi, and all the fun little characteristics you noticed and pointed out to him.
It was easy to tell who you’re favorite was going to be among the newest science recruits. You became quick friends with the ex-Marine, demanding his attention whenever he wasn’t busy.
You were an interesting little thing. Energetic as all could be, running around like you owned the place, switching between languages so casually as if they were one. Jake paid more attention to you in a week than most of the people on base had in your entire life.
He’d come by your room, peaking in as you played with your toys or read a book you definitely didn’t actually understand. As soon as you noticed his presence, you’d abandon whatever it was you were doing to run to him, hoisting yourself up into his lap.
“What's up, little bug?” He’d say, smiling down at you as you went on and on about whatever it is you wanted to talk about. Most of it went right over his head, but he listened nonetheless. He got the memo pretty early on that you were essentially left to your own devices, only helped with the bare minimum by people who didn’t want to be responsible for you
So, he started being more attentive towards you. Call it fatherly instincts, he calls it common empathy. You didn’t have any plans or expectations for him, you weren’t disappointed in his presence in place of his brothers, you simply looked up at him with those wide and love-filled eyes. That was all he needed to become hooked. His little bug, he liked to call you.
To Norm, Jake had adapted a fatherly role scarily quickly. Of course, Norm thought you were cute, but he wasn’t really sure what to do with you. It puzzled him how well Jake was with you, for only knowing you for a few days. How you crawled into his lab during one of the briefings, obviously tired but wanting to be involved.
The briefing was casual, so Jake wrapped his arms around you and cradled you, rocking you in his arms as he hummed a lullaby he’d grown up with on Earth.
It was the first time someone had sung you a lullaby, at least since you were a crying infant everyone was desperate to soothe. You fell asleep in his arms immediately. Grace only gave a passing glance and a chuckle, stating he was now on bedtime duty.
And that he was. You were a stubborn kid when it came to bedtime, fighting your own sleep and exhaustion because you wanted to be where the attention was. You didn’t want to miss out on any of Grace or Max’s briefings or discoveries, no matter how dull they were, or the fact that they didn’t really happen after hours. Nevertheless, you were difficult to put to sleep.
He was quickly called the Y/n Whisperer after he calmed you down from a tantrum and had you knocked out in bed within 10 minutes of you being told to go to sleep, an affair that often took at least half an hour and some strong bargaining.
Jake was still reeling from it all. For him, he was still dealing with the fact that his brother was dead and he’d taken his place on a scientific mission on Pandora, whisked away from his dystopic life on Earth and given a brand new chance. It was dizzying, and now he had a kid attached to his leg.
Call it what it was: whiplash. He doesn’t really understand why you liked him so much, why he was able to connect with you so well. Maybe it was because he was the first person to spare you a second glance in your entire life, a second glance you didn’t have to work and beg for.
If given the chance, Jake was sure you two would be absolutely inseparable.
It was during dinner that things shifted. You were there for Jake's recounting of the events that transpired after he got chansed off by a Thanator. Through it all, all you heard was that he’d met Neytiri.
Neytiri. Your Neytiri.
You missed her. You missed her so bad, and Jake got to see her. It had been two years, and you thought for sure there was no way you’d be able to see her again. But Jake saw her! He even went to the village, so he likely saw Tsu’tey, Mo’at, and Sylwanin!
Seeing them was possible. That was the conclusion you came to.
Tsu’tey was the one to find you the next day. You had snuck out, exopack secured on for the first time in nearly two years, and you set off. Your memory was hazy, and you hardly remembered your way through the forest.
Scratch that, you didn’t remember it at all. You got lost almost immediately, your excitement to see your friends slowly replaced with uncertainty and fear. You wandered through the woods, climbing across logs and rivers, becoming more and more sure that you weren’t going the right way…
Of course, you didn’t know what to do. No one could really blame you for how you started crying out, yelling for Neytiri, Tsu’tey, Sylwanin, Grace, whoever you thought could find you.
It wasn’t until you heard the growl that you regretted your decision to be so loud. Nantang. They surrounded you, stalking and getting ready to pounce. All you could do was scream.
Tsu’tey found you, following the distant yelling for familiar names and then the high-pitched screams. He shot the Nantang, scaring off the others as he rode in on his pa’li. He was ready to shoot you, the human who had trespassed onto their land, but he paused. Arrow resting between his fingers, and breath hitched.
It was you.
He was quick, dismounting his direhorse and scooping you up in his arms, doing his best to soothe you with soft words as you cried and writhed in his hold. Blood was everywhere. He was horrified.
He acted on pure impulse. Jake. Jake probably knew you. He was also human, and he was an avatar- so he probably knew Grace- he had to get you to Jake.
So he rode on his direhorse as fast as he could, holding you tightly in his arms as you bled and bled and cried. Oh, how you cried, clinging to him and whimpering, he felt so helpless. Exactly like how he’d felt that day Sylwanin died in his arms at the school house. He couldn’t have that happen again. Not with you. Not with the small girl he’d grown so fond of.
It was a blur, finding Jake and Neytiri, the morphing look of terror on their faces as they took in the sight of the girl in his arms and his disjointed explanation. It was a blur, and he was on his knees, Neytiri holding onto him as they both shook, taking in the situation as Jake ran off into the woods with you in his arms, pushing himself as fast as he could go.
Jake was scared. You were such a sweet girl, and in the days he’d known you, he was hooked. You were small, petulant, stubborn, smart; you were a good kid. You were funny and fun to be around, and he liked you. He saw why Grace had such a soft spot for you, who wouldn’t?
But now you’re in his arms, bleeding, and Grace is gonna be horrified.
He got you to the base, bursting through the doors, demanding a doctor, yelling you needed help because you were hurt and bleeding. You were small, hurt, bleeding, and it felt like you were at death's door.
You were swept out of his arms, and all you could do was whimper, reaching back out to the strong arms you felt safe in. They hooked you up to machines, tended to your wounds. They assured Jake and a just-arriving-frazzled Grace that you were gonna be fine.
But the base wasn’t a hospital. Yeah, it was a military base, and those often come with medical centers, but it wasn’t good, especially not for a child. With how advanced they were, they weren’t well equipped.
You suffered for days, writhing and screaming in pain, tears only stopping once you ran out of them.
Despite Grace and Max’s pleas and Jake's insistence towards Quaritch, you were essentially… ignored.
You were loved. But you were still just a bastard orphaned child; the RDA simply didn’t want to deal with you, especially with your seemingly growing allegiance to the Na’vi.
Of course, they did what they could to help you, but it was minimal.
You were going to die, Grace and Jake were sure of it.
So, desperate, he went to Mo’at. He pleaded for her to help you. She didn’t need much convincing.
The night before Grace planned to move the operation to the Hallelujah Mountains, they snuck you out, careful to remove all your hook-ups to the machines.
They took you to the village, breaking so many rules, desperate to help you.
You were frail, withering away in his hold. The best he could do was whisper comforts as he carried you.
Mo’at worked quickly, shooing them out of her tent as she worked on you. Salves, mixes, incense. She worked for hours. You were just a little kid; you had so much before you. She pleaded to the Great Mother to help you, even if you were a human she could barely reach.
You were getting better, but it wasn’t enough. Something was wrong, very wrong, and she didn’t know what it was or how to help.
She pulled away, examining you with a hitched breath. Just as she went to move to grab another tool, something caught her attention.
An Atokirina.
It floated in the air, pulsing until it wilted down to meet your skin.
Mo’at’s eyes widened.
“We must take her to the Tree of Souls.” She declared as she stepped out of her tent, the group that had gathered in front of it standing and moving in confusion.
They wanted to question it. Jake wanted to ask what was wrong, how you were doing, and if you’d live. All the words were on the tip of his tongue, but Grace grabbed his hand. She kept her gaze forward, at the tent, but she’d communicated enough.
Tsu’tey was the one to take you into his arms, lips pursed, and eyes gazing down at you in worry. For a moment, Jake wanted to be the one to hold you, but you curled into Tsu’teys arms so comfortably- so familiar, a moment of comfort and assurance when you were in so much pain.
Neytiri followed close behind, hand resting on your forehead as they walked, her eyes focused on your face scrunched in agony, your pinched brows and wavering lips. How she wanted to soothe you, to hold you, and kiss away the creases of pain in your face.
You’d grown so much since they’d last seen you. You were still so small, but so much more grown. They had missed you so much, their grief compelled by the loss of two sisters. They nearly begged Mo’at and Eytukan to call off the ban on humans on their land, if only to see you.
And now, you were back in their arms, but by the force of necessity and desperation. Out of the fear of death.
The clan, having roused at the commotion, made their way to the Tree of Souls with the group. They didn’t question their Tsahik’s care of the human child, many of them having heard the accounts of you and your kindred nature from the many children who’d attended the school.
Arriving at the Tree, Neytiri and Tsu’tey kept Grace and Jake at a distance, allowing Mo’at to prepare as the clan gathered around. They pulled Jake and Grace down to the ground with them, connecting their Kuru to the roots sticking up. They started to hum, moving as a group.
With everything in them, they begged Eywa to help you.
You were human, yes, but they loved you. You were their sister. You were Grace's daughter, by love if not biology. You were a sweet kid, and they wanted- needed you to stay.
“Allow this child to heal, Great Mother, allow her to heal and walk among us. To live, to feel your embrace.” Mo’at’s words echoed, her chants and pleas thrumming through the crowd.
Placed at the base of the spirit tree, you lay there, wrapped in luminescent tendrils. They wrapped around your small body, seemingly consuming you as they grew. The light of the tendrils pulsed with your every breath, echoing across the tree like a ripple in water.
You… you felt free. The tendrils were warm, encasing you in what felt like a mother's embrace. Your vision was blurred, but you saw. You saw so much, all you could do was smile. You saw Sylwanin, every time you’d seen her, every word, every movement. She wrapped around you. You saw the sea, you saw the forest and the land. It was breathtaking.
Mo’at faltered, her chants falling off the tip of her tongue as she glanced down at you. At this, the ones who’d brought you here opened their eyes.
They didn’t know what to do.
You were there, alive. More alive than you’d ever been, but they could feel that you were slipping away.
Neytiri crawled towards you, Grace scrambling up and finding herself at your side. She took your hand in hers as Neytiri caressed your hair.
They knew it was a desperate attempt, taking you here, unlikely to work, but it hurt. They weren’t ready to let go. The humans weren’t going to help you. What else were they to do?
Tears slid down Grace’s face as she watched you, your eyes glazed over as a smile crept onto your lips.
“Y/n- Syulì'ang please-” Neytiri whispered, her voice cracking. She leaned down, placing a kiss on your forehead. “Stay” she begged
“Syulì'ang,” Tsu’tey choked out, pleading, biting back his words, and tears with them. “Be strong, stay with us.”
You heard their words. You wanted to reach up, to comfort them. Grace was right in front of you, and all you wanted was to reach up and wipe the tears off her face.
Grace cried. Silent, of course. Tears slipping down her cheeks like arrows of fire burning their way through the air. They hurt like it. She wondered if they’d scar, if there would be a trail of scarred flesh down her cheeks when she was done.
You were her child, at least, the closest she had to one. You were the best thing she’d had in a long time. And now, you were slipping away. Like the school, like Sylwanin, like Neytiri and Tsu’tey and the children who’d called her Sa’nok. You called her Sa’nu.
The grief was endless. A fountain pouring from Neytiri as she wept, hands shaking as she tried to fight the urge to take you into her arms. She’d seen you grow up, your words develop from babbles to sentences, your mind expand. She wore the bracelet you’d made for her. It was ill-fitting and poorly crafted, but she weaved it into her armband, careful to preserve its shape and structure. She meant to always have you with her, even if she couldn't physically.
You were more than a child she saw as a sister; you could have been her child. A ridiculous notion, but she felt so strongly about you. She wanted to take you in, hold you close, and carry you as she did her chores and duties. She wanted to hunt and bring it home for you to eat till you were full. Perhaps, to her, you were an odd mixture of a sister and child, but that just meant she loved you all the more.
Her sweet Syulì'ang. She’d named you after the insect, a beautiful creature that fluttered around and gripped onto surfaces when it meant to. She wished and wished and wished that you'd stay, that you’d grip onto the ground and stay there with her. She did not like humans, but you? You, she loved.
So it hurt, watching as your eyes closed, feeling your pulse slow, have you die right in front of her, right in her reach.
Your eyes, heavy, rose up to the sky. “Sa’nu, Tsmuke, Tsmukan, Jake-” Your words were quiet, strained, and heavy. But you spoke anyway, a warmth passing through your body. “Eywa, she’s” It was hard to speak. “She’s like the waves-” your breath released from your lips, cutting off your words.
The tendrils around you pulsed before they dulled, the light dimming across the Tree of Souls.
Jake could only hold Neytiri as she cried, his own tears falling as he felt his entire demeanor freeze.
They left you by the tree, something Grace opposed. But Mo’at had insisted it was Eywa’s wish. Jake and Grace weren’t happy, nor were Tsu’tey and Neytiri; they wanted to give you a proper burial, but they complied with their Tsahik’s declaration.
It was mere days later that Neytiri visited again, only to be met with an empty landscape. You were nowhere in sight, only an abundance of tendrils in your place, pulsing with light as Eywa breathed below them.
Ronal, for weeks, dreamed of a face. A human one. She’d never seen the girl before, unfamiliar with the face and voice she kept meeting in her dreams. It bothered her, being met so forcefully with a demon's face, but behind it, she felt the Great Mother's words.
She couldn’t make sense of it; it drove her wild how she prayed and prayed, and all she was met with were new visions of the girl. With a newborn baby, she felt stretched thin. She confided in Tonowari about her dreams. He did what he could to comfort her, putting in effort to relieve her of as much stress as he could.
Ronal prayed, seeking answers and clarity. What did the Great Mother want?
One night, she dreamed of the spirit tree, along with the girl. She dreamt of whispers, of a new face, of a young Metkayina child she held in her arms.
She woke up in a cold sweat, right as dawn rose in the sky.
She made her way through the village, mounting her tsurak, and traveled to the cove of the ancestors. She felt a weight in her chest as she arrived. She dove under, swimming through the featherlike branches as she made her way to the center of the tree.
She reached forward, placing her palms on the branches wrapped tightly in on itself. Slowly, she unwrapped it, pulling it away from the other ‘leaves’ wrapped around. Once she got to the center, she pulled back.
An infant lay in the middle, wrapped in the leaves. Slowly, she pulled it out, taking it into her arms, she swam up. Breaching the surface, she looked down, watching as the baby breathed in the air.
The first breath.
Ronal gazed down at the baby, brows pinched together as she took her in. Confusion was the least she could describe it as.
A moment passed. Ronal mounted her tsurak, and she returned home.
Whispers surrounded her as she walked through the village, eyes following her and landing on the unknown infant in her embrace. In the mere minutes she’d had the baby, she felt an overwhelming sense of maternal instinct towards it. She reasoned she felt that way about most babies, but this was stronger.
She approached her Marui, Tonowari, meeting her at the entrance. He gazed down at her, then the baby, confusion panting his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, stuck in the flurry of words he was trying to put together.
“The Great Mother brought her to me,” Ronal spoke, calm and melodic. “To us.” Tonowari gazed up at her.
Words exchanged between them in complete silence.
He nodded, stepping aside, allowing Ronal to enter the Marui.
The two took to their daughter quickly, entranced by the baby given to them by Eywa. They were lost, confused by her appearance, but they didn’t question it. They simply placed her in the cradle with their other baby, Ao’nung, watching as they turned and curled to hold each other.
“You dreamt of her.” Tonowari’s voice broke the silence.
Ronal, attention on the baby's unwavering, nodded. “Last night, yes.”
He looked to his wife, tentative as he examined her facial expression. “And the others?” He questioned.
There was a moment of silence, Ronal’s hand coming to rest on the edge of the cradle.
“I do not care. She is my daughter. She is ours now.”
Tonowari stared at his wife before nodding, reaching down to cup his daughter's face in his hand. “And what is our daughter's name?” He spoke, already transfixed by the infant lying in the cradle he crafted by hand.
Ronal tilted her head, watching the girl. After a moment, she gazed to Tonowar, their eyes meeting as a soft smile graced her lips.
“Syuli”
After your death, Jake’s loyalty to the RDA wavered. Grace had accepted her fate as a trapped scientist long ago, but Jake refused. He bonded with Neytiri and Tsu’tey quicker, earning the faith of the clan before he finished his Iknimaya.
He saw it in black and white. The humans left you alone and to die, the Na’vi loved you as their own and wept at your death. His decision was clear-cut.
Still, his fast actions weren’t enough to prevent the events that led to Neytiri’s belief of his betrayal. Or the destruction of the home tree. Or the death of those he fought by.
By the end of the war, your death was followed by many others. Black stains on Jake’s heart. He mourned you, grieved for you. The devastation of the war was hard enough, but you? You weren’t even a casualty; you were a victim of the most unfortunate of circumstances. He replayed it in his head over and over again, each time wondering what he could have done to save you, to prevent your death.
It drove him to the worst of his depths. A side of himself he hadn’t even seen when his brother died.
The only thing keeping him afloat was Neytiri and the child that lay in her womb.
“She is with Grace now, my Jake, with the Great Mother.” Neytiri would say, burying her grief. Twice, she's lost you now. When Sylwanin died and her parents shut down their connections with the humans, she wept for not only her sister but for you. Would she never see you again? At least back then, she found comfort in the fact that you were safe and in Grace’s care.
Perhaps you still were, in her arms, just as you are in the Great Mothers. But you’re not in hers. That’s what hurt. How you’d never grow up, forever stuck as the small child she knew and loved.
Time passed, and she had Neteyam. Her sweet baby boy. She felt the cracks in her heart start to be stitched back together, only further healed when they took in Kiri.
She saw it in Jake, too, how he took to his fatherly role immediately, perhaps better prepared after his time with you. Slowly but surely, they came to be okay again.
Still, you burned in their hearts. As she wove her songcord, she pulled one of the beads from the bracelet you made her, as carefully as she could, and wove it in.
A‘eveng, Y/n, ohe oamum
Wamintxu fi oe, a syawn
a’atanur oe mameyam
meyam ohe ngenga, tsalsungay pehrr lom
A child, Y/n, i knew
showed to me, a blessing
a light I held in my arms
I hold you, even when gone
It was hard to speak about you to the kids. They didn’t want to introduce the idea of someone dying at such a young age. They also still grieved you, struggling to accept your death. It wasn’t fair. You should be with them, growing up alongside their children. You would have been such a good big sister.
This hit Jake especially hard, knowing how you’d been excited to have another kid on base; Spider. You raved to him about how you were going to bring him to the lab all the time, what toys you’d give him, and how you wanted to teach him Na’vi and have him as a little brother. At least, the closest you could have to one.
So it was hard watching Spider do all that, grow up and learn Na’vi, come into his family and be seen by his kids as a fellow sibling, knowing it was everything you wanted.
But years passed, and their family grew, and it grew strong. Their children knew of you in passing, in hushed breaths like how they spoke of Sylwanin and the others they’d loved that left them through such harsh tragedies.
Neytiri and Jake didn’t want the children to wonder what it would have been like to have you in the family. It was already too painful for them to wonder themselves.
Their children grew, their personalities developed, and they came into their own. It was hard not to see you in each of them. Tuk’s curiosity, Lo’ak’s mischief, the softness in Kiri’s eyes, and how Neteyam was so thoughtful with his words. For all its hurt, it also gave them comfort. They’d continue to see you, even when you weren’t with them.
Their grief became something mellow, something they could plant love and strength into.
But then the RDA came back. Like an old scar tearing apart, refusing to heal. Their lives turned upside down, and their healing came to a harsh halt, slowly stepping backwards against the blood and gunfire they stood in.
That eclipse, when the kids were in the hands of the recoms, Jake felt barbed wire wrapping around his throat.
He heard their whines, their yelps of pain, and he almost lost them. He refused to risk it. Not again.
“He had our children. Had them under his knife.” He was scared, begging Neytiri to leave, to find a better place for them. He hadn’t been able to find one for you. He wouldn’t let that happen again. “Look, I got nothing… I've got no plan. But I can protect this family. That I can do.”
Neytiri heard the unsaid, seeing what he saw when he spoke.
“But I do know one thing, wherever we go, this family is our fortress.” It was unintentional, his hands placed delicately on her shoulders, one slipping down, grazing the armband she’d woven with your bracelet in it.
They had to protect their children.
The Travel to the Metkayina was difficult, tiring, laborious, and met with storms that raged against them. But they pushed through. They’ve pushed through worse; they’d do this for their family.
They landed on the beach, drawing the attention of the clan, who gathered around them in confusion and awe. They were nervous, holding themselves close together as they were gawked at and picked on by oncoming clan members.
Jake felt a sense of relief when Tonowari, an honorable man and the clan's Olo’eyktan, arrived at the scene, greeting them warmly and with a smile. He felt confident, with Tonowari on their side, he believed he could get past the wall Ronal would inevitably put up.
As the crowd parted, he prepared himself, but he felt all the breath be taken out of his lungs.
Ronal stalked closer, her imposing demeanor, but that wasn’t what shocked him. Behind her, following at her heels, was a young girl. Teal skin with swirling stripes.
She resembled you.
He couldn’t place it; the girl was Metkayina, in every way. But something about her face, the way her expression was set in it, how she carried herself. The air around her, the look in her eyes. All of it set off bells in his chest, ringing and clanging against the grief that settled there. The grief for you.
She stood behind Ronal, tilting her head exactly the way you did when you were curious about something.
Neytiri had seen it hundreds of times, holding you in her lap at the schoolhouse. She let out a breath. Jake glanced at her, millions of words passing between them.
She saw it too.
Jake took a moment to collect himself, pulling back from the shock he’d experienced but couldn’t explain. He went on with his prepared speech. He was seeking Uturu; sanctuary, safety for his family.
His veins were buzzing. He didn’t want to be turned away, to force his children to retreat in defeat, praying they’d find another clan willing to listen and take them in. He felt helpless.
Ronal, skeptical, circled the family. She pulled at their tails, remarking how inefficient they’d be in the water, in their way of life.
She approached Kiri, taking her hands in hers. A scowl crossed her face. Four fingers. Kiri held her breath, self-conscious of her extra finger, a tell-tale sign of their human descent. Demon descent.
Ronal gazed down, tilting her head.
She looked up to her daughter, the one who’d arrived with her. She watched her for a moment, the dreams she saw all those years ago flooding her mind. Something she’d never speak aloud.
She dropped Kiri’s hands, walking past the children and Jake Sully. “You are ill fit to live here.”
“We can adapt. We can learn.” He pleaded, desperate to convince them to let his family stay. Desperate to appease the leaders of the clan.
“I’m done with war.” He spoke to Tonowari, quiet and between them. “I just want to keep my family safe.”
Ronal watched him, not convinced by his words. Behind her, her daughter stepped forward, placing her hand on her mother's shoulder.
“Sa’nu.” The words escaped her lips, and Jake breathed in. He saw you, sitting in Grace’s lap in the lab, running up to her excitedly, lying at the spirit tree, dying.
Ronal looked at her daughter, words exchanged between their gazes, she turned to her mate, being met with the same sentiment. A moment passed, and she nodded.
“Jake Sully and his family will stay with us.” Tonowari announced, explaining to the clan their duty to teach them their ways of life.
Jake sighed in relief, bringing forth a ‘thank you’ from his family.
“Our children, Syuli, Ao’nung, and Tsireya, will show your children what to do.”
Ao’nung stepped forth, displeased by his father's decision, but silenced.
“Come, we will show you our village!” Tsireya stepped forward, hand in hand with her sister.
You looked to the family that had arrived at your village. You took in their faces.
They felt familiar to you. You couldn’t place it.
Tsireya tugged you along through the village, humming as you made your way across the woven walkways. Neytiri and Jake, though focused on taking in their new home, couldn’t help but watch you. The bounce in your step all too familiar.
It was eerie, and they didn’t understand their attribution of you to the little girl they’d known all those years ago.
You became a constant in their life, always around their kids, peeking into their Marui to offer fruits you’d picked with your mother. You were a sweetheart, thoughtful, and kind to their children.
Your mother stayed skeptical of her allowance of the foreigners into their clan, fueled by your growing night problems.
It had been years since she last caught you sleepwalking. It was a problem when you were a child, roaming around the village in the midst of the night. Many concerned clan members came to her with stories of how you found yourself at the edge of the walkways, staring up into the open sky with a withered look on your face.
You sleep-talked, she discovered after staying up to follow you one night. You spoke garbled sentences, strung together words that didn’t make sense. You spoke in a mix of Na’vi and English.
How you even knew the language? She couldn’t understand.
She prayed nightly, seeking for guidance on how to help her sweet baby girl. Again, she was only met with visions of that human child.
It all came to a head one night when Tsireya woke her up, lip jutting out as she whispered that you’d fallen during your walks. Ronal soothed her daughter, telling her to go back to sleep before leaving to find you.
You were on your knees, hands clasped together as you spoke in broken prayers, eyes glazed over. You were somewhere she didn’t know.
She was tired of it, worried to death, and lost. So, she did the only thing she could think of. She pulled you into the water carefully, holding you as she rode to the Cove of the Ancestors. You came out of your trance, slowly but surely, but still drowsy and out of it.
She was able to coax you to enough consciousness to get you to dive under, connecting with the spirit tree.
She doesn’t know what you saw when you did. All she knows is that you hadn’t sleep-walked, or talked since. She knew you were special. A child she would never truly understand, but she loved and cherished you with everything she had.
She saw the way the animals around you seemed to move in sync with you, how the luminescence at night pulsed with your breath. She didn’t ask for answers. She loved you and she trusted the Great Mother.
But here you were again, standing at the entrance of their Marui, eyes glazed over, staring off into the stars. Ever since they’d let the Sullys stay, you’d been walking and talking in your sleep again.
It wasn’t as intense, thankfully, but it was enough to rouse her or her children from sleep every so often.
They worried for you. They took turns staying up, watching you, easing you back to sleep, careful not to startle you from your trance. During the day, they acted as if nothing was different. They knew you were different, but they loved you nonetheless. You were their daughter, their sister.
Ao’nung picked on you, teasing you and going out of his way to bother you. It was his way of showing his love, he joked. He had his moments. Picking you up in his arms and carrying you across the village to your mother for treatment when you hurt yourself on a spear, ignoring your complaints that it was your hand that was injured, not your legs, you could still walk! He ignored you, carefully setting you down in their Marui, lurking by the door until you were bandaged up and ready to leave.
Tsireya was easier. You got along with your younger sister without any problems, aside from the occasional spat that never went anywhere. You two were two peas in a pod. Inseparable. Hands clasped together, arms wrapped around each other. You were always together. It’s how you thrived.
Ronal and Tonowari, they never gave a second thought to the fact that you weren’t theirs, because you were. From the moment they’d set you down in that cradle, you’d become theirs. Their love for you was strong and unwavering. They called your name out with affection, they weaved you jewelry and clothes with love, they never let you doubt you were loved. They held you as you slept, as you dreamt.
And you dreamt. You dreamt every night. Of faces, of voices, of people you didn’t know, but knew.
By the time you woke up, your dreams were in blurry fragments, unable to be pieced together or made sense of.
Your family didn’t voice their worries to you. They saw how you flourished when interacting with their new clan members.
You were patient with them, guiding them through your way of life like it was the easiest thing to do. You blended in with them, conversing with the children so easily, it was as if you’d been doing it your entire life.
You and your siblings, Rotxo, and the Sully kids became somewhat of a friend group. Always together, at least in fragments. You felt as if your family had expanded.
The Sully kids adored you, especially Kiri. It was something about the way the two of you seemed to understand nature that connected you. And perhaps, your mysterious origins.
You confided in Kiri, and Kiri alone, about your peculiar birth. The whole clan knew, they’d witnessed it firsthand, but the story hadn’t made its way to the Sullys. Perhaps it was because it was accepted, no one thought twice about it, you were Ronal and Tonowari's daughter. No one thought to mention that, by biological means, you weren’t.
You told her how you didn’t know your biological parents. No one did. Abandoned at the Spirit tree, you were taken in by Ronal and Tonowari, raised alongside Tsireya, and essentially as Ao’nung’s twin.
She told you about her mother, a scientist who was beloved by their clan, who died during the first war against the humans. She was born from her Avatar.
Grace.
You spoke her name before Kiri told you.
An odd look passed her face. It wasn't until it dripped from your chin that you realised a tear had slipped down your cheek.
“I-i’m sorry, I'm just-” You strung together words, embarrassed and confused by your unconscious outburst. “It’s hard to speak about my birth.” You blamed it on that. Kiri accepted your words, wrapping her arms around you in an embrace that felt warmer than anything else you’d experienced.
You grew a lot closer to the Sully kids. It was their parents who were odd to be around.
Jake and Neytiri didn’t know what to think of you. You were Ronal and Tonowari’s daughter, Na’vi, born and raised in the reef. Yet when they looked at you, heard your voice, all they could see was that little girl they’d loved.
They were going crazy. That was the only explanation. Driven mad by the destruction of their home and subsequent forced abandonment of it.
They wanted to talk to you. They ached to. But it ached just as much to do so. It wasn’t fair to you, their projections of grief onto you.
You were kind, you spoke for them when they first arrived, and you went out of your way to welcome them. You taught their children and defended them, taking them in as if they were your blood.
But every time they saw you, they were swarmed by a whirlpool of grief and relief.
“She speaks like her.” Neytiri would whisper one night, when all the children were off in the village attending a celebration, Jake lying next to her.
“Yeah.” He’d say, eyes locked on Neytiri’s face, watching as she wandered through her mind. Watching as a tear slipped down her cheek.
For weeks, they watched you, watching every movement and quirk you exhibited. How you spoke, how you moved through the walkways, your sense of humor. The way you scrunched your nose in a certain way when faced with food you didn’t like. It all pointed back.
Back to her.
That girl.
She haunted them.
A ghost following them around. One they thought they’d put to rest over a decade ago.
They had moved on. They grieved her, yes, but they had learned to live without her. Just as they did with every person they lost.
But she was back.
They thought it was in their heads at first, but the more they saw, the more they became sure.
Her body had disappeared, Neytiri recounted to him, a whisper under her breath as they watched you talk to Neteyam and Tsireya from afar. They’d left her at the tree like Mo’at demanded, abiding by Eywa's wishes. Her body was gone far too quickly to have been natural decomposition, and no creature would dare feast on a body wrapped in Eywa’s arms like she was.
They didn’t question it, too wrapped up in their grief to try and breach the topic. They simply accepted it. Eywa wanted her. She was with Grace, they believed.
But she wasn’t.
She was in the reef, living amongst the people, living.
They saw you, and they saw her. One in the same.
They’d grieved you, and now you stood right in front of them, out of their reach.
It tore them apart. They must have been going insane because you were not that girl they knew, you were not the girl they loved and doted on. But you were.
You couldn’t be.
But they watched and they watched and they saw. They saw her.
“It’s not her.” Jake’s voice was steel. Laced with a hardened grief.
“I know what I saw, you know what you see.” Neytiri defended, unsure of how to explain it.
He shook his head, pacing back and forth in the Marui, sliding a hand down his face.
“She’s a Metkayina! She’s Ronal and Tonowai’s daughter! That's it.” He spoke so certainly, as if he were trying to convince himself.
The two breathed heavily, working through their mind and hearts to get their words. Logic wasn’t making sense, but they tried to cling to it, both of them in different ways.
“Ronal didn’t give birth to her, nor did Tonowair father her.” Neytiris' words were heavy, like steel and stone. “A gift from Eywa, Ronal calls her.”
Their eyes met.
At this point, they were haunted less by you and more by the fact that you were back. It wasn’t easy mourning someone, learning to accept their death after having grown to love them so fiercely, to learn how to live without them. All of that, only for them to appear again.
All those walls they’d built, all the strength they’d planted in their grief, it was crumbling, the base of it all blowing away like sand in the wind.
It almost hurt more than the grief itself.
They simmered in it for weeks, speaking through glances and hushed whispers.
It was quiet that day. Jake was making his rounds through the village when he heard it. The humming. Not just the humming but the tune.
Slowly, he rounded the corner, peaking around the Marui, eyes landing on you sitting on the edge of the walkway, legs dangling from an opening. You sat there, beading an arm piece as you hummed.
You hummed the lullaby Jake had used to sing that girl to sleep. The lullaby from Earth.
He felt his chest crack open. He wanted to say something, to reach out and speak to you-
“Sempu!” You called out, spotting Tonowari walk up from another direction. Wordlessly, you held up your work for him, a smile spreading across your face as he approached and knelt down.
“Ah, this is great work, my little ‘itetsyip.” He leaned in, hand reaching up to pull it closer to examine it. He grinned, nodding towards you. “You are an exceptional crafter.”
Jake watched the scene, brows furrowing, a weight resting in his chest.
You rolled your eyes. “Oh, bah! You and Mother praise me far too much.”
Tonowair simply chuckled, his hand moving to cradle your cheek as you grinned at him.
“No, we simply see how great you are.”
Jake started to notice more after that. He watched not just you, but your life. How you wandered freely through the village, greeting your clan members eagerly, your cheerfulness returned. You were surrounded by kids your age, all watching you with a mix of adoration and respect. You bonded with your siblings, giggling over inside jokes and banter.
Your parents were doting. They didn’t spoil you; they made sure you were responsible and self-aware, but they loved you, and they showed it. The more he watched, the more Neytiri did too; perhaps she’d been watching the full scene the whole time.
You weren’t alone.
You smiled so widely, and you never had to beg, you never had to work for attention or affection. You were accepted wholeheartedly.
You had everything you wanted here, Neytiri and Jake realized. You had everything they wanted to give you, and you didn’t have any barriers. You weren’t human or parentless. You moved about freely. You weren’t raised to expect to come second, third, or fourth place.
Neytiri and Jake had wanted to give you that life. But they couldn’t. They never could.
The Great Mother didn’t fulfill their desires to be the one to love you; she gave you what you needed. She gave you the opportunity to live.
It was bittersweet. You had the life you wanted. You were loved.
Just not by them.
And that was ok.
They’d lived their lives, they’d found happiness, a family, and they were good.
You’d found what you needed, even if it wasn’t with them.
Summary: When the Sully family arrives in Awa’atlu, old wounds begin to split open inside Tonowari, Ronal, and Reader’s family.
angst + comfort
Wc: 15 715 words
Taglist: @coconuthoneyandjaguars
Masterlist
Pt2
The first time the Sullys came into Awa’atlu, the village changed shape around them.
Not in any way a stranger could have named, perhaps. The woven walkways were still strung between giant mangrove roots, the platforms still alive with the rhythm of hands at work, of children racing over sun-warmed wood, of nets being mended and fish being cleaned and voices rising over the endless breathing hush of the sea. But something in the air tightened all the same. The clan did not stop moving. It only moved differently, like a body drawing a breath and holding it.
You stood beside Tonowari when they arrived, just behind and slightly to his left, where the leader of the hunting parties would stand when judgment was to be watched but not yet spoken. Salt wind dragged across your skin. Your queue lay over one shoulder. The white marks of your avatar body caught the late light faintly, and though your build had always remained closer to the forest people than the reef people around you, the years had given you the easy balance of one who belonged here. Not by birth. Not by blood. But by time, by battle, by work, and by love.
It still did not stop them from looking.
You had long since learned how to feel it before you saw it. The way glances snagged on your hands, on your narrower tail, on your shoulders, on the traces that marked you as something that had not begun on Pandora no matter how deeply you had rooted yourself into it after. Most days you could let it pass like a tide under a canoe. Most days you could remind yourself that your mates had chosen you in full sight of what you were, that Tsireya’s laughter had first shaped itself around your name, that Ao’nung had once fallen asleep on your chest with seawater still drying in his hair after training. Most days it was enough.
This was not most days.
Jake Sully stepped forward carrying exile in the line of his body. Neytiri stood beside him like a drawn blade. Their children hovered near enough to their parents to show loyalty and far enough to show strain. Even before anyone said anything, the village had already seen the tails. The hands. The faces. The traces of sky-people blood riding alongside Na’vi bone.
And because the clan had seen them, the clan had thought of you.
Ronal’s gaze slid over the newcomers slowly. She did not spit the words some might have expected. She was too controlled for that, too sharp. Her judgment was worse for being clean. Her eyes rested on each child in turn, cool and measuring, then went to Jake, then back to Neytiri, then flicked once toward you before returning to Tonowari.
“They are very unlike us” she said.
That was all. Nothing louder. Nothing cruder. But the thought spread exactly as if she had named it outright. You felt it move through the gathered Metkayina like current through shallow water. Not all at once. Not boldly. Just enough. Half-breed. Strange. Wrong-shaped. Sky-touched. The same old poison dressed in softer cloth.
Tonowari spoke then, giving them uturu as his mercy demanded, because war and grief had driven them there and because he was not small enough to turn away those who came seeking sanctuary. You loved him most in moments like that. His voice was steady, his judgment larger than fear. Yet even while you loved him for it, some quieter and uglier part of you noticed that he never turned to the clan and stopped the way their eyes had slid to you too. He offered protection. He did not challenge implication.
Beside the Sullys, Lo’ak’s face set in that stubborn, bristling way boys wore when they had been cut too many times and refused to bleed where anyone could see it. Kiri stared back with painful calm. Neteyam stood straight as a spear. Tuk all but hid herself against Neytiri’s side.
Then Tsireya came up from the water, bright and curious and open as dawn, and the moment bent in a different direction for a heartbeat. Lo’ak looked at her as if the sea itself had climbed out to stare back at him. You would have laughed if the tension in the air had not still been sharp enough to cut.
Ao’nung and Rotxo ruined the moment almost immediately.
They did not begin at full cruelty. Boys rarely did when they were performing for a crowd. They started with the tails, with the shape of hands, with that dangerous tone that asked a question not because it wanted an answer but because it wanted permission to laugh. Tsireya told them to stop. Ao’nung did not listen. His eyes had gone to the Sully children with a brightness you knew too well. Not simple meanness. Worse. The thrill of sensing where the group’s cruelty would be safest, and stepping into it because it would make him bigger in their eyes.
You did not miss the way his glance brushed past you before he opened his mouth again.
That hurt more than it should have. It hurt because you knew where he had learned that comfort. Not from nowhere. Not from silence alone.
Still, the scene moved as it needed to. Tonowari assigned his children to help the Sully children learn the way of water. Only when Jake turned to him with the rigid, humiliated gratitude of a warrior accepting mercy with both hands did Tonowari glance toward you.
Tsireya was the one sent forward in the end.
That fit better than anything else could have. She was bright where the moment had gone brittle, open where the clan had narrowed in on itself, and young enough to step toward strangers without carrying quite so much of the adults’ suspicion in her bones. When Tonowari told her to show the Sullys where they would stay, she went without hesitation, all kindness and curiosity, gesturing for them to follow her deeper into the village with the easy grace that seemed to live in every part of her.
The others moved with her after a brief pause. Jake remained close to Neytiri. The children hovered around their parents, tense and watchful under so many eyes. Lo’ak looked like he wanted to stare at everything and fight half of it at the same time. Kiri was quieter, reading the village as if it might speak back if she listened hard enough. Tuk stayed tucked close. All of them followed Tsireya across the woven walkways and root-bridges while the clan watched them go.
You stayed where you were, still beside Tonowari, your face unreadable even while your thoughts moved harder than you wanted. Ronal had not said much, but she had not needed to. The clan had heard what sat underneath her judgment all the same, and because they had heard it, they had remembered you too. You could feel it in the aftertaste of the moment, in the glances that had lingered just a fraction too long before turning away.
Tonowari waited until the nearest listeners had drifted farther off before he spoke your name.
His voice was quieter now, stripped of the public weight it had carried a moment before. You looked at him, and something in his expression made you follow when he tilted his head slightly toward one of the outer platforms. It was not secrecy, exactly. More the instinct of a leader who knew when a conversation would grow teeth if it was given to the clan to overhear.
You went with him in silence.
The platform he chose sat a little apart from the nearest cluster of walkways, close enough to the village to remain within sight and far enough to let the noise of it blur into distance. Wind rolled in off the sea, carrying salt and the faint scent of algae warmed under the late sun. Below, the water shifted around the roots in restless blue-green ribbons.
Tonowari rested one hand against the rail of woven mangrove and looked out rather than at you immediately. “I want you to teach Jake Sully” he said.
You did look at him then.
For a beat, all you did was stare. Not because the request made no sense. In some ways it made too much. You were one of the strongest fighters in the clan. You understood adaptation better than most. You knew what it was to enter a people not shaped like yourself and learn anyway, hard and fast and under the pressure of never being allowed the comfort of true ignorance. Still, suspicion rose in you before duty did.
“Why me?” you asked.
Tonowari turned then, and he was too perceptive not to hear everything under the question. Not only why me because of skill. Why me when the clan has just been reminded what I am. Why me when Ronal looked at them and the people looked at me after.
His face softened, though not with pity. He had always known better than to offer you that. “Because you are capable” he said. “Because you see more than what is in front of you. Because he will need someone who understands both pride and shame if he is to learn quickly.”
Your mouth tightened. “That is not the only reason.”
“No” Tonowari admitted.
The honesty stopped you from hardening further.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice even more. “He is Olo’eyktan to his family even if he stands as refugee here. If he fails, the rest will feel it. If he is isolated, he will become harder to guide. You know warriors. You know how men like him carry humiliation. And…” He paused, studying you carefully. “There may be things in him you will understand more easily than others would.”
You held his gaze a long moment. “Because he was one of the sky-people.”
Tonowari did not flinch from it. “Yes.”
The word sat between you.
You looked away, out across the water where Tsireya’s bright figure could just be seen leading the Sullys farther along the village edge. Jake walked near the back now, his attention shifting everywhere at once despite the discipline in his posture. Soldier’s habit. Marine’s habit, maybe, though that thought came and passed before you had fully named it.
“And Ronal?” you asked at last.
Tonowari’s expression changed, not with irritation but with the knowledge that there was no use pretending that piece did not matter. “Ronal trusts you.”
“That was not my question.”
His jaw flexed once. “She will not interfere.”
You gave a short, humorless breath through your nose. “Another answer that is not the one I asked for.”
Tonowari accepted that too. “She does not like this burden being here at all” he said plainly. “But she does not doubt you. Neither do I.”
That should have eased you more than it did. Instead you found yourself searching his face for something smaller and meaner. Pity. Calculation. A hope that you would understand the Sullys because you were enough like them to make use of. Whatever he saw in your expression made his own grow steadier.
“This is not because I see you as closer to them than to us” he said, and now there was a firmness in him that left no room for retreat. “It is because I know exactly where you stand. With us. With this family. With this clan. Do not insult me by thinking I have forgotten.”
The rebuke was gentle only in tone. It landed harder for that.
You looked at him properly again. There was no hesitation in him now, no uncertainty, no crack through which old fear could crawl. For a brief moment the pressure in your chest loosened.
Then duty returned in full.
“If I do this” you said “I will not coddle him.”
Tonowari’s mouth twitched faintly. “I would be disappointed if you did.”
You folded your arms over your chest and stared out at the village once more. “And if he cannot learn?”
“Then at least he will fail honestly.”
That, more than anything, sounded like Tonowari.
Silence stretched for a few breaths. At last you nodded once. “Fine.”
Tonowari let out a breath so slight most would not have caught it. You did. He had wanted this more than he had let show. “Thank you.”
You shook your head. “Do not thank me yet.”
That almost drew a smile from him, but it faded before fully forming. Instead he stepped closer, slowly enough to give you time to refuse him if you wished. One of his hands came up to rest lightly at your waist, warm and familiar, and for a brief moment he only looked at you. Then he bent and kissed you.
It was soft, short, and almost unbearably gentle. No heat, no urgency, nothing that belonged to hunger more than affection. Just the quiet press of his mouth to yours, sweet with reassurance and the kind of love that had long since learned how to speak in smaller gestures. When he pulled back, he stayed close for only a heartbeat more before letting you go.
“I will send him to you after they settle” he said.
You watched him go.
——————————————————————
By the time Jake found you, the sun had shifted lower and the village had settled into that restless in-between hour when work had not yet ended but the worst of the day’s heat had broken. You were near one of the outer racks checking spear bindings, more to give your hands something useful to do than because the task truly needed doing. The sounds of Awa’atlu drifted around you in pieces: children splashing in shallows below, women calling to one another from the fish platforms, distant laughter, the low hush of water against root and wood.
You heard his steps before you turned.
Jake stopped a respectful distance away. For a moment neither of you spoke. Up close, it was easier to see what had first flashed at the edge of your notice before. The way he held his shoulders. The way he looked at space first, then movement, then exits, then finally people. The kind of stillness that was not ease but readiness worn so long it had become a second skin. He looked older than his face alone accounted for. More tired too.
He inclined his head slightly. “Tonowari said I’m with you.”
His Na’vi was serviceable, accented hard, each word carrying the weight of effort. You let him finish before answering.
“For now” you said.
Something in his expression shifted, not quite amusement and not quite resignation. He had likely already learned enough in the village to know that this was your version of mercy.
You set the spear aside and faced him fully. For a moment, you let the silence sit between you, weighing him properly now that the village noise had fallen farther away.
“Tonowari believes you can learn” you said at last. “I have not decided yet.”
Jake took that without visible offense. If anything, something in his posture settled, as if bluntness was easier for him to understand than politeness.
“Fair enough” he said.
You crossed your arms over your chest. “You will listen the first time. You will not argue every correction like wounded pride makes you smarter. And you will not expect me to make this easy because you were Toruk Makto, Olo’eyktan, or anything else that matters somewhere other than here.”
That finally pulled the faintest shift in his expression. Not quite amusement. Not quite irritation. More like recognition of a hard tone he had heard before in other places, under other chains of command.
“Got it” he said.
You held his gaze another beat, watching for the usual signs. Swagger. Resentment. The need to prove himself immediately. Instead you found exhaustion, discipline, and something heavier buried under both.
That did not make you trust him. It only made you think he might be worth the effort.
For one strange beat, the air between you altered. Not softer. Sharper. Recognition trying on a shape before either of you trusted it enough to name. Neither of you moved first. Neither smiled. Yet some old instinct, buried under years and planets and new bodies and new loyalties, stirred its head.
You broke eye contact first because you disliked the feeling of being read.
“Walk” you said.
Jake followed without protest. You led him down one of the narrower village paths where the platforms thinned and the sound of the central marui softened behind you. For a while you said nothing, making him keep pace over slick wood and curving roots, watching whether he looked only at where he stepped or at the full environment around him. He adapted quickly, though not gracefully. Not yet.
At last you stopped near a lower platform where the tide had come in high enough to lap against the woven supports.
“If you are to remain here” you said, turning to him “you will learn more than how to swim their way and breathe their way. You will learn when not to take up space. You will learn when pride becomes a burden for everyone around you.”
Jake absorbed that without visible offense. If anything, his gaze grew a shade more direct. “You always start this friendly?”
“No” you said. “Normally I am worse.”
That did it. One corner of his mouth moved before he could stop it.
You noticed. So did he.
It vanished almost at once.
He was silent after that, and to his credit he did not push.
That, more than the recognition itself, was what made you decide he might actually be teachable.
——————————————————————
Jake Sully learned like a man who understood that failure was no longer private.
The first few days, you gave him no softness. You made him run the shallows until his breathing turned ragged. You corrected his stance with the blunt pressure of your hand against his shoulder and the sharper crack of your voice when words failed. You showed him how to move his balance lower on the slick roots, how to enter the water without fighting it, how to watch the current rather than only the surface. You kept your explanations short in Na’vi because he needed the language in his mouth as much as the skill in his limbs. When he stumbled, you made him go again. When he swore under his breath, you pretended not to understand.
By the end of the second day, both of you knew you were pretending.
He had just surfaced from another rough dive, pushing wet hair out of his face and coughing salt from his throat, when you said, “You are still trying to win against the water.”
Jake wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That obvious, huh?”
The English snapped between you so suddenly that both of you stilled.
Then, despite everything, the corner of your mouth twitched.
“Yes” you answered in the same language. “Painfully obvious.”
He barked a laugh. It came out rougher than amused, but it was real. For the first time since arriving, some of the tightness in him loosened.
“Jesus” he muttered. “That’s nice.”
“What?”
“English. No offense, but my brain feels like it’s getting beat with a shovel half the time.”
You folded your arms over your chest and looked at him a long moment. “You are doing better than you think.”
“Yeah?”
“No.”
That got a fuller laugh out of him, and there it was again, that quick flash of recognition. Not intimacy. Not anything you needed to fear. Just the strange, immediate ease of finding another person who had once stood under the same hard sun, listened to the same dead humor, worn the same kind of damage into the body until it became posture.
From the shallows, you saw Tonowari turn his head slightly from where he spoke with a group of hunters farther up the beach.
He looked away almost at once.
You told yourself it meant nothing.
——————————————————————
What unsettled your family was not one thing. It was accumulation.
Jake began to catch more of your English when it slipped out around frustration or instinct. Once, when he planted his foot wrong on a root slick with spray and nearly went backward into the water, you grabbed his arm and snapped “Watch your footing, soldier” before thinking. He froze. Then he stared at you with dawning disbelief.
“No way.”
You let go too quickly. “What?”
“That’s marine. Nobody says that like that unless—” He laughed under his breath. “You were one too.”
You did not answer immediately. Waves lapped around your calves. Farther out, ilu rolled just under the skin of the sea like ghosts. At last you said “A long time ago.”
“Still counts.”
“Not here.”
He studied you with a little too much understanding. “Yeah. I get that.”
You hated how much you liked being understood without having to pry your chest open for it. Hated, too, how dangerous that liking could look from the outside when no one else shared the language that carried it.
So you cut the moment short and sent him back underwater.
But these things added up. A phrase here. A tone there. A curse muttered in English when he swallowed too much water and came up sputtering. The half-grin you could not quite stop when he made some dry, bitter joke about command structures and impossible missions. The day you found yourself humming under your breath while sorting spears after training and he looked up from where he knelt checking a woven net.
“Hold on” he said.
You stopped.
“No” he said, staring. “No way.”
Your fingers tightened on the shaft in your hand. “What.”
“That song.”
You had not heard that song in years. Not truly. It was old even before Pandora, older still by the time it had crossed light-years with you in memory alone. Some fragment of Earth, half nursery-rhyme, half cheap old melody from barracks speakers and scratched recordings and a place so far gone it barely felt real anymore.
You should have denied it.
Instead you said “You know it?”
Jake let out a disbelieving breath. Then, very softly, he sang the next line.
Your whole body went still.
It was absurd. It was stupid. It was nothing but a few words from a dead world carried unexpectedly into salt air and reef light. And yet the force of it hit you somewhere behind the ribs. Something old and buried sat up inside you all at once.
So you sang back.
Not loudly. Not beautifully. Your voice had never been built for softness. Jake’s was worse, rough and low and frayed at the edges. But between you the melody formed anyway, pieced together from memory and laugh-broken mistakes and the sort of embarrassed amusement soldiers learned when they recognized one another being sentimental by accident.
When it ended, the silence after felt strange.
“Damn” Jake said.
You looked away toward the horizon because your throat had gone unexpectedly tight. “Yeah...”
“That was… damn.”
You stayed quieter this time.
Neither of you noticed Tsireya standing farther down the beach with an armful of shells for a long few seconds. By the time you did, her expression had already smoothed itself into something easy. She came forward smiling, asking what the song had meant, asking what language it was, asking if you would teach her a little of it.
You answered gently. You always answered Tsireya gently.
But that night, when you returned to the family marui, Ao’nung was sharper than usual. Ronal’s attention lingered on you too long before dropping. Tonowari asked how Jake had done, and the question was ordinary, but something under it was not.
You noticed.
You said nothing.
——————————————————————
Lo’ak came to you slowly.
It began with small things. Not intimacy. Not confidence. Observation.
You were the first among the Metkayina adults to acknowledge the Sully children’s progress without loading the praise with surprise or mockery. When Kiri held her breath longer than anyone expected, you told her so plainly. When Neteyam adapted his form in the water, you nodded once and said he learned fast. When Tuk followed Tsireya through shallow reef channels without fear, you crouched to her height and told her she was brave. And when Lo’ak took an ilu ride that ended ragged but stubbornly recovered, you caught him at the shore while everyone else focused on the larger lesson and told him “You corrected quickly. That's useful here.”
He looked at you then as if he did not know what to do with approval that had no sting hidden inside it.
After that, you caught him watching you now and again. Not often. Enough.
You did not go to him at once. Boys like Lo’ak could smell pity the way akulas smelled blood. He would have bolted from it. So you waited. You watched how Ao’nung needled him, how Neteyam shielded him when he could, how Jake’s discipline fell hardest on him and Neytiri’s worry sharpened around him until both could sound like disappointment if a child heard them at the wrong angle. You watched how Lo’ak learned to grin before the next blow landed, how he bristled before anyone touched the sore place because he had learned that if he bared his teeth first people mistook it for strength.
Then came the day Ao’nung and his friends crossed too far.
It played out near the waterline with enough witnesses to make it uglier. Rotxo laughed first. Ao’nung followed, circling the Sully children with that loose-limbed swagger boys wore when they believed the world had already decided in their favor. Tails. Hands. Foreheads. The mockery came quick and mean. Kiri’s expression closed. Lo’ak stepped forward at once, ready to start the fight that had already been offered to him.
You moved before he could.
“Ao’nung.”
Your voice cracked across the space hard enough that every child there froze.
Your son turned. Shock hit first, then defiance. He had expected adults to ignore it. He had not expected you.
“Mother—”
“No.”
The word came flat as stone. You crossed the sand until you stood between the two groups, not facing the Sully children at all. Facing him. Only him.
“What do you see when you look at them?” you asked.
Ao’nung lifted his chin. Around him, Rotxo and the others went still with the instinctive caution of boys who realized too late that the game had shifted.
He said nothing.
You took one step closer. “Say it.”
His jaw tightened. “They are not like us.”
The words struck with the force of memory because you had heard them before. Not always aloud. Not always with witnesses. But enough.
“No” you said. “They are not. And yet they are under our protection. They are guests. They are children. Is this how I taught you to carry strength?”
Ao’nung’s eyes flicked away for the briefest instant. Shame. Then anger, because shame rarely came alone at his age.
“They are freaks” one of the boys muttered from behind him, too quiet perhaps in hope of escaping notice.
You heard it anyway.
So did Lo’ak. So did Kiri. So did Tsireya, who had just reached the edge of the group and gone pale.
You felt the word land inside your own ribs like a thrown stone. For one terrible instant you nearly lost your hold on your face. Nearly let them all see exactly where it had struck. But you had stood through worse than a child’s cruelty, and this was not the moment to bleed.
Instead you looked at Ao’nung and said, very quietly “Then what does that make me?”
Silence.
Not one child moved.
Ao’nung’s eyes snapped back to yours, wide for one naked second before he forced them harder again. He had not expected that. He had not expected to be made to look directly at the bridge between what he had said and who you were.
“You are not—” he began.
But he had no ending for it.
You spared him none.
“You will not speak that way again” you said. “Not of them. Not of anyone under this clan’s shelter. If you do not know how to carry your rank with honor, then you will carry nothing. Go.”
He stood frozen just long enough to reveal the child still living inside the almost-young-man shape of him. Then he turned sharply and stalked off, his friends scrambling after him in uneasy silence.
The Sully children remained where they were.
You still did not look at them immediately. Your hurt was too near the surface. You knew if you met Lo’ak’s eyes just then you might show too much.
When you finally turned, Neteyam looked wary. Kiri looked as if she had understood far more than you wanted her to. Tuk only seemed confused. Lo’ak had that same braced expression again, like he did not trust good things not to twist into something else.
So you kept it simple.
“Go with Tsireya” you said. “Training is not finished.”
Tsireya stepped forward at once, relief and loyalty all over her face, gathering the others with the soft authority that came to her as naturally as tide.
Lo’ak lingered half a second longer.
You gave him one small nod.
He went.
Only when they were gone did you let yourself breathe.
——————————————————————
That night Ao’nung found you outside the marui.
The village slept in pieces, never fully. The sea muttered against the roots. Wind moved through hanging shells and fishbone charms with a sound like soft rattling breath. You had come out because you could not bear one more look, one more half-thought, one more silence from inside. You stood on a narrow platform over dark water and let the night keep your company while the tears you had denied yourself earlier escaped anyway, quiet and furious.
You heard him before you saw him. Young warriors always thought they moved more silently than they did.
“Mother?”
You swiped at your face before turning. He saw anyway. Of course he saw. Ao’nung had always been able to read your pain more quickly than Tsireya. He simply had less practice handling it.
He stood a little distance away, no longer broad with performance. Just young. Just your son. His shoulders had lost all their earlier swagger.
“I should not have said those things” he said.
His voice was low, roughened by shame he clearly hated. You waited.
“I should not have let them say them either” he added. “It was wrong.”
Still you waited.
Ao’nung swallowed. “I was angry.”
“Angry at children?” you asked.
“No.” He stopped, jaw tight. “At… everything.”
That at least was honest.
You looked back out over the water. Moonlight silvered the surface in broken bands. “Do you know why your words hurt?”
“Yes.”
“No” you said. “You know why they upset me. That is not the same.”
He flinched. Not visibly enough for a stranger. More than enough for you.
After a moment, you went on. “When you call them freaks, when you make their bodies into something to be mocked, you are not speaking only to them. You are speaking into a wound that existed before they arrived. A wound you have seen this clan touch in me all your life whether you named it or not.”
Ao’nung’s breathing changed. Slight. Tight.
“I know” he said.
You turned then and finally looked at him fully. “Do you?”
His face worked with things he did not know how to say. Defensiveness. Shame. Pride. Fear. The ugly confusion of realizing that someone could love you fiercely and still be disappointed in the shape you were taking.
“I did not mean you” he said at last, and it was the sort of thing a child said because he still believed intent could erase impact.
Your chest ached.
“I know” you answered softly. “But it doesn't erase that I still am lime them.”
Tears burned again. You despised them. You let none fall this time.
Ao’nung took a hesitant step forward. “I am sorry.”
This time, because it was him, because he had come on his own and because he was trying in the only way he knew how, you reached out. Your hand settled briefly against his cheek.
“I know” you said.
He leaned into the touch before he caught himself. The movement was small, almost involuntary, but you felt it all the same. It broke you a little more, because for all his sharpness and pride and the cruel stupidity of what he had done earlier, there was still something achingly young in the way he sought comfort before remembering he was meant to stand tall without it.
Your hand slid from his cheek to the back of his head before you could think better of it.
“Ao’nung” you said softly.
That was all it took.
Whatever stiffness had been holding him upright gave way at last, and he stepped into you with none of his usual swagger left, leaning his weight against you as if he had forgotten for a moment how to keep it all inside himself. You drew him in without hesitation, wrapping both arms around him and holding him close. One hand spread broad between his shoulder blades while the other rested at the back of his head, keeping him there with a gentleness that only made the ache in your chest deepen.
He did not speak. Neither did you.
For a little while, the two of you only stayed that way in the dark, with the sea breathing quietly below and the night moving around the edges of the platform. Ao’nung let himself be held in a way he would have denied wanting in daylight, all the sharp edges of him gone quiet for once. You pressed a kiss to his hairline and held him tighter for a heartbeat, as though that alone could soothe every place where disappointment had cut through both of you.
When he finally pulled back, it was slowly and with visible reluctance, his face turned partly away as if he could hide how much he had needed it.
You let him have that dignity.
He swallowed once, then straightened. “Goodnight, Mom” he said, voice rougher than before.
Your hand brushed briefly over his arm before you let him go. “Goodnight, baby.”
Only after he had disappeared back into the sleeping village did you stand there alone and let the thought come that you had been keeping away.
Ao’nung had been comfortable enough to say those things because he had heard their shape before. Maybe not in those exact words. Maybe not from Tonowari’s mouth. But from the clan. From whispers. From tones. From Ronal’s colder judgments uttered when you were not near enough to answer. From silences that let implication breathe.
And if Ao’nung had learned it there, if he had learned that such thoughts were sayable, then what had Tonowari and Ronal allowed to live around your children in all these years?
Worse still, what had they themselves believed and merely loved you enough never to say?
The question lodged like a hook and would not come free.
——————————————————————
After that, Lo’ak became a shape at the edge of your days more often.
He did not come to confide in you. Not yet. But he began staying back when the others ran ahead. He lingered after lessons under excuses that fooled no one. Once, while Tsireya helped Tuk with a breathing exercise and Ao’nung wrestled some challenge out of Rotxo farther down the reef, you found Lo’ak sitting alone on a low root with his feet in the water, staring out so hard at the horizon it looked like he was trying to force his thoughts into it.
You could have left him.
Instead you sat beside him without asking.
For a while neither of you spoke. Water moved around your ankles. A school of tiny fish flashed silver below. Somewhere overhead seabirds cried.
At last you said “You glare like your father.”
Lo’ak snorted before he could stop himself. “That’s not a compliment.”
“No” you agreed. “It is not.”
He glanced at you sideways then, suspicious amusement mixing with caution.
You let the quiet stretch again until he settled back into it.
When you spoke next, your voice was lighter than the weight of the question. “Did you want to punch Ao’nung?”
Lo’ak huffed. “Kinda always.”
“Reasonable.”
That earned you a real look. The first one not filtered through wariness.
You did not smile. Not much. Just enough.
A little of the tension left him. “You were really pissed.”
“Yes.”
“Because he was being a skxawng.”
“Yes.”
Lo’ak nudged water with one foot, watching the ripples. “And because of the other thing.”
There it was.
You turned your face toward the sea again. “Yes.”
He was quiet a long while after that. Then he asked, too casual to be casual “Does it bother you?”
You could have lied. You almost did. But something in the set of his shoulders stopped you.
“Of course it does.” you said.
Lo’ak looked down at his hands. Five fingers. Strong. Capable. Wrong, to some eyes. He flexed them once.
“Oh” he said.
It was such a small sound. Such a bare one. It carried more than any long confession would have.
You understood then, with a painful clarity, that no one had told him what he needed to hear. Not in a way that had sunk in. Not enough times. Not with the right weight.
So you spoke carefully, because some truths had to be laid in a boy’s hands like knives turned hilt-first.
“Listen to me, Lo’ak. The shape of your body does not lessen you. Not your hands. Not your tail. Not your face. Not any piece of you. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make themselves feel pure by cutting someone else smaller. That is not truth. That is cowardice.”
He stared straight ahead. You were not certain he was breathing.
“You are Na’vi” you went on. “You are your father’s son and your mother’s son. You are yourself beyond both of them. You do not have to earn personhood from people who look at you and see only what is different. Do you understand me?”
Lo’ak’s throat moved.
“Maybe” he muttered.
“Then I will say it again another day.”
That made his mouth twitch a little. Not quite a smile. Near enough.
And because he was still a boy, because the ache in him had not erased the impulse to test, he said “You really think I’m perfect?”
“Nobody is” you said at once.
His head whipped toward you, offended.
You let him stew half a second before adding “You are loud, impulsive, and you make decisions like someone throwing knives blind in the dark. But none of that has anything to do with the body you were born into.”
Lo’ak barked a laugh so sudden it startled both of you.
You joined him. Very briefly.
From then on, he sought you more.
Not always alone. Sometimes he just drifted toward wherever you were helping set lines or checking spears or returning from a hunt, offering clumsy help he would never have offered before. Sometimes you found him with Tsireya and Tuk, and he was easy there, gentler. Sometimes he caught you between duties and asked sharp questions about fighting, or hunting, or how long it had taken you to feel like you belonged in reef water. Sometimes he said nothing at all, only sat near enough that the silence became company.
The Sullys noticed. So did your family.
Jake and Neytiri, to their credit, did not pry. You saw the awareness in Jake’s eyes, the cautious gratitude in the way he sometimes let Lo’ak drift toward you without calling him back. Neytiri watched too, more guarded, but she recognized help when she saw it. She simply did not know its shape.
Your own family did not have that grace.
Tsireya’s jealousy came first and hurt the least. She grew clingier in small ways, touching your arm more often, leaning against you when she spoke, asking if you would braid shells into her hair that evening or come see some little thing she had found in the tide pools. It was not suspicion. It was fear of displacement. You answered it at once, gathering her close whenever you returned home, pressing kisses to her forehead, telling her stories while you worked her braids loose and redid them, letting her fall asleep with her head in your lap when the nights grew longer.
Ao’nung’s came in the form of watchfulness. He did not mention Lo’ak directly. He simply observed too much and went sharp around the edges whenever he found you speaking to the Sully boy alone. Shame still sat between the two of you after his apology, not healed, only softened over. That made everything worse.
Tonowari and Ronal felt different.
They held it in. They trusted you, and because they trusted you they hated the feeling all the more. You could see it in what they did not say. Tonowari lingering longer after evening meals, listening when you spoke of training but not asking the questions beneath his quiet. Ronal watching your face when Jake’s name came up and then turning away before the glance could become accusation. Their discomfort did not come from believing you unfaithful. Not yet. It came from seeing parts of you open in ways they had never been invited into.
That was what jealousy often was at its core. Not fear of replacement. Fear of exclusion.
You almost understood it enough to forgive.
Almost.
——————————————————————
The fracture deepened before it broke.
You began hearing things you had never let yourself fully hear before. A pause in conversation when you approached. A woman on a fish platform lowering her voice just a breath too late. A boy saying something under his breath about sky-blood and getting hissed into silence by his sister. None of it new, perhaps. Only newly impossible to ignore once Ao’nung had put shape to it in front of you.
And Ronal, for all the love between you, did not help.
She was not careless with you. Never that. In private she touched you with certainty, trusted your judgment in battle, shared the weight of the children and the home and the clan’s expectations. But she had always kept a harder core than Tonowari, and in moments where the Sullys were discussed her words carried enough old disdain to stir every insecurity you had spent years trying to bury. She did not call them demons. She did not need to. A tone could do the work. A look. A certain refusal to separate strangeness from contamination.
Each time, you said nothing.
Each time, something in you bent a little further.
Then came the day you learned she had spoken more plainly when you were not there.
Not from Tonowari. Not from some dramatic confrontation. From chance. From walking behind a half-screened section of woven wall and hearing the tail end of a conversation between Ronal and two women who had come seeking her counsel. You only caught enough to understand. The Sully children. Their bodies. Their blood. The risk of letting too much of the sky-people remain in the heart of the clan. Ronal’s voice cool and unsparing. Not once your name spoken, but you heard yourself in every omission.
You left before they saw you.
That night you could not eat.
When Tonowari asked what was wrong, you said you were tired. Ronal looked at you too long and said nothing. Ao’nung picked at his meal. Tsireya chatted about some little thing from the reef until even she felt the heaviness and fell quiet.
You slept badly. When morning came, you threw yourself harder into your duties.
No one stopped you.
——————————————————————
The argument began with almost nothing.
That was the cruel part. The worst fights often did.
You had spent half the day with the hunting parties and the latter part of the afternoon checking on the younger trainees. By the time you returned to the marui, salt dried tight over your skin and exhaustion sat meanly in your bones. The family meal was nearly ready. Tsireya was helping set woven plates in place. Ao’nung was cleaning a spearhead with too much force. Tonowari sat mending something with hands that only looked calm. Ronal had her back partly to you, sorting herbs and shells for medicines, her profile sharp in the slanting gold light.
You entered and the shift in the marui was immediate, small but noticeable all the same. Tsireya brightened first, coming to you at once, and you kissed her forehead as naturally as breathing. Your hand rested briefly on Ao’nung’s shoulder as you passed, even though he did not look up, his attention fixed too carefully on the spearhead in his hands.
Tonowari’s eyes found you next.
He was seated near the center of the space, broad shoulders slightly bowed over the piece of mending in his hands, but the moment he saw you he straightened a little. Not enough to make it obvious. Just enough that you caught it. His gaze moved over your face in one quick, quiet check, as though measuring your tiredness, your mood, the weight you had brought back in with you from the day. When you paused near him, he reached out and let his fingers brush lightly over your wrist. It was a small touch, gone almost as soon as it happened, but it carried the kind of familiar care that long years built into instinct.
“You are late” he said.
There was no reprimand in it. Only notice.
“Work took longer” you answered.
Tonowari gave a low hum and let his hand fall away, though not before his thumb brushed once against your skin. “Sit when you are done. You have not rested enough these past days.”
Before you could answer, Ronal looked up from where she sat sorting herbs and shells into neat little groupings by her side.
Her expression was harder to read, as it often was when others were near, but you knew her too well not to catch the brief pause in her hands when you stepped fully into the marui. She looked at you for a moment longer than necessary, her gaze moving over the damp salt dried into your skin, the tension still holding across your shoulders, the faint exhaustion under your eyes. Then she clicked her tongue softly, almost under her breath.
“You pushed too far again" she said.
The words should have sounded sharp. From anyone else, they would have. From Ronal, they carried that familiar edge of concern dressed in sternness, the shape it most often took when she did not want to soften herself in front of the children.
You exhaled through your nose, too tired to fight the gesture for what it was. “I am still standing.”
“Yes, Ronal said, dry and unimpressed. “And you think that is always the same as being well.”
Tsireya hid a smile at that, clearly having heard the argument before.
For the briefest moment, your eyes met Ronal’s properly. Something quiet passed there. Not tenderness made obvious. Never that, not in front of everyone. But something steady and known, something that had lived in the spaces between the three of you for too long to need much dressing.
You shook your head faintly, more to yourself than to either of them, and moved at last to wash.
——————————————————————
It could have ended there.
Instead Ronal said, without turning “Lo’ak was looking for you again.”
The words were ordinary. The tone was not.
You stilled with water running over your fingers.
“I saw him” you said.
“Mm.”
That sound. Small. Dismissive. Heavy with all the things left unsaid.
You dried your hands slowly and faced her. “If you wish to say something, say it.”
Tsireya froze. Ao’nung’s head lifted. Tonowari’s hands went still over the mending in his lap.
Ronal turned then. Her face was controlled, but not enough. “You spend much time with him.”
“He needed guidance.”
“He has parents.”
The words landed harder than they should have because you had given your life to children who were not of your body and never once resented it. Because you knew exactly where your deepest insecurity lived. Because Ronal knew it too.
“So do ours” you replied, voice already sharpening. “Yet that has never stopped me from raising them.”
Tonowari looked up fast. “Enough.”
“No” you said without taking your eyes off Ronal.
Ronal set down the herbs in her hands one by one with terrifying care. “The clan sees. The people speak.”
“And you listen.”
Her nostrils flared. “I am Tsahìk. I hear what moves through my people.”
“You let it move.”
“That is not the same.”
“No?” Your laugh came sharp and ugly. “Then tell me, Ronal, when they look at the Sully children and see something tainted, something wrong-shaped, something less, do you think I do not know what else they are seeing in that moment?”
Tonowari stood. “Y/n—”
“DO NOT.” You barely spared him a glance.
The words came out so loud and raw that the whole marui seemed to freeze around them.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. No one even breathed properly. It was not only the force of it. It was the fact that none of them could remember the last time they had heard you scream at all, much less heard it turned on one of them. Not Tonowari. Not Ronal. Not the children. You were not gentle by nature, not always soft, but this was different. This was something torn straight out of the center of you, stripped of discipline and pride and every careful restraint you usually kept wrapped tight around your hurt.
Silence crashed into the marui so hard even the sea beyond seemed to retreat.
Ronal’s chin lifted higher. Hurt had reached her now, and pride arrived right behind it. “You are twisting this.”
“Am I?” Your voice rose. “Ao’nung did not learn those thoughts from water and wind. He learned them here. In this clan. In this home. In the things said when I am not present and the things not challenged when I am.”
Ao’nung jerked upright. “Mother—”
“Be silent.”
The words cracked out of you with a force that seemed to stun even yourself.
Ao’nung went still at once. So did everyone else. It was not simply that you had snapped at him. It was that none of them were used to this version of your anger, this loud, shaking, barely-contained thing that tore out of you without the usual control wrapped around it. You could be stern. You could be sharp. But this was different, and the shock of hearing it turned on him kept Ao’nung rooted where he stood.
Ronal’s eyes flashed. “You accuse me of turning my son against you?”
“I accuse you of feeding him poison and calling it caution.”
Tsireya made a strangled sound. Tonowari stepped between you by instinct, but you moved sideways before he could block the line of the fight.
The words struck. Not because they were true in the way she meant. Because some part of them touched something real.
Your face twisted, more wounded than angry for one naked second.
“Never offered you?” you shot back. “You speak as though you ever reached for them.”
Ronal went still.
You laughed once, harsh and shaking. “Do you know how many times either of you asked about where I came from? About the life before this one? About the language still living in my mouth? About the things I lost?” Your voice rose again, raw with old hurt now, with something far older than the Sullys and this argument and even the clan’s whispers. “You accepted that those parts of me existed, yes, but you never wanted to stand too close to them. Never wanted to know them unless they could be made useful, or small, or easy to set aside.”
Tonowari’s expression changed at that, guilt flashing through it before he could hide it.
You did not spare him either.
“I did not hide those pieces because I wished to keep you out,” you said, voice breaking around the force of it. “I kept them quiet because no one asked. Because no one looked at those wounds and wondered what they were made of.”
The silence that followed hurt worse than shouting.
You had kept those fragments hidden. Not maliciously. Not knowingly. But because pain went silent when no one around you shared its language and because the ones who claimed to love you had never truly learned how to ask for it.
“You think I would betray you for friendship?” you asked, voice trembling now with fury.
“I think” Ronal snapped, and now she was shouting too “that demons return to their own. I think perhaps you feel the pull of sameness and do not know it. I think perhaps that is why you go so often where you are reflected.”
Everything in you went cold.
Tonowari moved at once. “Ronal.”
But she was too far inside the blow already. You saw regret hit her only after the words were gone.
You stared at her. “Do you see me only as a demon, then?”
Ronal was breathing hard. Wounded pride, jealousy, fear, and years of buried prejudice had tangled too tightly to unwind cleanly. In that moment she chose anger because anger felt stronger than retreat.
“Yes” she said, in a voice that shook. “In this, yes. What else calls a mated woman away so often if not the demon in her? What else lets her laugh and sing and hide herself with another male as though the bond of her family is not enough?”
Tsireya began to cry.
The sound barely reached you. Your ears were roaring.
You stepped forward so fast Tonowari actually reached out to catch your arm and missed. “You dare” you said, each word raw. “You dare accuse me of cheating while standing in the home I built with my own hands. While speaking to the children I fed, bathed, taught, held. While wearing medicines I gathered and skins I cured and weapons I sharpened. You dare call me demon after I gave you every piece of my fucking life?!”
Ronal’s face crumpled for a heartbeat under the force of it, but you were beyond mercy now.
“You put those thoughts into Ao’nung’s mouth” you went on, voice breaking louder. “Do not deny it. He did not invent that cruelty. He learned from the contempt you carry when you think I am not looking.”
“I was protecting this family!” Ronal shouted back.
“By teaching our son to despise people like me?”
Ao’nung surged to his feet then, shaking with his own helpless rage and terror, too young and too proud and too frightened for either of you.
“Stop talking to her like that!”
You turned on him in disbelief. “To her?”
His chest rose and fell fast. “She is my mother.”
The words hung. Not wrong. Not enough.
Pain and fury made you crueler than you meant to be. “And I am what, then?”
Ao’nung’s face twisted. For a second you saw him realize the cliff edge. He stepped anyway.
“You are not even my true mother” he spat. “You are not my real parent.”
The world stopped.
There were sounds after. Tsireya sobbing. Tonowari barking Ao’nung’s name in horror. Ronal’s sharp inhale like she had been stabbed. But all of it came from very far away. What you heard most clearly was the split inside your chest. Clean. Final. A thing tearing where you had thought it had grown too strong to tear.
Tonowari crossed to you quickly, hands half raised. “Y/n, listen to me—”
“No.” You reeled back from him too. “NO. NOT ONE OF YOU.”
Tsireya ran forward then and you almost broke on the sight of her, but you could not stay. Could not breathe inside that marui another second.
You snatched up the nearest things that were yours. A wrap. A knife. Your bow. A small satchel hanging from a peg by the entrance. Tonowari called your name. Ronal did too, and hers sounded ruined now, but you could not hear anything except the echo of demon and not my true mother and the older, deeper voice inside yourself whispering the worst of all.
You could not even give them children.
Perhaps that was what had always sat beneath it. The old failure. The body that had crossed worlds and changed shape and still would not do this one thing the clan understood without question. You had told yourself for years it did not matter, because Tsireya and Ao’nung were yours in every way that counted. But pain was a scavenger. It dragged up every buried bone when called.
You fled before you screamed.
You climbed until your hands bled.
Not badly. Just enough for the sting to keep you in your body when grief wanted to blast you out of it. You left the clustered marui of the village behind, crossed a tangle of roots and tide-cut stone, and found one of the old trees farther inland where mangrove gave way to the slightly drier edges of forest. There, high above ground and water both, you wedged yourself into the cradle of thick branches and finally let the collapse come.
It was not graceful. It was not quiet.
You cried until your chest cramped and your throat felt flayed raw. You hit the trunk once with the heel of your hand hard enough to bruise. You cursed in English because Na’vi felt too sacred for the ugliness in you and because no one was there to hear Earth’s dead language anyway. Then you curled in on yourself with your forehead pressed to bark and shook like something hunted.
You thought of Ao’nung as a small child reaching for you from Ronal’s arms the first time he had chosen to come to you without prompting. You thought of Tsireya feverish and half asleep, her fingers tangled in your braid while you sat up all night cooling her skin with damp cloths. You thought of Tonowari holding you after hunts gone bad, of Ronal’s mouth at your shoulder in the dark, of every year you had given to this family, this place, this life built on the bones of another.
Then you thought of the clan’s eyes on you when the Sullys arrived. Of Ronal saying unlike us. Of whispers. Of silences. Of Tonowari never quite cutting them off. Of every time you had chosen gratitude over fury because love seemed more important than being right.
The night gave you too much room to think. Sleep would not hold for long, and every time you drifted close to it your mind kicked you back awake with something sharper waiting. So you lay there in the cradle of branches staring through gaps in the leaves at scraps of dark sky and let yourself wander somewhere crueler.
Your thoughts found Lo’ak because of course they did. Not just Lo’ak as he was now, all sharp edges and stubborn pride and hurt packed into the shape of a boy trying not to show where the world had bruised him, but Lo’ak as he had been when he was smaller, when his hands had still looked too big for the rest of him and his ears and brows and fingers had marked him out before he could even understand why people were staring. You thought of the way eyes lingered. The way silence changed texture around him. The way even kindness could turn ugly when it carried pity underneath.
And then, against your own will, your mind made the leap. If you had ever carried a child of your own here, if Eywa or fate or whatever force ruled these things had ever placed that life in your arms, would they have looked like that too. Would they have had your blood written into them in all the ways this world knew how to notice and punish. Five fingers. Strange bone structure. Some soft human wrongness visible beneath Na’vi skin. Something beautiful to you, maybe, because it would have been yours, because it would have been theirs, because love would have made every difference sacred. But not beautiful to everyone else. Not safe.
The thought hollowed you out in a new place. Because once it came, another followed it, quieter and somehow worse. Maybe Tonowari and Ronal had known. Maybe not in words, not in any deliberate, spoken way, but somewhere deep and practical and afraid. Maybe some part of them had always been relieved that no child had ever come from your body. Relieved that they had been spared the risk of loving a child the clan might look at the way they looked at Lo’ak. Relieved that they had been spared explaining your traits in the face of tradition, in the face of gossip, in the face of that old, ugly instinct to sort the acceptable from the strange.
You shut your eyes hard enough to see color behind them, but it did nothing. The thought kept gnawing. Not because you truly believed they would reject such a child once placed in their arms. That was what made it hurt in a different way. You knew Tonowari would have loved fiercely. You knew Ronal, for all her pride and sharpness, would have fought like a knife for anything she called hers. But love after the fact was not the same as wanting before the fact. It was possible to love deeply and still feel relief at being spared a harder road. Possible to adore you and still be grateful that you had not given them a child who would carry the most visible proof of what set you apart.
Your stomach turned. Suddenly the old grief was tangled with something meaner, more humiliating. It was one thing to wonder whether they had ever looked at you and seen difference they tolerated because they loved you. It was another to imagine they had looked at your empty hands, your empty womb, and thanked the stars in some quiet hidden corner of themselves that it had stayed that way.
You pressed the heel of your hand over your mouth to hold in the sound that wanted out. Below you, the forest breathed and shifted and remained indifferent. Somewhere distant, water moved against root and stone. You thought of Lo’ak again, of the set of his jaw every time he pretended he did not care, and something inside you cracked with a tenderness so painful it felt almost like guilt. Because if a child of yours had looked like him, you knew with horrible certainty that you would have loved them past language, past reason, past fear. You would have torn the world open with your bare hands before letting anyone make them feel lesser for it.
And that, perhaps, was the sharpest wound of all. That no such child had ever existed, and yet you were grieving them anyway. Grieving the possibility. Grieving the shape of a life you had never let yourself hold long enough to name. Grieving the chance that perhaps, somewhere under all this hurt, you had wanted more than you had ever admitted. Not just mates. Not just a place. Not just borrowed children who had become yours through devotion rather than blood. Something smaller and more dangerous. Someone who might have carried your difference openly into the light, forcing everyone around you to reveal exactly how much of your strangeness they could truly bear.
For a long time after that, you did not sleep at all.
——————————————————————
Morning did not fix anything.
That, perhaps, was the hardest part. Dawn came all golden over the water as if the world had not been split open. The village woke. Nets were lifted. Fish gutted. Children called to one another. Duties remained, indifferent to heartbreak. So did you.
You returned at first light only long enough to wash your face in cold water and tie your hair back properly. Then you went straight to your responsibilities. The hunters needed directing. Tracks from the night tides needed reading. Two younger warriors had argued over spear allocation. A net line had torn along one of the outer shallows and needed stronger hands to repair it before midday.
The clan saw you.
Of course they did. Word had already spread. You could feel it in the way voices lowered when you passed, in how no one quite dared ask anything. Their curiosity warred with the very obvious truth written in your face. So they watched instead.
Let them, you thought.
If they expected you to vanish because your heart had been broken in private, they did not know you at all.
By noon Tonowari found you near the storage platforms where dried lines and harpoons were kept. He approached alone, which was at least wise.
You did not turn when you heard him.
“Y/n.”
You kept checking a spear haft for warp.
He stopped a careful distance away. “Please.”
That made you laugh once under your breath. Not kindly. “You ask for gentleness now?”
Tonowari absorbed the blow without flinching. “I ask for a chance to speak.”
You finally looked at him then. He wore grief openly. Guilt too. It would have moved you yesterday. Today it only hurt.
“Where was this chance” you asked “when I needed you to stop the clan from looking at me like I was something lesser the moment the Sullys arrived? Where was it when Ronal spoke and let implication do its work? Where was it when Ao’nung learned those thoughts under our roof?”
His face tightened. “You think I don't know I have failed. I know I have.”
“Then let that knowledge keep you company.”
He stepped forward despite the warning in your posture. “I did not think—”
“No” you cut in. “You did not. That is exactly it.”
For a second you saw anger spark in him too, not at you but at himself, at the impossibility of saying enough. Then it died. He stood there broad and wounded and unable to mend with strength what strength had failed to protect.
“I love you” he said simply.
Pain sliced fresh through your ribs. “Then you should have protected me better.”
You walked away before he could answer.
——————————————————————
Tsireya came later.
Where Tonowari approached like someone handling a blade, Tsireya came like she always came to you: quickly, heart first, tears already threatening. You found her near the outer shallows because she had clearly searched until someone told her where you were. The moment she saw you, she ran.
You caught her automatically. There had never been a world where you would not.
Her arms wrapped around your waist so tightly it almost hurt. You dropped to your knees in the wet sand at once to hold her properly. She was crying before she even tried to speak. You kissed her forehead again and again, smoothing damp hair back from her face, murmuring broken comforts in Na’vi and half-English endearments that survived from a life she had never known.
“None of this is your fault” you told her. “None of it. Do you hear me?”
Tsireya nodded against your neck and cried harder.
You rocked her a little, because once upon a time that had been enough to calm every storm she brought to you. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I should have said something” she choked out. “I should have stopped them sooner. I saw Ao’nung growing mean and I thought he would soften. I should have—”
“No.” You tipped her face up until she looked at you. “You are not responsible for carrying what the adults failed to carry. Not you.”
Her mouth trembled. “Come home...”
That nearly broke you all over again.
You drew her in and held her. “I cannot” you whispered.
“Not ever?”
Your throat closed. You made yourself answer honestly. “Not yet.”
Tsireya nodded because she was kinder than anyone deserved and because she understood even when understanding hurt. She clung to you another minute, then let you wipe her face with your thumbs as if she were still little enough to fit entirely in your lap.
When she left, she looked back three times.
You watched every step.
——————————————————————
The family felt your absence exactly as you knew they would.
Not because you flattered yourself irreplaceable. Because every home had a rhythm, and you had been part of theirs for too long not to leave silence where your habits belonged. No second pair of hands to catch the small work before it fell. No evening rounds through the marui checking straps, medicines, children, weapons, weatherproofing. No body dropping tired beside theirs at the end of a long day. No one to laugh first when Tsireya made some bright joke. No one to sharpen Ao’nung’s practice blade after he had abused it against coral. No one to shoulder against Ronal while sorting herbs. No one to trade a quiet look with Tonowari across a crowded family meal.
Absence was never just emptiness. It was the shape of all the things that failed to happen.
Ao’nung felt it hardest after the first shock passed. Shame made him restless. Restlessness made him stupid. He trained too hard, snapped too fast, and once nearly got himself clipped by a reef edge because his focus was split in six directions at once. Tonowari hauled him out and cursed him senseless for it. Ao’nung took the scolding without fighting back because his thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
Ronal carried hers more inwardly. She did her work. She led. She helped heal. She moved through the village with the same proud spine and uncompromising hands. But she slept poorly, and when she thought no one watched her eyes went to doors, walkways, platforms, the outer edges of the village where you should have been appearing any minute with wet hair and sea-salt on your skin and some tired complaint ready on your mouth.
Tonowari wore his like a stone tied around the chest. He had always been large enough to contain pain without spectacle. That did not make it smaller.
You did not see all of this firsthand.
You only saw enough to guess the rest.
And still you did not return.
——————————————————————
It was Lo’ak who found you on the second evening after the fight, though not by design.
You were coming back from the outer roots with a bundle of repaired line over one shoulder and a small catch looped at your hip when you spotted him sitting alone where mangrove shadows met the darkening water. He did not hear you at first. His posture gave him away before his face did. Folded in. Guard up. Something raw fresh in him.
You almost kept walking.
Then you remembered how it felt to be left alone with hurt large enough to swallow speech.
So you went to him.
He looked up fast when your steps reached him, visibly startled, then awkward. “Oh. Hey.”
You set the repaired line aside and lowered yourself onto the root beside him. “You choose lonely places.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Guess so.”
You studied him in profile. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Mm.”
Lo’ak huffed. “You do that thing.”
“What thing?”
“That thing where you act like you already know I’m full of crap.”
“I do already know.”
He gave you a sideways look. Even in the gloom you could see the fight between pride and relief.
At last he muttered “Dad got on my ass again.”
“About?”
“Everything.” He kicked lightly at the water below. “The ilu stuff. The diving. Ao’nung. Me not thinking. Me thinking too much. Pick one.”
You listened.
“He doesn’t say I’m messed up or anything” Lo’ak said after a moment, staring hard at the darkness. “Not like that. He just… with Neteyam it’s always trust and expectations and all that warrior stuff. With me it’s like he’s waiting for the next screwup.”
There was no accusation in his voice by the end. That made it sadder.
“And your mother?” you asked.
Lo’ak shrugged again. “Mom loves me. She just…” He grimaced. “She just doesn't say he isn't right.”
You sat with that.
After a while you said “When people are afraid for someone, they often speak badly. They think fear will sound like discipline if they make the voice hard enough.”
Lo’ak snorted faintly. “That doesn’t make it suck less.”
“No” you agreed. “It does not.”
Silence. Then, softer, he asked “Did you mean it?”
You turned toward him. “Mean what?”
“What you said before.” He did not look at you. “About me.”
You understood.
“Yes” you said. “I meant it.”
Lo’ak swallowed. The dark hid his eyes, but not the tremor that went briefly through the line of his jaw.
“Okay” he murmured.
Nothing dramatic followed. No collapse into confession. No sudden ease. He only sat there beside you a little longer than before, and when you rose to leave he rose too and carried half the repaired line without you having to ask.
Sometimes trust entered by the smallest door.
——————————————————————
By the third night, the ache in you had sharpened into something cleaner.
Not less painful. Clearer.
You knew you could not keep sleeping in scattered places forever. You also knew you would not return to the marui only because they missed the space you filled in it. Missing you was not enough. Love was not enough. Not when love had left certain injuries untouched for years because addressing them would have required discomfort.
So when dusk deepened and your feet turned almost without thinking toward the old path that led to the spirit place the Metkayina kept near the inland meeting of root and freshwater, you let them.
The Tree of Voices. Mangrove-wrapped, sea-breathed, threaded with swaying tendrils that caught moonlight in pale glows. The place always quieted you. Tonight it only made you careful.
You saw Ronal before she saw you.
She floated near the top of the great tree, posture bowed in a way you had almost never witnessed from her. Not weakness. Pleading. Real pleading. It stopped you cold enough that your first instinct was to turn away before she looked up.
You pivoted.
“Please.”
Her voice cracked on the one word. You froze with your back half turned.
For a long moment neither of you moved. Then slowly, because running now would have been a kind of cruelty and because some exhausted, still-loving part of you could not do that to her, you turned back.
Ronal had risen to her feet. In the silver-blue light her face looked carved from grief. She came no closer until you allowed it by staying still.
“Do not leave” she said.
“I already left.”
“You know what I mean.”
Yes. You did.
The wind shifted. The floating tendrils stirred. Somewhere beyond the roots, water moved over stone.
You folded your arms hard across your chest. “You have words now.”
Ronal closed her eyes briefly. “I should have had them sooner.”
“That is not apology. That is observation.”
Her gaze came back to yours, wet and unshielded in a way that startled you more than any shouted argument had. “Then hear this. I was wrong.”
The simplicity of it hit harder than defense would have.
She took one slow breath. “I was jealous. I was afraid. I heard pieces of you I could not share and instead of asking for them, I made them suspect. I let the clan’s uglier thoughts sit too near me. I told myself I was protecting what was ours, when in truth I was protecting my pride. And when I was hurt, I used the cruelest words I could find because I knew where to wound you.”
Your jaw tightened so hard it hurt.
Ronal’s voice shook more now, but she did not look away. “No. I do not see you only as demon. I do not even see you as demon at all. I see my mate. I see the woman who has stood beside me through blood and storm and birth and grief. I see the one who raised my children as wholly as if they had first quickened under her own heart. I see the one I hurt because I was not strong enough to master my fear before it mastered my mouth.”
Pain and love and fury all surged at once so violently you nearly stepped back.
“You said it” you whispered. “You cannot unsay it.”
“I know.”
“You let those thoughts live around our son.”
“I know.”
“You let the clan’s whispers touch me for years.”
Ronal’s face crumpled. “I know.”
There it was. No defense. No reaching for context before accountability. It left you without the clean fuel of rage.
You hated that.
“And what of Ao’nung?” you demanded, because if you could not keep striking her, perhaps you could at least keep from softening. “What of Tonowari? What of the fact that none of you protected me where protection should have been simple?”
At that Ronal’s eyes filled properly and one tear slid down without her wiping it away. “Then do not forgive us yet.”
The words hit so unexpectedly you stared.
She took a step closer. Stopped. Waited. “Be angry. Stay angry. Ask more of us than one night of grief. But do not stay gone while we try to become better than the people who wounded you. Come where we can answer. Punish me with your honesty if you must. Not with your absence.”
Your throat worked uselessly around an answer.
Then Ronal, proud Ronal, fierce Ronal, lowered herself to her knees before you.
It was not dramatic. That made it worse. Better. Truer.
“I am asking” she said, voice almost breaking fully now. “Come back and let me mend what I can. Even if it takes long. Even if you do not touch me. Even if you do not call me beloved for many nights. Come back.”
Something inside you gave way then, not into easy forgiveness but into the terrible truth that you loved her still. Loved her enough that the sight of her bowed hurt almost as much as what she had done.
You crouched before you knew you meant to. Your hands found her face roughly, as if you could still be angry through touch. Ronal leaned into your palms with a shuddering breath.
“If you ever say those things again—”
“I will spend the rest of my life earning the right not to.”
You exhaled, shaking. “That is not how forgiveness works.”
“No” Ronal whispered. “But perhaps it is how atonement begins.”
For a long moment you stayed there, hand on her face, anger still alive and grief still raw and love refusing to die under either. Then footsteps sounded behind you, hesitant and stopping short.
Tonowari.
Ao’nung.
Tsireya.
Of course.
You looked over your shoulder. Tsireya was already crying again, though more quietly now. Tonowari’s expression was almost painfully careful, hope warring with the knowledge he had no claim to it. Ao’nung looked worst of all. Stripped bare by shame. Younger than he had in years.
He took two steps forward and stopped so abruptly he nearly stumbled.
“Mother” he said, and his voice cracked so badly you closed your eyes.
When you opened them, he was crying too. Not prettily. Not with dignity. Like a boy who had discovered too late that words could not be taken back just because terror came after.
“I was wrong” he blurted. “I was angry and stupid and I wanted to hurt and I said the worst thing I could think of because I knew it would hit and I hate myself for it and I know that is not enough and I know I am yours, I know that, I know it, and I am yours too if you still want me, please—”
He broke there.
Tsireya covered her mouth, sobbing. Tonowari looked away briefly as if the sight of his son’s grief struck somewhere too tender to witness directly. Ronal, still kneeling beside you, made no move to intervene. Wise again, for once. Let him say it.
You rose slowly and faced Ao’nung fully.
He flinched before you even touched him.
That nearly undid you.
“What you said” you told him, voice low and steady only by force “will stay with me for a very long time.”
He nodded frantically, tears falling. “I know.”
“You do not get to speak from pain and call the damage smaller because you did not mean all of it.”
“I know.”
“You are my son" you said, and his face broke open entirely. “You are my son whether blood says it, or the sea says it, or Eywa herself says nothing at all. But if you ever weaponize that wound again, I will not spare you for your age.”
Ao’nung was crying too hard to answer properly. He nodded anyway.
Then, because you were never not his mother no matter what you had told yourself in the dark, you opened your arms.
He came into them with a sound you would remember for the rest of your life.
You held him while he shook. Tsireya collided into both of you an instant later, wrapping herself around your side and pressing tear-wet kisses to your shoulder and jaw and temple as if trying to prove you were really there. You drew her in too. For a few breaths the three of you stood locked together, all pain and salt and forgiveness-not-yet-but-love-still.
When you finally lifted your head, Tonowari still had not moved.
You looked at him. “And you.”
His mouth almost twitched through the grief. “Yes.”
“You do not get to be the calm one and imagine that is enough. Your silence has teeth.”
Tonowari bowed his head once. “I know.”
“You should have stopped it long before now.”
“Yes.”
“You let me bear things alone because you thought surviving them meant I needed no shield.”
His eyes closed briefly.
You let him sit under that. Then, because he had owned it with the same painful honesty Ronal had and because love made monsters and mercies of all of you, you held out one hand.
Tonowari took it like a man accepting judgment.
When he stepped close, he did not pull you into him immediately. He only rested his forehead against yours and breathed. That hurt most of all. The restraint. The understanding that your anger still lived and had to be honored.
“I missed you” he whispered.
You shut your eyes. “Good.”
He laughed once against your skin, broken and relieved and miserable all at once. “Cruel woman.”
“Yes” you said.
That made Ronal huff a damp, half-laugh from where she had finally risen, and suddenly the impossible thing happened.
The pain remained.
So did the love.
They stood together and did not cancel each other out.
——————————————————————
You did not return to the marui that instant. You made them walk back with you slowly. You made them answer. Not every question. Not every hurt. But enough. Along the root-paths under moonlight you spoke of the clan’s whispers, of old wounds, of the ways love had not absolved them from confronting the ugliness around you. Ronal did not shy from hearing it. Tonowari did not hide behind leadership. Ao’nung spoke little after his apology, but every word he gave was honest. Tsireya stayed close enough to touch you every few breaths as if still making sure you would not vanish again.
By the time the family marui came into view, you were exhausted to the marrow.
The sight of home almost drove you back. Then Tsireya laced her fingers through yours and tugged very gently, and you let her.
Inside, nothing had changed and everything had. Your sleeping place remained as you had left it. Your things, the few you had grabbed, were not there because you still had them. Yet the air itself felt different. More careful. Less sure of itself. Good. Let it be.
Tsireya made you sit before you could decide not to. She brought water. Ao’nung, red-eyed and subdued, disappeared and returned with the wrap you had left behind days ago, folded more neatly than he had ever folded anything in his life. Ronal stood at the edge of the space as if uncertain whether approaching would wound more than soothe. Tonowari lit the low lamps and then simply remained near, visible, available, not pressing.
You looked at them and felt the ache all over again. You stood there for a long moment, looking at them all in the dim light of the marui.
Tsireya’s face was still wet with tears. Ao’nung looked wrecked by his own shame, all the sharpness gone out of him at last. Tonowari stood quiet and careful, as if one wrong movement might send you slipping away again. Ronal had not tried to come closer since your return, but her eyes had not left you once. The weight of everything still sat there between you, bruised and breathing, but it no longer felt like something that would swallow the whole family alive if no one spoke.
You let out a slow breath and looked away for a moment, gathering yourself.
“If I come back” you said at last, your voice tired but steady “then I will not return to silence. I will not come into this home and pretend nothing was said. I will not make myself smaller so the rest of you may feel more comfortable with what you have done.”
“No” Ronal said immediately, her voice low and rough. “You should not.”
Tonowari nodded once. “You will not have to.”
You looked at Ao’nung then, and some part of your chest still hurt too badly to soften fully, but there was room for something gentler now too.
“And you” you said quietly “will not hide from me when you are ashamed. You will face me. Do you understand?”
Ao’nung swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, Mother.”
That word nearly undid you again.
The silence that followed was not easy, but it was no longer cruel either. It simply existed, full of exhaustion and the remains of tears and the fragile uncertainty of people who had broken one another open and were now being forced to learn how to touch the wound without making it worse. For the first time since you had left, the marui felt less like a battlefield and more like a place where healing might someday be possible.
Tsireya was the first to move.
She stepped toward you slowly, as though afraid you might still pull away, and when you opened one arm for her she came at once, folding herself against your side with a soft, shaking breath. You wrapped her close and kissed the top of her head. She clung to you without embarrassment, pressing her face into your shoulder the way she had as a child whenever the world felt too large or too sharp for her soft heart.
“I missed you” she whispered.
Your eyes closed. “I know, sweet girl.”
Ao’nung lingered only a moment longer before he came too, slower than his sister had, more uncertain, but no less in need of it. He did not throw himself at you. That was not his way. He only moved close enough that you could reach for him, and when you did, when your hand caught his arm and pulled him nearer, the tight control in him gave with almost frightening speed.
You drew both of your children in against you then, one on either side, and held them.
For a while none of you said anything. Tsireya’s breathing gradually evened under your hand. Ao’nung stood tense at first, then slowly let himself lean just a little into your side, no longer pretending he did not need the reassurance of your touch. You kept one arm around Tsireya and the other around him, your fingers stroking once down his back before settling there. The simple familiarity of it hurt and soothed in equal measure.
Across from you, Tonowari watched with something raw and grateful in his face. Ronal looked quieter than you had seen her in a long time, her expression stripped bare by remorse and love and relief she did not seem to know what to do with.
When the children finally eased back, you were left facing your mates.
For a heartbeat no one moved.
Then Tonowari crossed the small distance between you in that same careful way he had worn since you returned, broad body held back by restraint rather than confidence. His hand came up slowly, giving you every chance to refuse him, and rested against the side of your neck. Warm. Steady. Familiar enough that it made your throat tighten.
“You do not have to forgive everything tonight” he said softly. “You do not have to be whole tonight either. Just stay.”
The words were so simple that they lodged deeper than any grand speech could have. You looked at him, at the honesty in his face, at the grief he had made no attempt to hide from you, and nodded once.
“I can stay” you said.
Something in him eased then, not all at once, but enough. He bent and pressed his forehead gently to yours, saying nothing more, and in that silence you felt apology, relief, and love all tangled together. It was not enough to erase what had happened. It was enough to remind you why leaving had hurt like tearing out part of your own bones.
When Tonowari stepped back, Ronal still did not move immediately.
Her hands were clasped too tightly in front of her, a rare tell from someone usually so composed. At last she came toward you, slower even than Tonowari had, and stopped close enough that you could see how red her eyes still were.
“I do not know how to touch you tonight without fearing I have lost the right” she admitted.
Your anger stirred again at that, but more tiredly now than before. “Then do not decide for me.”
Ronal’s breath caught.
You reached for her first.
The look that crossed her face at that was almost painful to witness. She stepped into you as soon as your hands found her arms, and the moment she was close enough you pulled her the rest of the way in. Ronal held herself tightly for all of one second before breaking and wrapping both arms around you with a quiet, shaking exhale that seemed pulled from the bottom of her lungs. You held her through it, one hand at her back, the other slipping up into her braids.
“I am here.”
At that, Ronal made the smallest wounded sound and held you tighter.
The rest came more quietly after that.
No more shouting. No fresh wounds. Just the family settling around one another in the weary aftermath of too much pain finally spoken aloud. Tonowari brought water. Tsireya, still reluctant to let you out of reach, sat pressed close to your side while Ao’nung fetched the wrap you had taken when you left and set it beside you with lowered eyes. Ronal insisted, in the old familiar way that was half command and half care, that you sit before your legs gave out under you. This time, when she said it, a faint thread of warmth lived under the sternness again.
You sat.
Slowly, naturally, the others gathered around you. Tsireya curled in first, leaning against you with her head on your shoulder. Ao’nung sat near your knee, not touching at first, but close enough that the distance no longer felt like rejection. Tonowari settled at your other side, one arm stretched loosely behind you along the woven supports, near without crowding. Ronal remained in front of you for a few moments, as if still confirming to herself that you were real and staying, before finally kneeling close and resting one hand lightly over yours.
No one rushed to fill the quiet.
That was what made it kind.
The sea breathed beyond the marui walls. Night sounds moved through the village in soft layers. The lamps burned low, throwing warm light over tired faces and damp lashes and shoulders slowly unclenching after days of strain. At some point Tsireya’s eyes drifted shut, her breathing evening out where she rested against you. Not long after, Ao’nung shifted closer in tiny increments until his shoulder brushed against your leg. He did it as if hoping no one would notice.
You noticed.
You said nothing, only let your hand settle into his hair for a brief, gentle stroke. Ao’nung’s eyes closed for half a second at the touch before he ducked his head. That alone told you how deeply he still needed to feel he was forgiven, and how young he still was beneath all the pride.
Tonowari reached for one of the woven blankets and spread it over all of you with the same quiet efficiency he brought to every act of care. Ronal watched him do it, then leaned in and pressed a small kiss to your cheek, so soft it barely seemed to land. You turned just enough to let your forehead brush hers in answer, and the relief that moved through her was so visible it made your chest ache.
By the time the night deepened fully, the marui had gone still around you.
Tsireya was sleeping against your side. Ao’nung had not quite fallen asleep, but he sat drowsy and quiet near your knee, no longer fighting his own need for closeness. Tonowari’s hand rested warm and solid over your ankle beneath the blanket, a grounding touch more than anything else. Ronal remained tucked close enough that your shoulders brushed, her presence careful now in a way it had not been before, as though she had finally understood how precious your trust truly was.
You looked at them and felt the ache still there.
Not gone. Not erased. Still bruised, still tender, still real.
But underneath it, and around it, something softer had returned too. Something stubborn. Something home-shaped.
Your family had hurt you. They had failed you. They would have to live with that and do better, and you would make certain they did. But they were still yours, and you were still theirs, and tonight that truth was no longer a weapon in anyone’s mouth. It was only a promise resting quietly in the dim light, wrapped in warm bodies and salt air and tired love.
So you stayed there with them, held and holding in turn, while the tide turned outside and the night folded gently around your home.
Prompt: what will you choose—love or duty? bound by responsibility, the metkayina tsakarem cannot help but fall in love with neteyam sully after his family seeks refuge among her people.
Pairing: fem!metkayina reader x neteyam sully, fem!metkayina reader x mom!ronal, fem!metkayina reader x dad!tonowari. Aonung x sister!reader, Tsireya x sister!reader
Wc: 7.9k
Warnings: kissing, use of y/n, touching, secret relationship, arranged relationships, mentions of mating, touchy!feely!neteyam, fighting, mentions of blood, male on female violence (not neteyam), fluff!, slightest bit of angst.
Translations: yawne (beloved), Tsakarem (spiritual leader in training)
Being the eldest daughter of the olo’eyktan came with many demands, and a lot of training. With that belonging came new challenges, and a good deal of pressure.
It had been weeks since the Sully’s had last sought and received uturu from the Metkayina reef people. As your siblings grew friendships with the newcomers, you fell short—hardly able to spend time with them as your duties and training kept you away.
Trust that you understood your position all too well. You must be fierce, do not fret, show no weakness as you will one day become a strong, spiritual matriarch just like your mother.
Atleast, it’s what your father’s always told you.
Your role as Tsakarem often keeps you from making your own decisions, leaving the important things to your parents. But the moment you saw Neteyam, your mind expanded.
His honey gold eyes, his smooth, dark blue skin, and his lively braids—it all made your stomach whirl.
You’d sneak off at night to see him, it was easy when everyone, even the group thought you two just didn’t like each other. Your ambivalence only grew when you thought of the reactions your parents would give if they’d ever found out.
The night he began to secretly court you was full of complexity, but excitement. You’d never even thought of rebelling against your parents’ strict and robust morals.
You sit cross legged beside your mother in the large, main marui pod, rolling herbs into pastilles and studying new tree sap recipes for healing.
“How is it going, daughter?” She asks, moving to crouch over you and superintend your work.
“Mm” You hum softly, it is all you can manage to do when you are as focused as you are now. Your body shifts, giving her space so that she can observe closely without putting too much pressure on herself.
The distant sound of yipping causes your attention to shift to the flaps of the pod entry, observing through the slight gaps between them; your siblings and the Sully children, leaping from the council platform and into the sea—which you loved. so much.
“Daughter,” Your mother calls, her voice cutting through your thoughts. “Focus.” her hands crush the rest of the herbs that you had sort of abandoned.
“Mother, may I go to the water?”
“We are almost done here.”
“Tsireya and Ao’ get to do whatever they want.”
“No, they have been assigned to educate the Sully’s. They are working hard too, with just opposite tasks.”
Your arms cross and your head tilts, it has been weeks since they arrived. What more could they possibly be learning? “It has been weeks, they know what they’re doing.”
Your mother sighs, her hands stopping their movements. “Really? Tuktirey is still young. She needs more attention, more attention means more lessons.”
You grumble as she puts the herbs and bowls away to sit beside you, holding your hand and sitting up straight, her legs criss crossed—she teaches you to listen for signs, to understand the connection between the people and our deity. And to teach others what you have learned, so that you can pass your knowledge down to your sister and other young clan members.
Eclipse comes faster than you’d anticipated, but it does not bother you, it only means you’ll get to see Neteyam.
Your mother dismisses you after long hours of training, while skipping through the village, you spot Tsireya, Aonung, and the Sully kids, returning from the water.
“Sister!” She rushes forward, grabbing your arms and smiling. “Where have you been? You should have joined us, it was fun. Please, join us tomorrow.”
“Yes, I will. Go comb your hair, it will be knotted from all of the swimming you’ve done. Make sure to…”
Tsireya’s eyes roll playfully, her hands letting out of yours. “I know, I know.” She laughs and runs to the main pod, you watch her go for a minute before approaching the Ilu pens where Neteyam is storing away the reins and saddles. watching him silently through the woven saddle racks, you pick up the rest of them.
“I can feel your eyes.” He smirks teasingly, leaning down to look back at you.
“I know,” You shake your head, fighting back a giggle. “We have not spoken in days.” Your smile falters briskly, hands ceasing before moving again, slower this time.
His smirk is wiped away instantly, he hangs the saddles up and moves quickly to stand before you. “I’m sorry, it’s hard when everyone thinks we hate each other. I don’t want them to suspect anything either, it could cost you your position.”
A sigh you’d been holding back escapes from your lips, “Then let’s go together—tonight, secretly. At the three brothers like usual.” You plead, hands dropped to your sides.
“Okay, yes.” His fingers hook gently around the rough fabrics that make up the guipu skirt which your mother weaved for you. “Come here, please”
“I will see you later.”
His eyebrows pinch together subtly, he’s never had to ask you to come here twice.
He watches you set off towards your pod, hands clenched tightly around his head. Neteyam knows that you’re angry. Why wouldn’t you be? He hasn’t even come close to your usual spot in weeks. No explanation. No apology. Just silence.
He snarls to himself, walking slowly to his family’s pod. Everyone is there, hooking up the hammocks and preparing for bed.
“Where have you been? C’mon, grab your stuff and hook it up. Let’s go.” Jake ushers him as soon as he steps into their dwelling, shaking his head marginally as he helps Tuk with hers.
“Yes sir.” He sets his hammock up right beside Lo’aks, his fingers moving steadily around the intricate weavings.
In your marui, your hammock is already set and ready to be slept in even though you won’t be using it. As you pick out your outfit for you and Neteyam’s meet up, your father comes in unexpectedly.
“Where are you going at this time, daughter?” His arms cross as he stands at the entrance, leaning against the wall.
“Nowhere. I am just planning for tomorrow's council meeting.”
He nods, moving towards the hammock which he shares with his mate. The rest of your family shuffles in, your brother being annoying as usual, snatching you and your sisters belongings and tugging at your long, black hair.
“Aonung! Stop!” You snap, snatching your hair from his grasp. Tsireya slaps him lightly across the head, leaping away soon after to lay in her hammock, laughing aloud.
“Quiet!” Your father hollers, rubbing the tip of his nose with his fingers in exasperation.
You quickly lay in your own nivi, your outfit suspiciously fancy for sleep. Your parents decide to make no comment, turning over and resting in each other's arms.
You wait up for everyone to doze until they finally do. You stand as quietly as you can, tiptoeing out of the domicile and running to the Ilu pens as soon as your feet meet the sand.
Neteyam is already there, prepared with food, water, and mats. Prepared in ways you hadn’t expected.
You keep your mouth shut the whole way there, it wasn’t hard to miss his gaze—he kept his eyes on your back the entire time, you could almost feel them bleeding through you.
At the three brothers, he dismounts and helps you onto the rocks. Neteyam sets up the mats, splaying the food and drinks around it. “Come on baby.” He says carefully, reaching for your hand, the other tapping a spot beside him.
You eye him for a beat before sitting down where his hand was. “What is it?”
“I’m apologizing. For not meeting with you.”
He reaches out, rubbing small circles on your shoulders.
“I just wish you’d have told me why you weren’t meeting with me. Can you?”
“I just didn’t want to be too obvious, my father and brother were catching onto my disappearance,”
“Oh. Well we can’t let that happen…”
“I know. I just want you to be happy. I know you love your people, and I know you’re ready to take on your mothers role.”
“Yeah.” You mumble, staring into the sea, hands holding his shoulders. You always had to remind yourself of your position, to keep you from being reckless—but you never had to worry around Neteyam.
His hands trail down your body, pulling you in by the waist and kissing your cheek gently. “We’ll figure it out. Let’s just enjoy this…hm?”
“Okay,” You whisper as you try the fresh pasuk he’d brung. “Mm” you hum, offering it to him.
Neteyam didn’t even eat much, just the food you offered. All he could do was smile as he watched you enjoy them,
“Come here,” He says, his voice a low whisper. “Closer.” You look up from the fruit in your mouth before scooting closer, the juices dripping down your chin.
He wipes away the juice that had been squeezed from the fruit, peppering your face in soft kisses, chuckling charmingly and pulling you into his lap to finally kiss your lips.
The kiss was gentle at first, slow, like he was trying to hold onto this moment. Your eyes shuttered closed, hands exploring his hair and braid pattern desperately.
“We need…” You breathe, pulling away for a second—your forehead against his. “We should get back. Soon.”
“Soon.” He repeats, continuing to kiss you, deeply this time. One hand tangled in your hair, while the other held your thigh, steadying you on his lap.
“Neteyam,” you gasp, tugging at his hair.
He continues for what feels like eternity, leaving sloppy kisses down your neck before pulling away. “Okay, okay.”
“We must get back.” You murmur between pants, hands adjusting your ruffled top, then moving to his hair—wiping it from his face.
He reserves the rest of the food he’d brought, storing it in the basket and standing, helping you up as he moved towards the ilu that was still there.
With his hands in yours, he sends you onto the creature gently, sitting behind you right after, his chest flush against your back, broad shoulders enveloping your shadow.
You ride back to the village, sharing soft laughs and mindless jokes with one another, when you reach the lagoon, you both fall silent—scattering around quickly, but quietly, as if hunting a meer deer or a fast fish.
You kiss him, a soft, sweet goodnight gesture. “I will see you tomorrow.”
“I hope so.” He smiles, pressing one last lingering kiss against your hair.
You tiptoe back to your marui as quietly as you could, removing the beautiful weavings that you had slipped into earlier and wearing more comfortable, satin ones.
When you drop the thick, heavy outfit you’d been wearing before, a shell that held the whole top together fell especially hard.
Your eyes shoot up immediately, just hoping your family didn’t hear the loud thud. Aonung stirs and then his head jerks directly towards you.
“What are you doing up?” He whispers loudly, standing spindly.
“None of your business." You snap sharply, moving to pick up the clothes.
“Ah, ah.” Aonung crouches down faster and holds your outfit up.
“Give it to me! You will wake mother and father.” You grit through your teeth.
“This smells like the Sully boy,” he taunts, waving the ioi around as if it were a toy.
“Aonung! Those are special beads,” you snatch the apparel from him, clutching the shells and beads it is adorned in.
“Then why were you wearing them out? Hmm?”
“None of your business! Go back to sleep. Now!” You slap his hand away, snarling sharply, hanging your clothing on your personal belongings rack that your father crafted for you, a symbol of familial love.
Aonung watches you silently, his gaze softening just a fraction. “Fine, sorry.”
You turn back, watching him lie down before reposing with a soft blanket from your childhood.
The next day is laced with duty and gathering—hunters, including Neteyam, his father, Lo’ak, Rotxo, your brother, your father, and several other young hunters among the metkayina vanished to amass the village's food preservation.
You are crouched beside your friends, heating stews and proteins which were prepared some days prior—maintained nourishments that are too difficult to find and cook all in one day.
As you wrap up the reheating, you join your mother for a quick ritual, then you hear of the hunters returning.
The men rounded up baskets of beast meat, seeds, fish, rich drinking water, and herbs for spices.
Your fingers wrap gently around the sash which the young warrior, Amak had given you. “Thank you, Amak—for these gifts.” You smile, passing the sash down to the line of women.
You turn to walk back to your marui, and as you do, two large hands wrap around your waist and pull you to a secluded area behind your home.
You gasp sharply before realizing it is Neteyam. Your breathing soothed and your eyes softened. “You scared me,”
“I’m sorry yawne” He laughs, kissing your cheeks carefully.
“Careful, Teyam…” You whispered softly, “someone will see us.”
“I’m tired of keeping this a secret.” His voice was low, frustrated and serious.
“No,” you whisper—not harsh, not angry, calm, controlled. You pull back.
“No?” He stills.
“We are not telling anyone.”
His brows draw together. “Why?”
“Because the moment we do, it stops being ours.”
That makes him pause, you lower your voice, glancing toward the open stretch of sand beyond your marui. Your father is speaking with Jake sully, your mother is blessing the catch, Aonung is watching everything as always.
“If we tell them, it becomes alliances, it becomes responsibilities.”
“And what is it now?”
You step closer, fingers coiling tightly into the cummerband around his waist. “It is mine, it is yours. No future titles, no duties. Just us.”
“You are not afraid?” he presses gently.
“Of being caught?” A small smile curves your lips. “Always.”
He exhales a soft laugh.
“But I am more afraid of losing this before we have had it long enough. We will tell them one day. When it does not feel like surrender.”
“And until then?”
“Until then we are quiet.”
Footsteps crunch faintly in the sand nearby, you both freeze as a shadow moves along the side of the marui, Aonung's voice drifts closer.
You shove Neteyam lightly toward the other side where he can sneak away. “Go.”
He doesn’t argue but before he slips away, he steals a quick kiss—warm, dangerous. “You like the risk,” he murmurs against your mouth.
You shove him again, cheeks flushing. “Go.”
He disappears around the curve of the pod just as your brother rounds the corner.
His eyes narrow. “You look suspicious.”
You fold your arms calmly. “You look nosy,”
His gaze lingers, then drifts behind you—searching. Your heart pounds so loudly you’re certain he can hear it, but Neteyam is gone. Aonung huffs, “mother wants you.”
“Then why are you still here?” You brush past him to find your mother. You assist her in preparing the bowls, and when the time comes—the entire village is there, surrounding your father.
The topic of the meeting has your heart thumping against your ribs, a shiver of instinctive fear running down your spine. Sky people.
All your life, you hadn’t worried about war. Now it has come. It would come. Your father, Neteyam, warriors of the clan going so far, you’d stay up worried—worrying that they would not return.
As the meeting wraps up, your parents call you to your marui for a brief, important talk.
You step into the quiet of your marui, woven walls glowing faintly in the evening light. Your mothers expression is calm, the weight behind her eyes pin you to the spot. Your father sits opposite her, hands folded in his lap.
“You have grown, daughter.” Your mother begins softly, there is no warmth in her tone. “Strong, intelligent, and careful. But you are also old enough to understand your duties as Tsakarem.”
You nod slowly, stomach twirling, head running with millions of possibilities.
Your father leans forward, voice deliberate. “It is time we speak of your future, daughter. The clan’s unity must be preserved, and there are decisions you must accept.”
Your chest tightens as if you know what is coming, but the words still struck like a tidal wave.
“You are to be mated with Amak. The future of the clan lies with you.”
Your ears dropped, tail pausing its movements and tucking itself between your legs.
Your mother reaches out, her fingers brushing your cheek. “You will understand in time. Your heart will follow your duty, as all Tsakarem have before you.”
But you do not feel comfort. You feel a storm. Anger. Desire. Fear. A part of you wants to scream. Another part knows the clan’s eyes will always follow.
If you were to see Neteyam again you could not falter.
As the days passed, you noticed your mother and father speaking with Amak’s parents more often than ever before.
You are on the ilu, riding with Neteyam, hands placed on his waist as your head rests against his back.
He stops nearby a rock, taking your hands and helping you climb up. “Come here.”
“They are speaking to Amak’s family again,” you say quietly.
His bubbly expression vanishes completely.
“They will arrange it,” you continue. “Not now. But soon.”
His jaw flexes so tightly you can see the muscle shift. He steps closer—too close for propriety, not close enough for comfort.
“You will not accept it,” Neteyam mutters, fingers clenched around yours as if anchoring himself.
“I have no choice!” You cry, hands weakening.
“Hey…” He whispers, tugging your waist and lifting you onto a higher part of the rock. “It’s alright, we’ll find a way.”
You close your eyes, leaning into him, feeling the heat of his body, the steady rhythm of his breath against your own. The world around you—the clan, the looming duties, the weight of expectations seems to shrink to just this moment. Just the two of you.
“I can’t go against my parents,” you whisper, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. “I am their Tsakarem. I have responsibilities, Teyam.”
“And so do I,” he counters softly, hands running through your curls. He tilts your chin so your eyes meet his. “We will find a way.” He repeats.
He steps between your legs, his hands rubbing soft circles against your hips. He pulls you in, lips trailing down your neck as you close your eyes, arms wrapped around his shoulders tightly, hands tugging at his braids. “Neteyam…” you whisper, voice trembling.
He continues, smiling softly, hands moving from your hips and unto your waist, sliding under the flaps of your beads to touch soft skin.
“Someone will catch us…” Your hands move to his chest.
“Shh.” He whispers, hands desperate, pulling you close again.“No one sees us here. It’s just us.”
You lean in once more, lips finding his, slow at first, teasing, tasting, savoring the risk. Your hands lower along his back as his fingers tighten around your waist, pulling you closer. Your hearts hammer in unison.
A soft sigh escapes you as he trails kisses along your jaw, your hands tangled in his hair now—for a moment, nothing exists outside of this.
A shadow rides over the water, both of you too deep in one another to care. Then a splash in the water catches your attention—you both part, freezing mid motion, hearts leaping to your throats.
Aonung stands there, eyes wide in shock and anger—his arms are crossed, jaw set tight. “Get off of her! Right now!” Aonung snaps, voice cracking.
Your brother rushes forward, pushing Neteyam back into the rock.
“Aonung!” You yelp, reaching for his arm.
He pushes you back as well, carefully before pinning Neteyam down, punches landing on his face.
“Stop now! Please!” You scream, pulling your brother away.
Neteyam only retaliates, turning over and fighting back. “Neteyam!” You snap, he freezes for a second, but your brother's continuous slaps bring him back to the moment.
You cover your mouth—unsure how to separate the two from one another, you can’t help but laugh.
You manage to pull Neteyam off of your brother at some point and he leans against the rock, panting softly.
“Did you choose this?! You bring him here for this?!” Your brother questions, not angry with you—but with Neteyam.
“We…we’re careful, Aonung”
He calms slightly with the knowledge that you did choose this. But his frustration remains as he remembers your title in the clan.
“Careful?! You’re Tsakarem! You have responsibilities! You are pure! And here you are sneaking off with this forest boy in the evening!”
“We know the risks and we love each other."
“Love?!” Aonung spits the word like it’s venom. “Love doesn’t matter! You’re promised—promises are not optional!”
“It has not been sealed! it is just a mere plan!”
“Father and mother will hear about this.”
“Do you think my life is a game to be arranged for convenience? Do you think I want this? Do you think I want to mate with someone chosen for me, for duty alone, while my heart beats for someone else?”
“You are blind! Naive! you are risking everything!” Aonung studies you, jaw tight, eyes flashing with anger and something softer—concern. Your expression is small, eyes big and glossy. After a long pause, he finally exhales sharply. “Fine,” he snaps, spinning on his heel. “I won’t tell. But… do not think I won’t be watching.”
He goes away on the ilu and you turn to Neteyam, his expression is soft as he glares down at you—arms still closed around your waist. “Are you okay?” He whispers.
“No,” You press your face against his chest. “I am so pressured. The constant reminder of duty crushes my ribs.”
He holds you against him with one hand on your head.
“Your nose is bleeding.” You observe, wiping some of it away with your thumb.
“Let’s get back.”
You nod, taking his hand and helping him onto the ilu, you stay seated behind him, your eyes fixed on his back and the bruises your brother left there. “I can assess these when we get back.”
“Leave them. They will heal themselves.”
“Are you angry with me?”
He doesn’t answer at first, guiding the ilu through the darkening water, the reef glowing faintly beneath you. His skin is warm under your delicate palms, muscles tight beneath your touch.
“No,” Neteyam says finally, his voice quiet. “Not at you.”
Your hand trails down to his cummerband, tightening around the fabric. “At my brother?”
“At all of it.” His voice is rougher now. “At the way they speak about you like you are something to be traded. Angry at the way I have to stand there and pretend that I do not—” His accent is thick as he speaks.
Your chin rests on his shoulder, back arched to reach his height. “Do not what?”
“Do not love you.”
The words sink into you slowly, heavy and anchoring. “I do not want you fighting my brother.”
“I do not want to fight him either.” He exhales sharply. “But I will not let anyone speak about you like that. Not even Aonung.”
“He thinks he is protecting me.”
“And he is,” Neteyam admits after a moment of silence. “In the only way he knows how.”
The village lights come into view, both of you straightening instinctively, distance slipping between your bodies even before reaching the shore.
He helps you down first, hands lingering at your waist for half a breath too long. “Meet me tomorrow?” He asks softly, leaning closer.
You hesitate, not because you don’t want to see him, but because you do. “Yes,” you whisper. “But not at the rocks. Aonung will be watching now.”
A faint smile brushes his bruised lips. “I thought you liked the risk.”
You nudge his chest gently. “Be serious.”
“I am,” his eyes soften. “I am serious about you.”
Your chest aches. “We have to be smarter,” you murmur. “If they seal the arrangement with Amak…”
His face hardens at the name “…then what?”
You have no answer. “I do not know,” you admit. “But I will not surrender quietly.”
Sleep does not come easy that night, you lie in your hammock, staring at the woven ceiling of your marui. Across the space, you can hear Aonung shifting.
“You are reckless.” He mutters into the darkness.
“—You would not understand.”
“I understand more than you think, I see the way father looks at you. Like you are already carrying the clan on your shoulders.”
Your throat tightens, no response.
“He will not bend,” Aonung continues. “If this mating strengthens alliances, he will not bend.”
“And mother?”
“She will say it is Eywa’s will.” Silence settles between you.
“Aonung,” you whisper.
He sighs, already knowing what you will ask. “I will not tell,” he says again. “But if this destroys you, I will drag that forest boy away myself.”
You smile at that, “it is not Neteyam’s fault. It will not destroy me.”
“You hope,” he corrects.
The sun had barely risen over the Metkayina reef, casting golden light that danced across gentle waves. You follow the group as they moved toward the hunting grounds, the air filled with the soft squawks of the tsurak and the faint whisper of the reef.
Rotxo, Aonung and Lo’ak were joking as usual, laughter echoing over the water, Tuk and Kiri darted across the shoreline, chasing each other and shrieking. Tsireya stood nearby, her gaze sweeping the water.
You and Neteyam stand silently apart, helping to untangle nets that had drifted from the hunters’ return. Your hands brush more often than necessary—yet both of you move with mechanical precision.
“Careful there,” Rotxo says without looking up, tossing a shell at the water. “Wouldn’t want to ruin the nets.”
You give a soft nod, avoiding Neteyam’s gaze. He grunted something that could have been an agreement—or a complaint, but said nothing.
Lo’ak leaned against a rock, watching. “They really don’t like each other, huh?” he mutters to Rotxo and your brother, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Yeah…you can feel the tension,” Rotxo laughs aloud.
Tsireya tilted her head slightly, lips pressed together as she watched you and Neteyam carefully. “I think it’s more than just dislike,”
Your eyebrows pinched together, they are speaking as if you were both not right there. Neteyam’s jaw tightened just the slightest, no one else noticed the faint smile he tried—and failed to suppress.
Aonung’s eyes never left you two, he knew the truth of what was happening with you both, and he noticed the quiet choreography of your hands, the glances no one else caught. The others only saw what they expected; hostility, irritation, and the unspoken tension between you and Neteyam.
His eyes followed you two as you finished untangling the net, his jaw was tight, he had seen enough the day before to know that the tension everyone else thought was hate—was something far more tender.
The next days are heavier, Amak appears more often, kind, respectful—strong. He brings you carved shells, rare corals, gifts that would make any Tsakarem beam, you accept them with practiced smiles.
But every time his fingers brush yours, every time his hands touch your skin—you feel nothing. That frightens you more than anything.
Neteyam grows quieter in public, careful. Every time your eyes meet across the sand, it feels like something stolen and sacred.
One evening, as the sun sinks low, casting golden streaks across the water, your father calls you to stand beside him before the clan. Your pulse stutters, communal beads hanging elegantly over your smooth skin.
“Soon,” he announces, voice carrying across the reef. “We will celebrate unity between families.”
Your stomach drops—now the whole clan knows that you are promised. You do not look at Neteyam, you cannot.
After the gathering disperses, he finds you anyway. Behind the ilu pens. “This is happening,”
“Yes.” You frown, hands fiddling around with your neck accessories.
“You still say we wait?”
Your composure crumbles. “What do you want me to do?” You whisper fiercely. “Run? Abandon my mother? My people? My duties?”
“I want you to choose me, baby.”
The words hang between you like a blade, you step back slightly, letting it fall. “I am trying to,” you say, voice trembling. “But choosing you means tearing something else apart.”
He steps forward, eyes blazing—not angry, just desperate. “then let it tear”
Your heart pounds so loudly you can barely hear the waves. “I cannot—i will not be the reason my clan fractures.”
“And I cannot be the reason you live a life you do not want.”
Silence falls over you both, wind moving through woven pods, the laughter of children near the shore, your life pulling in two directions.
“I need time,” you say finally.
He studies your face, searching for certainty. “You have some time,” he says quietly, “but not much.”
The following day is too bright, the reef reflects sunlight in sharp, blinding streaks as the clan gathers near the central platform. Warriors repair their weapons, other men and women among the clan weaving and cooking.
You move through it all with your chin lifted, spiritual beads gleaming against your skin like a reminder of who you are supposed to be.
Near the drying racks, two young hunters murmur to loudly. “I saw her,” one whispers. “At the ilu pens with the sully boy.”
“The Olo’eyktan’s daughter?” the other scoffs, “no, she is promised to Amak.”
“They were not standing like strangers.”
You freeze, back still turned. Across the platform, Amak pauses mid step, his shoulders stiff. His head tilts just slightly, listening. Your pulse pounds, trying to move away before he reaches you—but his hand closes around your wrist. Not brutal…yet.
“Walk with me,” he says. Not a request.
His eyes search yours as if they are hunting for truth. “You have been seen.”
Your breath remains steady. “Seen doing what?”
“With him.”
You do not pretend that you don't understand, just watching him seeth before you.
“With Neteyam.” He finishes, the name leaving his mouth like something bitter.
“We speak, sometimes…” you answer carefully.
“Do not insult me.” His grip tightens. “You are Tsakarem. You do not sneak to speak.”
You pull your wrist back slightly, “lower your voice.”
“Why?” His voice rises instead. “So you can continue to meet him in the shadows?”
“No! I remember exactly who you are. You are promised to me!”
“I am not yet mated.”
“But you will be!” His voice cracks across the sand now, drawing more attention. “And the clan already speaks of you wrapped around a forest boy!”
Your cheeks burn, not from shame, but in fury. “Do not speak of me as if I am your possession.”
His fingers dig into your arm now, hard. “You will not make me a fool before the clan.”
“Release me.”
“You will end whatever it is you have going with the forest boy.”
“I will not.”
Something shifts in his expression, hurt cuddling into pride. “You would throw away alliance for him?” he demands.
“I would choose my own future.”
The slap is not open handed, it is the shove that follows—sharp enough that you stumble backward against the wooden frame of the marui behind you, shoulder striking hard.
Gasps ripple through those close enough to see. Pain shoots up your arm.
“Do not touch her.” A sharp voice sounds from across the platform, Neteyam. He crosses the sand in seconds, anger radiating off him like heat. His golden eyes take in your posture, the mark already blooming on your arm.
“This is not your concern, forest boy.” Amak snaps.
“It became my concern when you put your hands on her.”
“I have every right—”
“You have none.” Neteyam calls out, that is all it took for Akam to lunge first, the crack of fist against jaw echoes across the reef. Neteyam stumbles back but recovers immediately, slamming into Amak’s ribs with equal force, enough to send them both crashing into the sand.
Shouts erupt as warriors rush forward—they hesitate. This is not a minor scuffle, it is territorial.
Amak swings hard, splitting Neteyam’s lip. He retaliates with a brutal strike to his cheek, knocking him sideways.
“Stop it!” You scream, rushing forward.
Someone catches your arm—aonung. His grip is firm but not cruel “Do not go between them.”
“They will kill each other!” You hiss.
Across the dais, Jake strides forward, towering, angry. Neytiri moves beside him, eyes worried, but she moves like an arrow.
Your father pushes through the formed circle of villagers, your sister watches among the crowd worriedly. “Enough!”
His roar silences the crowd. He sweeps the scene, eyes lingering on your bruised arm. “What is the meaning of this?”
Amak wrenches free just enough to point at Neteyam. “This forest boy dishonors the village!”
Your heart stops beating, the silence is loud.
“He sneaks with your daughter in darkness. The Tsakarem.” His voice rises deliberately, making sure everyone hears. At this point your mother is at the site of action. “They meet alone,” he continues, “they touch, they kiss, they hide.”
A collective murmur spreads through the crowd like wildfire, Jake’s grip on Neytiri tightens.
“Is this true?” Your mother asks, her eyes closed.
Your hands tremble. “We have not performed Tsaheylu,” you say clearly, hands hovering. “We are not mated, mother.”
Gasps fill the village. “But I would choose him,” you continue, “if I were permitted.”
Amak laughs, lacking any amusement. “She admits it before the whole clan.”
“You disappoint me, daughter.”
Jake looks between you and his son, understanding dawning with dread. Neteyam tries to step forward again. “It is my fault—”
“It is mine too,” you cut in, placing a hand on his arm.
Amak’s lip curls in disgust. “She would abandon alliance for a man who has not even bonded her.”
That stings because it’s true, you and Neteyam have not made Tsaheylu—you’re both ready, just marked with fear. There is no sacred bond to shield you, only choice and love.
Your mothers eyes draw to you, crossing the sand and gently cupping your jaw, tilting your face towards the light. Then she sees it, the swelling at your shoulder and the imprint of fingers forming at your wrists.
Her breathing changes, slow and controlled. “Who,” she asks softly, “placed this mark on my child?”
Amak straightens, still angry. “She defied-”
Tonowari takes him by the arm. “You put your hands on her?”
He struggles against your fathers firm grip. “She shamed…”
Tonowari shoves him forward harshly. “She is my daughter.” His words tear out of him.
Ronal rises to her full height now, eyes burning blue as she steps between you and the onlookers. One arm shields you instinctively as if you are still small enough to tuck behind her ribs.
“No male,” she says, voice ringing across the reef. “Will ever strike what came from my body and call it correction.”
Amak’s parents step forward nervously, but falter when your mother gives them that cold stare.
“She is promised,” Amak tries again.
“She is not yours!” Ronal snaps.
Tonowari releases him only to shove him back a tad. “If you cannot control your temper before the bond,” he says, chest heaving. “what would you do after?”
The question shifts everything. It is no longer about Neteyam, or secrecy, or embarrassment. It is about safety. Your safety. “Did he frighten you?” he asks quietly.
Ronal’s fingers brush your hair back, checking you like she did when you were a child who scraped your knee on coral.
“If he ever raises his hand to you again,” she says coldly, directed to Amak without looking away from you. “He will answer to me before Eywa”
“This discussion is finished. No union will be considered with a male who forgets he courts a daughter, not a trophy.” Your father announces.
When he looked at Neteyam. this time, it was different. Measured, evaluating a man who did not claim ownership over his daughter, did not speak for you, accepted accountability when needed, and did not hide once exposed.
The reef is quieter at dusk, never silent, but soft. You sit near the outer shallows, legs submerged to your calves, watching the current drag ribbons of light across the sand below.
You know they are coming before they speak, Aonung’s footsteps are heavier, Tsireya’s are not footsteps at all, she moves like tide foam.
Tsireya drops beside you first, bumping her shoulder into yours gently. “You look dramatic.” she announces.
You huff a soft laugh. “I am not.”
“You are,” Aonung mutters, lowering himself on your other side. “You stare like a dying ilu.”
“I do not!” You laugh.
Silence falls again, but it is not a tense silence, it is just shared. The water laps at your skin. After a moment, Tsireya rests her head against your arm. “Does he make you happy?”
“Yes.”
Aonung exhales through his nose. “That is inconvenient.”
You nudge him with your knee. “Do you hate him?”
“No,” your brother replies immediately.
You blink, then he continues, staring out at the reef instead of you. “I hate that you will leave.”
“I am not leaving,” you whisper.
“You will.” He insists quietly. “If you bond. If you lead, if alliances shift, daughters always leave.”
Tsireya tilts her head. “That is not true.”
“It is sometimes true, and I do not like it.”
“I do not want to leave you,” you say honestly. “Either of you.”
Tsireya’s hand slips into yours. “You will not leave us,” she says firmly. “Even if you go somewhere else, you are still our sister.”
“We will always sit beside you.” Your brother says.
“I love you,” you say suddenly. The three of you, born of the same reef, the same parents, the same expectations.
Aonung clears his throat. “You are emotional.”
Tsireya beams. “I love you too”
your brother hesitates, then quietly, “yes, fine. I love you too.”
The sun sinks lower, and when you finally stand to return to the village, your brother walks slightly ahead, Tsireya slightly behind.
Two weeks pass, not in secrecy, not in shadows, open. You no longer slip away at eclipse, you walk beside Neteyam in daylight.
At first, villagers watch like they expect something to break, but it doesn’t. You help your mother grind herbs, Neteyam helps mend nets with young warriors. You cross paths naturally. You speak without flinching. When his hand finds yours, it is brief—appropriate, but not hidden.
There are whispers. But there is no scandal, because nothing you do is dishonorable. You have not bonded, you have not defied your parents, you have no abandoned duty, and Neteyam has not overstepped once.
Your father watches Neteyam like a stalking akula, not judging—but again, evaluating. He superintends his training, his hunting, the way he guides other, younger hunters in need of help.
As day blend to one, stretching into another turning of the tide, your name is still spoken with reverence, Tsakarem, daughter of the olo’eyktan—but now it is also spoken with something else; curiosity.
And Neteyam’s name is no longer whispered like a secret pressed into woven walls.He trains under your father’s gaze without flinching. He listens. He does not posture. When corrected, he bows his head. When praised, he does not swell. The young warriors begin to follow him naturally—not because he demands it, but because he steadies them.
That night, you sit with your mother outside your marui. The tide is low, the stars scatter across the water like crushed shells.
“you embarrassed me,” she says calmly. You brace for anger, but her voice is not sharp. “You frightened me.” She corrects.
“I did not mean to, mother. You would have let me bond with Amak,”
Her jaw tightens slightly. “I would have let you fulfill what I believed protected the clan.”
“And now?”
Her gaze drifts towards where Neteyam sits with his siblings near the shoe, laughter drifting across the dark blue.
“Now I see protection is not always found in arrangement.”
It is the closest thing to a blessing you have ever heard from her lips.
Later, Neteyam meets you by the shallow reef—not hiding, not touching too closely, just standing beside you. The distance between you feels smaller now, not because you are reckless, but because you are seen.No stolen kisses tonight. Just fingers brushing briefly before parting. And somehow, that feels stronger.
Amak keeps his distance, your father speaks to him sometimes, not cruelly, but firmly. The lesson was not about love, it was about control.
And Neteyam? He earns his place without asking for it. One evening, after a long hunt where he guides younger warriors safely through rough currents, your father approaches you quietly.
“He does not seek to possess you,” he says.
“No, papa.”
“He does not weaken you.”
“Never.”
Tonowari studies the horizon.“Then if you bond one day,” he says slowly, “it will be because you chose strength and not because you surrendered to it.”
Your throat tightens.It is not dramatic. Not ceremonial. But it is permission.
You sit cross legged between Neteyam’s thighs as he braids a new bead into your hair, one carved from reef shell—simple and unadorned. He does so in front of the water. Not hidden, or displayed.
He leans forward, placing a soft kiss on your neck. “We do this when you are ready,” he murmurs, leaning against your shoulder there. “Not when they push, and not when we are afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
He smiles softly, placing more kisses up your neck and unto your face. “Neither am I”
The reef breathes around you—you are now a woman who chose, and that changes a lot.“But Neteyam…” you murmur, leaning back slightly.
“I know that we’ve managed everything so far…” you continued, fingers fidgeting with a loose strand of hair. “But you and Aonung need to fix things. You two do not get along.”
His hand stilled mid weave, you could feel the tension that drove to his shoulders. “I can feel it every time you two are around one another.”
“What are you saying?” he leaned forward, golden eyes sharp.
“I’m saying every time you’re around him, it’s like you’re ready to fight! You can’t stand him, and I’m stuck in the middle. Every. Time.”
You spun to face him, your hair slipping from his careful fingers.
“I don’t like it either!” He snapped. “You think I want this tension? You think I enjoy being hated by him for what…Loving you?!”
“Then act like it!” you snapped, twisting slightly so your face turned toward his shoulder. “Act like you can handle it! Because I can’t keep choosing between the two people I love!”
“Turn around baby, let me finish.” He muttered as you yelled in his face.
You exhaled sharply before turning back around and allowing him to finish braiding the beads into your long black hair.
“I’m trying,” his jaw clenched, fingers knotting the last strands with controlled force. “You have no idea how it feels to see him hate me for loving you.”
“And what?—do you think it’s easy for me?!” Your hands gripped his arms, the sand beneath you shifting as you pressed closer to him. “Do you think I like watching my brother fight with the man I love?”
The tension coiled between you, his waist warm against your neck. “I feel it,” he said brusquely. “Every moment. But I won't back down from you. You’re mine and I am yours in every way that matters.”
You exhaled shakily, leaning back into him, the sand sticking to your legs. “Just… don’t make it worse,” you breathed. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
“Meet me at the three brothers’ rocks tonight.” There was no secrecy in Neteyam’s tone, no smirk or challenge, just certainty.
You do not sneak from your marui. “I am walking the reef before sunrise.” Ronal studies your face for a long moment, eyes sharp, searching. Whatever she sees there makes her nod once. Tonowari watches you pass, he does not call you back—it feels like a blessing.
The tide is low when you reach the Three brothers’ The rocks stand dark against a violet sky, the water curling around their bases in soft, patient breaths.
This is where you once ran breathless in the dark, where fruit juice stained your chin, where he first said he was tired of hiding, where Aonung dragged him off of you with fury in his eyes. Where you almost lost everything.
Neteyam steps down from the peak of the middle rock when he finally sees you, neither of you rush forward. “This place used to feel so dangerous,”
“It was.” You answer, smiling.
“It doesn’t anymore.” He steps closer until only a breath holds you two apart. The wind lifts the ends of his braids.
“This is where we chose each other," you smile again.
He nods once. “Where I decided no one else could take you as theirs.” He laughs.
Your hand rises to his chest, feeling the steady beat of his soul beneath your palm. “I am not being taken, I am choosing.”
His eyes search yours carefully. Choosing. “If we do this, there is no stepping back.”
“I’m not afraid anymore.” The words settle between you two like something hallowed. You step down together into the shallow water between the rocks. Cool, tiny waves brush your ankles, the reef glows faintly beneath you.
You sit facing one another, knees touching, hands resting against thighs, breath uneven but steadying. There is no rush. Your fingers lift slowly to your kuru, his hands echo yours, there is a final moment of stillness and your foreheads touch first.
Then, gently—the tendrils squirming, longing for connection. The kurus join, the connection is not violent or overwhelming. It is grounding.
Your breath catches as his presence floods into you, warmth, steadiness, a voracious protectiveness braided with patience he had to learn, for you.
Everything paused—even the world, to witness something beautiful. Neteyam inhales sharply when the bond settles fully, his hands tightening against your thighs.
The connection deepens—not louder, not brighter. Just wider. You feel the steadiness of his heartbeat sync with yours, the rhythm aligning until it’s difficult to tell which pulse belongs to whom.
Your eyes open at the same time, his are wide, pupils dilated, exploring you. Your lips part and he takes the opportunity to have them meet his. Slow and deliberate—testing the reality of this moment.
His hands find your face, brushing your jaw and smoothing back your hair. Your head tilts as he buries his face into the crook of your neck, teeth grazing the sensitive spots there.
He smiles softly against your nape, palms running down your body—feeling, discovering the places that make you sigh.
The kiss breaks for a second, eyes searching, hands touching. He reaches for your hand, squeezing gently. “I love you.”
Your smile brightens intensely, placing soft kisses along his knuckles. “I love you.”
He pulls you close, holding you on his lap. You lay silently there, tracing constellations, sharing small jokes, and for the first time—you do not feel compromised by duty, by arrangements. you are free. and you are mated for life.
AN: ive had a weird obsession with neteyam recently teeehehehe so..here, also should i make this a series ?
(1 you are here, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan x Metkayina!reader
Synopsis: you are the eldest child of the olo'eyktan and tsahik of the Metkayina tribe when a certain Omatikaya family comes seeking uturu in your home village.
warnings: cussing
Multiple people gather around looking at the skinny family, Tonowari; your father, emerges from the crowd along with your mother to be met with the Toruk Makto, Jake sully.
“Why do you come to us, Jake Sully?” Tonowari questions the man, wary but respectful. “We seek uturu.” Ronal quirks her head at that, eyeing the family carefully “Uturu?” She walks around them. Inspecting their features. “We are reef people. You are forest people, your skills will mean nothing here.” Tonowari goes on while Ronal grabs at them, feeling their skinny arms, tails and hands. “These children… they are not even true Na’vi!” She grabs up Kiris hand, showing the clan her pinky finger. You emerge from the water along with your little sister Tsireya. “Tsk, what is all this commotion?” You shake your head and shoo your Ilu away. Walking up you see a forest family, curious you walk up, moving along the crowd to see your mother fighting with the mother of the forest family.
“I was born of the Omatikaya! My husband was Toruk Makto! He led the clans to victory!” She hisses to Ronal who hisses right back “And now he brings his war to us?” Jake notices the tension and tries to calm his wife despite her stubbornness. You look over at the children and see a little girl, a boy and girl around Tsireya and aonungs age, then finally the eldest boy who’s your age, you two stare at eachother for a moment but you look away, you go to stand next to Aonung, tugging Tsireya along. After Jake’s pleading, your parents communicating and your mothers clear defeat, it is obvious your father decided.
He raises his arms, ready to announce to the clan. “Toruk Makto and his family will stay with us. Treat them as our brothers and sisters. They do not know the sea, so they will be like babies taking their first breath. Teach them our ways so they do not suffer the shame of being useless.” He looks over to Jake sully, “My children will teach your children our ways- Aonung scoffs in disagreement, “But father!- Tonowari sends him a stern look and puts an arm out infront of his son. “It is decided.”
You step up infront of the children and smile, “Follow me.”
On the shore, you find yourself leading the group along with your two siblings and your family friend roxto. “You might be good at swinging in trees but-“ you cut off Aonung with a slap to the head, which the eldest boy who you learned his name was Neteyam, laughed at. “Shut up skxwang…we will start with your breathing. We use abdominal breathing to stay under water longer.” You try to keep your gaze on the whole group but it constantly finds its way back to neteyam whose gaze is strictly on you. Flustered you continue your instructions, while everyone has someone to train with you end up getting stuck with neteyam. “breathe in, breathe out. Imagine a flickering flame. Slow down your heartbeat.” You reach down towards his abdomen, placing a hand on his stomach gently.“Breathe down from here. Breathe out slowly.” Touching him gently makes you both flustered. Once you believe he gets it you quickly cut the breathing practice short. “swim with us!” Tsireya says with glee, leading the group to the shore.
Diving underneath the three young metkayina instuctors swim fast, leaving behind the omatikaya kids. After looking behind, you notice they aren’t close to where you are and Aonung signs “What’s wrong with them?” Roxto smiles and signs back “those guys are bad divers.” Tsireya slaps him and signs, “be nice, they are learning.” You giggle at this little moment and sign “skxawng” hitting Aonung upside his head as he rolls his eyes. Resurfacing little Tuk lets out a groan “you’re too fast!! Wait for us!!” You smile and brush her little braids out of her face when Neteyam speaks up, looking at you “We don’t speak this finger talk, we don’t know what you’re saying.” You look over to him “I’ll teach you.”
After the training you still have many duties to do, bidding the Sully kids goodbye you rush off to do your Tsahik training with your mother.
“Neteyam! Hey, that Tsireya girl is hot!” Lo’ak runs to catch up to his older brother, seeming to want to talk about his new crush. “I guess bro. I wasn’t really paying attention.” Neteyam rolls his eyes as he makes his way to his families new home, “Yeah I saw, you were too busy looking at the older sister. You two seemed to like eachother. Got real close during the breathing practices.” he teases his brother, or tries to. “Oh shut up Lo’ak. She had to get that close to show me where to breathe you idiot.” His mind plays the scene again, touching his lower stomach as he blushes but his thoughts are quickly interrupted when his mother calls out for him. “Neteyam! Come help me prepare dinner.”
You’re halfway done with your training for the day when Tsireya walks in with a gleeful smile. You look up “you look awfully happy. Something happen ?” Your mother also looks up, perhaps wondering the same. “Uhm.. just had fun during training! That’s all!” You smile and continue to try and perfect the paste you’ve been on for atleast 3 days. “Yes, that was fun wasn’t it?” You think back to it, “You got close to the eldest boy didn’t you? Do you finally think you’ve found a worthy mate?” You stop mixing and look up at your younger sister with shock, looking over to your mother who was already looking at you. “Y/n? What is this?” You glare and Tsireya and put the paste down. “Nothing mother! We just had basic training. Tsireya is just speaking nonsense.” She looks skeptical but nods “They have demon blood. Remember that child.” She looks over at your paste and smiles. “You are done for today. Good job ma Y/n.” Kissing your head she sends you and your sister off, free to do whatever for the rest of the day.
“Tsireya what was that! Mother almost skinned me alive!” She giggles “Calm down! She looks more interested than mad. Maybe she thinks he is a worthy mate for her untouchable daughter despite his demon blood!” You look over at her and sneer. “The Lo’ak boy has demon blood, you seem to have taken a liking to him.” She gets flustered at that “He’s different. I accept him, he’s more than just the “demon” blood in him.” You look over at her with some kind of surprise “wow tsireya, that’s a nice way of looking at it. You really do like that boy.” She groans and tells you to shut up, you just snort and push her away.
Weaving a basket on the shore, you see Neteyam approaching and put it down. Smiling at the boy you invite him to sit next to you. “Ah Neteyam! Hello, is there something you need?” He shakes his head and settles down next to you in the sand. “No, just bored. Everything is new and I’m just not sure of what to do.” You hum at that, thinking of something “I can teach you how to ride an Ilu? If not it is fine, I know it is late and we have many duties tomorrow-“ he cuts you off “I would be honored. Show me the way?” You look at him with surprise and smile. “Yes! Okay, follow me.” You grab his hand. Leading him to the water, after calling your Ilu and another for him, you reach for his kuru and grab hold of the ilus. “Connect it gently, allow her to feel you. Learn you.” Watching you with content he grabs his kuru and goes to connect it. Once she settles you get on yours, smiling to him you gesture for him to follow.
You jump up a wave, landing back into the water, “cmon neteyam! Use the wave!” He looks at you and back at the wave, guiding his Ilu down into the water. You wait eagerly for him to jump out. “Neteyam?..” Then all of a sudden he comes out with a loud splash yelling “Woooooo!! Holy shit!!” He comes crashing down with a big splash, rising back up you hit him on the shoulder playfully “you scare me skxawng!” After a few more of the jumps you reluctantly make your way back to the shore, sitting down on the sand. “Thank you for joining me Neteyam. This was fun.” Looking up you see him already looking at you, smiling. “No, I should be thanking you! That was great!” After awhile you both make your ways back to the village. Bidding goodbyes and heading separate ways to your families homes.
Opening your marui flap you giggle at the sight of Aonung drooling. Sliding onto your mat carefully so you don’t awake your parents, you see Tsireya look at you drowsily but she smiles, knowing where you’ve been. Hushing her back to sleep you turn around, thinking back to the fun you had with the forest boy. you smile at the thought and fall asleep.
Neteyam carefully opens the flap to his families new home, seeing everyone asleep he lets out a quiet sigh of relief, sliding onto his mat carefully just to see his younger brother smirking at him “Hey bro. Back from your date?” He rolls his eyes at Lo’ak. “Shut up skxawng. We were just hanging.” This time Lo’ak rolls his eyes. “Yeah okayy bro.” Neteyam glares at him and flicks his forehead, forcing him back to sleep as he turns around and tries to sleep himself. But can’t help and think about the fun you two had. Flustered he shuts his eyes and falls asleep.
AN: okay so if this does well I can turn it into a series, what do we think? SERIES OR NO SERIES?!?!? I lowkey left it on a cliff hanger so I might HAVE to do a goddamn series.
Summary: Every mighty leader needs to have his mates de-stress him every once in awhile.
Warnings: NSFW, xenophilia (alien genitalia), marking, biting, scenting, blowjob, size difference, human x Na'vi.
Notes: First time writing for Ronal and Tonowari together! These two are so fun to write.
Credits: Credit to @cafekitsune for the MDNI and Support banners. Credit to @saradika-graphics for the divider.
Na'vi Translation:
Olo'eyktan: (Male) Clan Leader
Tsahìk: Matriarch, high priestess, interpreter
Kaltxì, ma oeyä txe'lan, ma oeyä txe'lankong: Hello, my heart, my heartbeat.
Muntxatan: Husband; male spouse
Ma: Vocative marker used to indicate whom the speaker is addressing. Can be used with a name.
Mawey: Be calm
Nga mowan, ma oeyä muntxatan: Are you pleased, my husband
Awa'atlu is busier than normal this time of year, there was so much your mates had to prepare for. With the returning of the Tulkun just days away, hunting season coming to a close with a hunting celebration to be planned, and recovering from the most recent scouting mission, Tonowari is extremely overwhelmed.
As Olo'eyktan, Tonowari is weighed heavily by the many duties that are expected of him, holding the lives of his clan members in his hands at every decision he makes. Ronal has been busier as well, every decision needed to be made, needed to be made together. But it was Tonowari that took the decision and put it to work, instructing and overseeing any and all actions taking place on the island.
You and Ronal both can see the strain on him, the tiredness in his eyes and heaviness in his limbs when he comes home, dark circles under his eyes as he scarfs down his food like he's starved – and he is considering he doesn't get a chance to eat all day except for the small breakfast he shovels down before leaving.
It's beginning to worry you how much he's spreading himself thin, not a single complaint leaving his perfect lips as he continues to push himself more and more, coming home with a soft smile as he greets you both, letting his large hand cradle Ronal's bump and relieve her of some of the heavy weight as he holds you close to his chest. He deserves a break, but you know he'll never take one, maybe even give you a good-natured chuckle about how worried you are while cradling your face in his hands, reminding you of how proud he is to lead his people.
Not even Ronal could fight him on this, and she's too afraid to try, not wanting wear him down even further with an unneeded argument.
The concern rolls off Ronal's body in waves as she watches over Tonowari's busy form in the distance bouncing in between jobs, the pestle and half ground herbs on her workstation long forgotten as she stares off into the distance at her mate. Leaving your own grinding, you walk to her side, wrapping your arms under her bulging belly as you rest your cheek on her hip, squeezing at her stiff form in an attempt to get her attention.
"All this worrying isn't good for you, Mamas. And it isn't good for our little one." you tell her, moving around so you're standing in front of her tall form, bumping your mask covered face against her stomach. Ronal rests one hand on her stomach as the other lays on the back of your head, running down to support your neck as you look up at her.
Her gorgeous, crystal blue eyes peer down at you, a frown tugging at the corner of her lip. "He needs to rest," she says, glancing back up at your mate as her ears lay back, sighing, "But of course, he will not."
You run yours hands up and down her lower back, gently squeezing at the base of her swaying tail, "You know better than me that, that man won't rest until the jobs are done. And even then, he'll still be running around like a chicken without a head." you sigh with her, shaking your head as your hands move to her hips and thighs, kneading at the cord muscles until they relax into your touch.
Her ears perk up, eyes going round as she looks at you like you've grown a second head. "What bizarre Earth creature runs around without a head?" she asks with so much concern it's adorable.
You bite your bottom lip to suppress a laugh, "It's just a terminology, I promise no animals are running around headless on my planet." you reassure her, leaving one last squeeze to her lower thighs before going back to your spot on the floor, beginning to grind down the half mashed herbs into a fine paste again.
Not even your joking can make Ronal relent from her worried stance at the doorway, a stern frown tugging at her beautiful face, the very beginning of tears glistening her eyes. You immediately stand back up, wrapping your arms around her again to center her once again. "Hey, hey, it's okay. He'll be okay, Mamas." you soothe her, nudging your jaw across her stomach lovely.
"Our mate is strong headed," you hum in agreement. "And stupid!" you hum again as she wipes away a single tear, huffing as her pregnancy hormones causing her unwanted tears. "He's overworking himself and a little stressed, but we both know he'll come to us when he needs us." you promise her, massaging her belly tattoos in circular motions in hope to elicit a kick from the baby.
As she looks away from Tonowari hauling a large piece of wood across the beach, the tears in her eyes dry as mischief replaces them. "I am Tsahìk, we are his mates, it is our duty to help him cope with his stress." she says, lips pulling in smirk you know all too well.
The deviousness dripping from her voice causes you to shrink within yourself, memories of the same tone of voice seducing you into her home come flooding back to you, the same glint present in her eyes the night you gave yourself to them are in her gaze now. Her long, slender fingers grasp at the back of your head, supporting your neck as she pulls your gaze up to hers, "We need to give relief to our poor, stressed mate."
You heard Tonowari before you saw him, heavy footsteps crunching the sand under him with more heaviness as his tired body trudged closer to your shared home. "Kaltxì, ma oeyä txe'lan, ma oeyä txe'lankong." he greets the two of you, wrapping an arm around you both and squishing you in a tight hug.
You give him a hard squeeze in response, burying your now maskless face into his toned upper thigh, giving his smooth skin a soft kiss as Ronal gives his lips a biting kiss. He chuckles at the sudden nip, returning the playful gesture to Ronal before leaning down to you, ears perking up in excitement at the freedom he has to lay a deep kiss to your lips without the wretched mask in the way.
When he goes to pull away from the tight group hug, Ronal and you pull him back in, sharing a knowing troublesome look and giddy smiles as you each wrap him back in your arms. Your face nuzzles at his hip, gently nipping at his pelvic bone in between soft kisses, resting your hands at the base of his tail to tease the butter soft skin there before falling down to massage at his sore thighs and toned bottom. Ronal scents at his neck, fully biting at his pulse point until he groans, her hands running up and down his chest tantalizingly slow.
"What has gotten into my sweet girls this evening?" Tonowari questions as his brow bone raises, relaxing into the slow worship of his body done by his eager mates. You look up at him, keeping your eyes locked when you place a kiss on his lower stomach. "Nothing's gotten into us, we just want to show how much we love you, 'Wari."
Ronal hums, "Giving you the attention you deserve for being such a good Olo'eyktan to our people. Such a good muntxatan to your mates." she tells him as she grasps at his shoulders, giving him just a hard enough push for his exhausted body to fall into the healing cot behind him.
Tonowari's eyes grow round, his crystalline eyes swallowed up by his blown pupils when you and Ronal kneel at his feet, his tail swaying erratically as it thumps against the cot. He immediately leans forward, extending his arms to stop you two. Tonowari never made you or Ronal kneel for him, he hated the implication that it made and always laid down to ensure your comfort as you pleasured him. "Do not–"
You take his outstretched hand, intertwining your fingers with his, tucking your pinkie into his warm palm. "It's okay, Tono', we want to do this for you." you reassure him, kissing the tips of his calloused fingers.
Ronal fully kneels, shushing at your mate when he goes to protest, knowing the extra weight of her pregnancy belly would make this so much more uncomfortable. "Mawey, ma oeyä Olo'eyktan," she purrs the words against his inner thigh, the sharp points of her canines scratching across the delicate skin as she gives him a feral smile. "We want to help you, please you until you finally rest."
Tonowari releases a shakey breath as the two of you begin your slow decent to where he needs you most. Your lips kiss the soft skin of his inner thighs reverently, stopping a moment to suck a purple bruise on the crease of his thigh, further teasing him by kissing the wet spot on his loincloth created by his pooling slick. Ronal's eyes never leave his as she kisses and nips her way down his heaving chest, digging her teeth into the sensitive skin on his V line, skilled fingers untying the knots holding his loincloth together and letting the fabric fall away.
A line of slick connects to Tonowari's slit to his loincloth as Ronal throws it to the side. She coos at his when his slit begins to relax more at your hungry gaze, the very tip of his cockhead peeking through the relaxed muscles. "So eager for your mates, ma 'Wari" she says to him, gingerly running her thumb up and down his slit to coax his cock out further.
You were shocked when you first got together with your mates, how differently their biology was to yours, and even more shocked no one thought to fair warn you of the strangeness of having mates with alien genitalia and heat cycles that left you more sore and numb than they were. But now you adore it, love watching the panic build across Tonowari's face when his cock starts to slip free at your teasing touches in public, or when Ronal praises you as you all but shove your face deeper into her hypersensitive slit.
Tonowari shudders at the contact, a deep groan rumbling through his chest as your small finger join Ronal's in parting his slit apart until his cock slowly slips out of it's pouch, the smallest of whimpers leaving Tonowari's tightly sealed lips when the cool evening air makes contact with his slick covered dick. You both coo at him when his hips suddenly jerk up, yearning for touch after so long of being forced to think of everyone else over his own needs. Spreading his legs further apart, you and Ronal sit pressed against one another as you each take a side, your lips hugging the hard, hot flesh in each deep, sucking kiss you leave on his shaft, meeting at the tip to share a kiss over the leaking head.
Tonowari's groans, wet pants, loud moans and whimpers fill the air, his hands clenching into tight fists as you and Ronal moan into your kiss, letting your tongues wrap around the tip to deepen the kiss. "Oh, G-Great Mother..." Tonowari whines, giving up restraint and cupping the back of Ronal's head as she parts from the kiss, suckling the head of his cock as she slowly slips down, taking more of his shaft down her throat.
You hated you couldn't do the same, no matter how many times you've tried and Tonowari telling you that it was okay, you wanted to please him the way he pleases you. Your focus turns to the knot growing at the base of his shaft, licking at the prominent vein throbbing under the taunt skin. You revel in the loud yelp it earns you, humming into the ball of tissue when his massive hand lands on your head, long fingers massaging at your scalp as encouragement as you lay kiss after kiss onto his knot, opening your mouth wide enough to suck at the hot flesh.
Tonowari has never looked more ethereal. Beautiful, long, wavy hair clinging to his forehead and chest, tattoos shimmering from the layer of sweat covering his body, full, enticing lips bruised from how hard he's been biting at them to stay quiet. And of course he's failing, Tonowari can never stay quiet for too long, never hold back how much he loves being with his mates as his desperate moans and groans taint the sex coated air.
Ronal's cheeks hollow as she pulls off his shaft, making a wet pop as his tip slips from between her lips. She smiles up at her disheveled husband, "Nga mowan, ma oeyä muntxatan?" she asks him, the whine that leaves his parted lips is all the answer she needs before taking him back into her mouth.
"I a-am–" his groan cuts him off as Ronal hums around him.
Your hands join your mouth, squeezing harshly at his knot to add the pressure you know he loves, kissing up the part of his shaft Ronal can't fit while your hands continue to massage at the engorged tissue. Tonowari tenses, head falling back onto his neck as his hips rock into your hands, pushing his cock down Ronal's throat and deeper into your tight grip as he cums, whining when neither of you stop. His legs start to shake, hands once encouraging you to continue are now desperately trying to get you away from his overly sensitive shaft and deflating knot.
Both you and Ronal lean back, helping each other wipe away the cum and spit trailing down your chin and neck as Tonowari collects himself, eyes still closed as he gasps to catch his breath. You grasp the sides of Ronal's face, pulling her into a deep kiss, groaning at the taste of Tonowari's cum still coating her tongue. You give her lips one last kiss with a content hum, "Delicious as always."
You're wrapped in a warm embrace as Tonowari pulls you onto the cot, slowly helping Ronal get up and placing her on the cot next to you. His hand splays out across your chest as he guides you to lay down, putting a hand by each of your heads so he can peer down at you both. You giggle up at him, lifting your hand to trace over his features, "What does my pretty baby want now?"
Ronal is already getting comfortable, turning her head to nuzzle at your temple as Tonowari leans down, ghosting his lips over yours as he says, "I want to please my beautiful mates as well as you have pleased me."
