Summary: You join the RDA young after the world figures out your ability to shapeshift. They offer you a new life- so why does everything feel wrong?
Warning(s): Mention of pain and discomfort when shapeshifting, the RDA
Note(s): So, I saw Avatar: Fire and Ash, and wanted to at least write a little something set in that universe. This section of the story happens before the events of the movie, so there is no spoilers in this one! Sorry that this isn't beta read. Part Two here!
You join the RDA because they make it sound like the only place you’ll ever be safe.
They find you young- young enough that the world hasn’t finished deciding what to do with someone whose body refuses to stay singular. Your ability to shift shape is treated like a miracle in press releases and like a liability in private. Governments argue over jurisdiction. Scientists argue over ownership. The RDA steps in with contracts already written, hands already extended, voices smooth and confident.
We know how to use your gifts. We can protect you. Pandora needs people like you.
You're young enough that fear still sounds like reason when it wears a calm voice and a tailored suit. Young enough to mistake a leash for a lifeline.
Afterwards, they show you carefully curated footage: Na’vi warriors painted in blood-red war stripes, arrows piercing armor, humans dragged screaming into the trees. They speak of Pandora as if it is a mouth full of teeth- hostile atmosphere, lethal fauna, a planet that wants you dead. They say savage like it’s a diagnosis.
“This is why we need people like you,” someone says gently. “People who can survive where others can’t.”
They frame it as responsibility. As prevention. As protection. They tell you that without the RDA, more people will die- scientists, workers, families who just want a future off a dying Earth. They tell you the Na’vi don’t understand progress, that they won’t negotiate, that they answer every attempt at peace with violence.
By the time they ask if you’re willing to help, the room feels smaller. The choice feels narrower. Outside these walls are governments arguing, crowds speculating, strangers who would love to decide what you deserve.
You nod before you realize you’re doing it.
You skip entire layers of training because your body can already do what machines struggle to replicate. Where others learn procedures, you are the procedure. You’re sent ahead of survey teams, ahead of engineers, ahead of anyone whose life costs more to replace. You walk into environments that would shred unmodified lungs. You stand in atmospheres that make others choke and panic. You adapt, cell by cell, instinctively, efficiently.
They assign you handlers.
Not friends- handlers. People who know your resting heart rate better than your favorite color. People who smile while watching your vitals scroll across transparent screens, fingers hovering over emergency overrides they’re always a little too ready to use. Doctors who talk about you while you’re still in the room, using third-person pronouns like you’re furniture that might break if handled wrong.
“Stability looks good today,” one of them says while you’re still shaking from a shift.
“Let’s see how far we can push it next time,” another replies.
They don’t say human when they look at you. Not really. They say asset. Adaptive. Exceptional. Your ability to alter your body, to rewrite bone and skin and organ density, is something they can catalog and deploy. You become a collection of graphs and projected tolerances. A list of acceptable losses.
They house you in white rooms with glass walls- clean, sterile, impossible to hide in. People watch you constantly, smiling without warmth, offering praise that never quite reaches their eyes. You’re commended in reports and quietly avoided in hallways. Conversations stop when you enter. Someone always finds an excuse to leave.
You learn quickly which version of yourself makes them most comfortable. Smaller changes. Cleaner ones. Nothing that reminds them you can become something they can’t predict.
Years pass like this. Not marked by birthdays or milestones, but by evaluations and clearance upgrades. You grow taller. Stronger. More precise. You learn how to hold a form longer, how to suppress the tremor in your hands afterward, how to smile when someone congratulates you on a successful test that nearly killed you.
That’s what the briefing says, over and over, in clipped sentences that echo long after the screens go dark. But the first time you see it- really see it, not through filtered feeds or drone cams- you feel something loosen in your chest, a tension you didn’t even realize you’d been carrying for years.
They release you into a controlled zone: a section of forest fenced with invisible containment fields, watched by drones that hum softly overhead like mechanical insects. The air is still toxic by human standards, but survivable for you. It slides into your lungs rich and damp, thick with scents that your old training has no names for. The ground beneath your feet gives subtly, alive and faintly warm, as though it recognizes the weight you carry and chooses not to resist it.
Light pours down through leaves larger than any sail you’ve seen, filtering through in fractured rays that scatter gold, green, and emerald in impossible patterns. Every shade feels alive, shimmering as though the canopy itself is breathing. Bioluminescent fungi pulse softly along roots and tree bases, reacting to your movement, glowing brighter as if startled into life by your presence. Air is heavy with the smell of sweet sap and rain-soaked earth, layered with something floral, electric, a scent that clings to your skin and curls deep into your lungs. It doesn’t just fill your senses- it anchors you.
You slow without meaning to, each step hesitant, reverent. You almost forget the RDA, the cameras, the commands. Even the warnings fade, leaving only the forest and its quiet, deliberate rhythms.
A small creature darts across your path, limbs spindly and iridescent, skin shimmering in impossible colors. It pauses, regards you briefly with eyes that feel aware, and vanishes into the underbrush without fear, without hesitation. A cluster of glowing insects rises from the moss like liquid fire, hovering, weaving in tight spirals, then scattering silently like sparks from an unseen flame.
Vines curl and uncurl lazily along the trunks of trees, not threatening, just alive. When you place a hand against the bark, you feel a faint vibration beneath your palm, a rhythm that reminds you unsettlingly of a heartbeat.
Your comm crackles.
“Vitals are clean,” someone says. “Asset appears stable. Proceed.”
You don’t want to.
For the first time since joining the RDA, you feel something loosen inside your chest. The planet isn’t hostile- it’s aware. Watching, yes. Measuring you the way you were taught to measure it. But not with hatred. The world breathes. The forest hums. Everything is connected in a way Earth forgot how to be.
This is when doubt takes root.
If this place is savage, why does it cradle life so carefully?
If the Na’vi are monsters, why does the land itself feel… gentle?
You feel a tug, faint at first, then stronger, pulling you forward, deeper into the forest, as if the planet itself is curious about you.
The deeper you go, the more the magic of it reveals itself. Seed pods, small as teardrops, float through the air, drifting slowly as if suspended in water. When they brush past, they release tiny clouds of light, glimmering like dust made of stars. You step near a shallow pool, and the water reflects not just your image, but faint trails of bioluminescence winding through the roots beneath. Tiny creatures swim in it, transparent, their bodies pulsing with soft neon, leaving streaks of light as they move.
Even the air moves with a purpose here. Breezes curve around your face like caresses, carrying scents that make your lungs ache with longing. Every step releases a whisper of life from the forest: leaves shifting, vines twisting, insects skimming the ground in quick flashes of luminescence. The forest doesn’t just exist- it sings, a song too intricate and layered for your ears to fully catch, but somehow impossible to ignore.
You try to describe it later, in the sterile white rooms of the RDA, but words fail you. They hear only “complex,” “reactive,” “ecology”- terms too clinical to capture the shimmer of light on leaves, the tiny sparks of color dancing in pools of water, the pulse of life beneath your hand.
“Don’t anthropomorphize,” a handler warns. “Pandora is dangerous. You just haven’t seen it yet."
Later, as you wade through bioluminescent marshes while analysts murmur excitedly in your ear about data returns, you start to notice what the RDA doesn’t log.
Bulldozers carving through the forest without pause for nesting grounds. Biologists who protest vanishing from assignments. Words like containment mutating quietly into elimination on spreadsheets no one talks about aloud.
You hear it before you see it- not gunfire, not the mechanical hum of drones- but the quiet rhythm of planning.
Late-night briefings you’re not supposed to attend, doors left half-open because no one thinks the freak will understand the numbers. Atmospheric processors scaled beyond “research.” You watch maps light up with projected blast zones that don’t care about villages, only about yield.
Hunting units shift from defense to retrieval. And one name keeps surfacing, spoken with irritation, obsession, almost a hiss:
Sully.
Circled. Annotated. Spat like a curse.
Jake Sully and his family aren’t just enemies. They’re obstacles. Symbols. Proof that Pandora can’t be tamed while they’re alive.
They speak of final pushes, decisive measures. They speak of fire, of scorched earth, of burning Pandora until nothing remains to resist.
You watch a recording where someone laughs while replaying footage of a burning stretch of forest. A scientist flinches but says nothing, you can only watch as command signs off anyway.
One night, you overhear a strategist mutter, almost conversationally, “If we burn enough forest, they’ll come to us.”
A few people laugh.
You stop sleeping after that. The forest haunts your dreams even when you aren’t on Pandora- the heat of the fires, the screams of animals you never see, the laughter that feels like knives in the dark.
They start pushing your abilities harder. Asking if you can approximate indigenous physiology. If you can blend. If you can infiltrate. The way they look at you changes- less amusement, more hunger.
That’s when the word freak finally slips out.
Not shouted. Not angry. Just casual.
“Careful,” a tech mutters when you pass, “thing like that could turn on us.”
Thing.
Something cold settles into you then, slow and absolute. You understand, all at once, that no matter how useful you make yourself, you will never be included, only deployed. You aren’t a person here. You’re a contingency. A failsafe. A leash they haven’t figured out how to tighten yet.
That night, you don’t wait for permission.
You don’t pack. You don’t plan. Planning assumes time, and time is something the RDA only ever gives you until it decides to take it back.
You choose a body the RDA fears and covets in equal measure. You easily pull the image from memory: blue skin under bioluminescent light, height and grace and strength not born of machinery. A body that belongs here.
Your body answers before your mind can hesitate.
The first sound is bone.
They stretch with a sound like ice cracking under pressure. Pain spikes- sharp, electric- as your spine lengthens, vertebrae re-spacing themselves with brutal precision. You bite down on your sleeve to keep from screaming as your ribcage expands, lungs reshaping to drink deeper air. Your heart stutters, then resumes with a heavier, slower beat.
Your hands convulse. Fingers lengthen, joints re-aligning, nails thickening into something harder. Your skin burns- burns- as pigment floods outward, human tones drowning beneath blue, faint stripes surfacing like memories you never lived.
A tail forces its way into existence at the base of your spine and you sob despite yourself, because nothing has ever hurt like this and nothing has ever felt more right.
Your face is last, cruel in its patience.
Your jaw reshapes with a sickening pull. Your nose flattens, cartilage folding inward. Your eyes widen, darkening, pulling in light until the room seems suddenly brighter, sharper, unbearably detailed. When your ears crawl upward along your skull and taper to points, you nearly black out.
When it’s over, you lie there shaking, too large for the cot, breath dragging in slow, powerful pulls you don’t know how to control yet. The room smells different now. Everything does. Metal. Fear.
Your fear.
You catch your reflection in the steel wall.
A Na’vi stares back.
Not perfect. Not born. Something about the posture is wrong, the stillness too practiced- but close enough. Close enough to vanish into the forest. Close enough to survive.
By the time the alarms realize something is wrong, you’re already in the forest, feet sinking into living soil, the network of Pandora thrumming beneath you like a heartbeat answering your own.
When you burst from the controlled zone, the RDA is already regrouping at the edge of the forest. They shout orders, curse your name, curse the trees- but their bullets are useless here. Pandora itself seems to fold around you, carrying you further into its depths, hiding you in plain sight.
Hours stretch into days.
You no longer measure time by hours or meals, as you once did in the white rooms. You mark it by the life around you: blooms unfurling in colors you’ve never seen, petals glowing faintly under Pandora’s filtered light; insects that glitter like liquid gemstones, wings flickering with iridescence as they dart between leaves; birds tracing arcs of faint light across the canopy, feathers reflecting bioluminescent patterns even in daylight. Every step, every breath, reminds you that the planet is alive- and that it wants more than extraction. It wants preservation.
Your body aches. Muscles tremble with exhaustion. Lungs burn against air still thick with unfamiliar gases. But you keep moving, because stopping isn’t safe, and because the forest is teaching you, whether you notice or not.
You watch the animals.
A small herd moves through a clearing- slender-legged, striped in shifting blues and greens, heads bobbing as they sniff the ground and nuzzle plants. Their antenna-like whiskers probe the soil, sniffing, tasting, and nudging one another as they graze on thick, spongy moss and low shrubs. They drink from a clear, shallow stream with slow, deliberate sips, eyes constantly flicking for danger. You mimic them, kneeling to sip from the same pool, letting the cool water wash the dryness from your throat. You bite at leaves, nibble fruits your human instincts would have ignored, and find your stomach forgiving.
Nearby, a larger creature lopes cautiously through the underbrush, six legs moving with smooth, deliberate rhythm. It grazes on thick ferns and low shrubs, alert to every movement and sound. You copy its careful steps, testing plants, finding solid ground, learning without knowing the names of anything you touch or taste.
You move lightly over soft moss, climb with careful precision, stepping where no trace remains. Nights are spent tucked in bioluminescent groves, fungi glowing faintly beneath you, seeds drifting like lanterns above, casting the world in quiet, shifting color. Sleep comes in fragments, but even in dreams the forest pulses beneath your skin, a constant, gentle thrum.
A few more days pass, and you begin to realize that berries, leaves, and whatever edible roots you can find won’t be enough. Your body- long, strong, shaped for speed and endurance- demands more. You feel the hollow ache in your stomach and the way your muscles twitch with need.
That afternoon you watch a predator slip silently through a stream, its body low, eyes scanning the water. With a sudden lunge, it strikes, claws plunging into the shallow flow, lifting a wriggling fish with precision. It doesn’t waste a second. Teeth clamp down, and the fish disappears in a flash.
Something clicks inside you.
Hunger strips everything down to what matters. It sharpens your thoughts in a way the sterile RDA rooms never could, cuts through training manuals and protocols until only instinct remains. You sink into a crouch at the water’s edge and watch, really watch.
The predator doesn’t rush. Its limbs brace against slick stone, weight distributed with careful precision. It waits, motionless, letting the water settle, letting the fish forget it is there. When it strikes, it isn’t strength that wins- it’s timing. Rhythm. A patience so complete it feels like part of the river itself.
You feel your body mirror the lesson before your mind names it.
Your fingers sink into the cool current, tail twitching for balance. You mimic the predator, diving your hand toward a darting fish, fingertips brushing scales, heart hammering. The fish slips. You try again. And again. The forest hums around you, water splashing over stones, insects flickering along the banks, sun filtering through towering leaves.
The water ripples around your hands, darting fish slipping through like quicksilver. No matter how carefully you move, no matter how patient you are, your fingers are too soft, too human and too Na'vi in equal measure. Hunger gnaws at you. You can’t wait.
You flex your hands, and instinct takes over. Nails thicken and sharpen, lengthening into curved claws, hard and precise. The transformation is subtle but powerful; muscle and bone shift to support the new form. The cool water presses against your claws, and suddenly, you are no longer merely trying- you are predatory, efficient, alive in a way you haven’t felt since leaving the RDA.
You dive your claws into the stream, and with a swift, practiced motion, you pin a wriggling fish against a submerged rock. There’s a dull thunk as you deliver the final blow, the fish still under your grip. Cold and slick in your hands, it’s the first kill you’ve taken in this body, in this new life.
"Thank you." you murmur softly.
You gather dry twigs, small sticks stripped from the low branches, leaves that crumble to dust between your fingers. You strike stones together, a sharp clang against another, sparks spitting briefly into the air. Your heart pounds. Sparks fall uselessly onto damp moss. You try again, rubbing sticks, grinding them together with raw strength, but nothing catches. But Pandora is not a kitchen. The forest has no patience for convenience.
The fish is lying there, cold and unyielding. Hunger twists in your gut, muscles trembling from exertion, lungs still burning from long days of running. You can’t wait. Fire isn’t coming.
You bite. Scales scrape against your teeth, fins crack under your jaw. The flesh is cold and slick, metallic on your tongue, sharp with the taste of water and living stone. Your stomach tightens in protest, a reflex from a body that remembers sterilized meals and approved rations. Then it eases.
Every bite is messy, real, and for the first time in days, satisfying.
In the next few days, the trees begin to thin. The canopy lifts, and sunlight spills across your face in unfiltered waves, warm and blinding. You haven’t felt this warmth on bare skin in years. The ocean’s salt and tang tease your senses first as a scent, faint and foreign, carried on a wind sharper and clearer than anything under the forest canopy. Somewhere ahead, the cry of distant creatures and the flash of gliding shapes over the water tell you: the coast is near.
Spider’s a tough kid. He’ll never let anyone see it, what this scene did to him, but it’s with him regardless. He’ll even convince himself he’s fine, that it didn’t mean anything, and that in the end Jake chose to keep risking the wellbeing of the whole planet rather than kill him. Jake valued Spider’s life over all of Pandora. Spider believes it.
It warms and comforts him and makes him feel like a real Sully. But at night, when he’s trying to sleep, the thoughts circle his brain like a pack of viperwolves.
He can’t ignore that Jake would never have considered sacrificing one of his own kids.
He can’t ignore that while Neytiri came to rescue Jake, Spider had to escape captivity himself and hitch a ride with them. He knew they wouldn’t have broken him out of there, just like they didn’t the last time.
He’s alive purely by his own guts and self determination, and secondly by Jake’s own guilt. For it was guilt that stayed Jake’s hand upon that rock. It wasn’t love - not the kind that the rest of the Sullys shared.
He tried so hard to ignore the thoughts, pushing them away night after night, hating the feelings of utter despair they evoked, but worse… the anger. He could still feel Jake’s knife against his throat, could never forget the way he told Spider to kneel. To be quiet. To face forward.
Why?
Spider knew it was a desperate situation, that Jake did love him somehow. But it… it wasn’t enough. And the hurt only swelled as time went on. As he watched Jake interacting with Tuk, with Kiri, who wasn’t even his biological kid. And he knew. He knew he wasn’t enough and never would be.
Then in the dawn the morning light was enough to vanquish the thoughts for a few hours, to remind him that Kiri had chosen him, that Eywa had accepted him, that he finally had everything he’d wanted. And he was able to push away those thoughts to deal with once the sun set again.
Spider who as a kid would kick and scream until he was allowed to sleep in one of the link units with the prayer that he would wake up with an avatar.
Spider who as a kid would sneak out at night to sleep under the tree of voices because he wanted so badly for Eywa to hear him and give him the right body.
Spider who as kid let his mask go completely depleted before changing it because it just reminded him of how different he is to his people.
Spider who when he first entered the water without his mask completely forgot and found out real quick what sea water to the lungs feels like.
Spider who still hits his face against things because there is no longer a barrier between him and the world.
Spider who bites everything just because he can now.
Spider who sometimes has moments where he forgets and panics when he doesn't have a mask on.
Summary: You braid Kiri’s hair in the quiet of the morning.
fluff
Masterlist
Taglist : @coconuthoneyandjaguars
PS.: I went a bit overboard with this one it was supposed to just be a moment with Kiri but it escalated hahaha
The mornings in the new camp never smell the way Hometree must have smelled.
You know this, though you never say it aloud, because there are some losses that become cruel when named too often. The People have made shelter among other giant trees, with woven platforms, screens of leaves, arched roots used as pathways, and every skill the Omaticaya have ever possessed turned toward survival. It is beautiful in the way all Na’vi work is beautiful, because their hands do not know how to make anything without reverence. But it is not the same. Sometimes, before dawn, when the mist still hangs low and the forest is quiet enough that the insects sound like distant breathing, you can feel the absence of the old place like another body moving through camp with all of you. It lingers in the pauses between voices. It lives in the way Mo’at sometimes falls silent while looking at nothing. It rests in the way Neytiri’s eyes still sharpen when firelight catches wood the wrong way. Home was not only shelter. Home had roots, memory, songs pressed into its walls, children’s laughter caught in the bark, and dead who were still loved in every corner of it.
So the new camp had grown carefully, stubbornly, as if everyone were refusing to let grief become the only thing left. Platforms had been braided strong enough for sleeping. Cooking places had been set apart from the children’s games. There were racks for drying fish, storage hollows for herbs and fiber, shaded places where babies could be nursed while the elders worked nearby. Jake had helped as best he could in his own ungraceful way, learning where brute strength was useful and where it only got underfoot. Neytiri had moved through the building of it all with the certainty of someone born from the forest itself, fierce and tireless, though you knew the exhaustion beneath it. And you had found your place between them, sometimes with a knife shaping stakes, sometimes with a basket at your hip, sometimes with one child balanced against your side while another tugged your hand, your life so full now that it astonished you even in its weariness.
This morning the air is mild and damp, touched by the sweetness of crushed leaves and the faint mineral smell of the stream below the rise. Light filters through layers of green overhead, broken into thin shafts that move slowly across the woven floor beneath you. Kiri sits between your knees with solemn patience that is not true patience at all, because she is seven and seven-year-olds are rivers pretending to be stones. Her back is to your chest. Her hair, black and soft and unruly from sleep, spills over your hands in a dark curtain. You have already separated the first sections, smoothing them gently with wet fingers, and now you work them into neat braids with practiced care while she tries very hard not to fidget.
“Do not move” you murmur, leaning close enough that your voice brushes the shell of her ear. “If you keep turning your head, I will braid your thoughts into knots too.”
Kiri huffs in a way that is almost a laugh. “You cannot braid thoughts.”
“I am very skilled” you tell her, dead serious. “Ask your father and mother. They fear me.”
That earns the laugh you wanted. It is small at first, then brighter, and her shoulders relax under your hands. You keep braiding. The rhythm of it is soothing, over and under, tightening and smoothing, fingers learning the language of care without thought. There are many kinds of mothering, you have learned. Some are fierce and blood-fast and ready to bare teeth. Some are quieter. A bowl set down before a child can ask. A palm pressed to a hot forehead. A story told in the dark. Hair parted and gathered with patience before the day begins.
Below, the camp is waking in layers. Someone calls for more water. Someone else laughs near the cookfire. A baby lets out a sharp offended cry and is immediately soothed. The sounds float upward around you until they become part of the forest itself. Kiri tilts her face toward the morning light, eyes half-lidded, and for a moment you do nothing but hold a length of her hair and look at her profile. She is one of those children who seem to belong to two worlds even while she sits perfectly still in one. There is Grace in the shape of her mouth when she is thinking. There is Grace in the watchfulness, too, that quick inward turn before she speaks. But there is also something entirely herself, something older than either bloodline, some strange spark that has always felt as though Eywa placed it there with particular care.
“I'm going to think you have become a root” you say at last. “So still and quiet.”
Kiri opens one eye. “I am listening.”
“To what?”
She tips her head, considering. “Everything.”
You smile despite yourself. “Your mother says that too.”
“She says it differently.”
“That is because your mother says everything as if she is giving orders to the sky.”
Kiri laughs again, and then the laughter fades into thoughtfulness with the swiftness only children manage. You feel it before she speaks, the way her body goes a little inward, the way her shoulders lose their loose easy weight. Your hands slow without stopping. The braid grows steadily beneath your fingers.
“Did you know her very well?” she asks.
You do not need to ask who she means. With Kiri, sometimes the name comes first and sometimes it does not. Either way it is always there. She means Grace
“Yes” you answer softly. “I did.”
There is a long pause after that, but not an empty one. Kiri has never asked her questions carelessly. She circles them the way one might circle a sleeping animal, curious and gentle and afraid to do harm. When she was smaller, she asked in fragments. Is that her picture. Did she sing. Did she like the forest. Now, at seven, her thoughts have lengthened. They reach farther. They want answers that can hold shape.
“What was she like?” Kiri asks at last.
You draw the braid over her shoulder and begin another. “Brilliant,” you say first, because that is the truest and easiest word. “Brilliant in the kind of way that makes a room feel too small for a person. She noticed everything. Plants, patterns, mistakes, lies, possibilities. She could look at something for one moment and understand more than most people do in a whole day. Sometimes it was annoying.”
Kiri turns slightly, and you click your tongue.
“I am listening” she protests.
“You can listen facing forward.”
She obeys, though only after a dramatic sigh. You gather another section of hair and continue. “She was sharp, too. Her mouth could cut if she wanted it to. Especially when people were foolish, which, to her mind, was often. And she was stubborn. Very stubborn. If Grace believed something mattered, there was no moving her from it. Not with rank, not with fear, not with manners.”
Kiri is quiet, absorbing each word as if it has weight. “Was she kind?”
The question catches at something inside you, because kindness is never as simple as children deserve it to be. You lower your chin briefly to the crown of her head before lifting it again.
“Yes” you say. “But not always in soft ways. She did not know how to make herself sweet for the comfort of others. She was impatient. She was rude when she thought people had earned it. She could seem cold if you did not know where to look. But she cared very, very deeply. That was the trouble of her. Everything reached her, even when she tried to pretend otherwise.”
You think of Grace in the lab as she once was, voice clipped and eyes tired, cigarette in hand, standing among lab tests and broken hope. You think of the bullet scars that never really left the story of her. You think of her bond with Neytiri and Sylwanin, the way the school mattered, the way grief sharpened rather than emptied her.
“She loved your mother” you add. “Not the way me or your father loves her. But deeply. She respected Neytiri. Admired her. And before everything broke, before the school was lost, she loved teaching the children here. That mattered to her more than she admitted.”
Kiri’s voice is smaller when she speaks again. “Did she love me?”
The braid stills in your hands.
There are questions children ask because they are curious, and questions children ask because somewhere inside them they are standing barefoot before a closed door. This is the second kind. You can hear it in the careful way she shapes the words, as if she already fears the answer might slip and wound her.
You lay the unfinished braid against her shoulder and wrap your arms around her from behind, not tightly, just enough for her to feel the truth of your presence. Her small hands come up over your forearms without thinking. The morning sounds continue below you, blessedly ordinary.
“Yes” you say, and there is no hesitation in it. “Yes, baby. She did.”
Kiri’s fingers curl a little harder around your arm. “But she was asleep.”
“She was” you agree. “And she was gone before she could raise you herself. But love does not begin only after a child is grown enough to remember it. Sometimes it begins before breath, before names, before anyone else can see it clearly. She wanted life. She wanted understanding. She wanted wonder. And you…” You smile against the side of Kiri’s head. “You are full of all the things she reached toward.”
Kiri is quiet for so long you wonder if she will speak again. Then, in a very careful voice, she says “Sometimes I think maybe she is far away. And sometimes I think maybe she is not.”
You close your eyes for a beat.
The Omaticaya do not speak of the dead the way humans do. Even the word gone is not always the right one. Voices remain in Eywa, memory remains, energy is borrowed and returned, and death is not emptiness so much as change. You have lived among that truth long enough that it no longer feels like translation. Still, this is Kiri, and she deserves gentleness before philosophy.
“I think” you say slowly “that there are many kinds of nearness. She is not here the way I am here, with hands and breath and bad jokes. But she is not nothing. Not nowhere. Eywa keeps what is loved. The People have always known this. Your mother knows it. Your grandmother knows it. And I…” You press a kiss to her temple. “I believe Grace is not lost.”
Kiri turns her face just enough that you can see one eye, bright and uncertain. “Do you really?”
“I do.”
“Even if she was a sky person?”
A soft laugh leaves you, more sad than amused. “Especially then. Grace spent so much of her life trying to understand this world well enough to deserve it. She did not always succeed. No one always succeeds. But she loved Pandora. She loved the People here. She gave her heart long before she meant to.” You reach up and smooth a flyaway strand from Kiri’s forehead. “And Eywa is not so small as to reject love because it came from the sky.”
Kiri seems to think that over with her whole body. You can almost feel the wheels turning in her, the connections making themselves, the quiet private reasoning that reminds you of Grace so strongly it aches. Then she asks “Were you friends right away?”
You snort softly. “No.”
That surprises her enough to make her fully turn before you can stop her, and you catch her chin lightly in your hand.
“You wish to go into the day with one side braided and the other wild?” you ask.
She grins, guilty and unrepentant. “Maybe.”
“You are impossible.”
“You love me.”
“That is true” you admit, and guide her back around.
You separate the next section of hair with more deliberate care, buying time while memory settles. “Grace did not become friends with people right away. Grace examined them first, as if she expected everyone to fail some test she had not told them about. The first time we really spoke for longer than a few words, I thought she disliked me. The second time, I was sure of it. The third time, she insulted me so specifically that I realized she had in fact been paying attention to everything I said. After that, we got along better.”
Kiri giggles. “What did she say?”
“That I had an admirable ability to ask intelligent questions in the most irritating way possible.”
Kiri laughs harder now, and you let her, because it is good to hear. “That sounds mean.”
“It was not mean. It was Grace.” You smile, feeling the memory warm as you handle it. “She brought people close by pretending she was pushing them away. Not everyone understood that. I did, eventually.”
“Did she smile?”
“Yes. Not often the way some people do. Not because she was unhappy all the time. She simply did not waste expression. But when she smiled for real, it changed her whole face. Especially with children. Or when she was teaching. Or when someone surprised her in a way she admired.”
“Did she sing?”
You think, then shake your head even though Kiri cannot see it. “Not beautifully.”
Kiri makes a scandalized noise. “That is not kind.”
“It is true. She knew songs, but she was no singer. She liked other people’s voices better.” You tighten the braid with a gentle tug. “She liked listening, when she remembered to.”
“Did she know my father?”
“Yes” you say dryly. “Too well, probably.”
That earns another laugh. The heaviness in her has eased a little, enough that the question can breathe without crushing her. You continue before she can spiral back into sadness.
“She and your father fought with words very well. They annoyed each other. They respected each other. Sometimes those are not such different things. And your mother…” You pause, choosing with care. “Your mother had reason not to trust humans. Grace knew that. But she also knew Neytiri had strength and clarity that should never be dismissed. There was history there. Pain too. But there was real regard.”
You do not speak Sylwanin’s name immediately. The dead must not be dragged through conversation carelessly. Still, Kiri already knows enough to sense the shape of that silence.
“And her sister?” Kiri asks quietly. “Mother’s sister.”
You look down over her shoulder, into the camp beyond. A boy runs past with a fishing spear too large for him, and somewhere someone shouts his name. A woman carrying woven baskets balances them on one hip as easily as breath. Life keeps moving. It always does. The dead must be spoken of from within that movement, not outside it.
“Grace cared for her too” you say at last. “Sylwanin and Neytiri were very important to her. The school mattered because the children mattered. That loss never left Grace. Not really. Some sorrows become part of the bones. They do not disappear just because years pass.”
Kiri nods slowly. “Mother still gets sad.”
“Yes.”
“She gets angry too.”
“Yes.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.” Your answer comes quickly, firmly. “No, ma yawne. Grief is not bad. Anger is not always bad either. Sometimes it is the shape love takes when something precious has been harmed.”
That seems to settle into her in a place deeper than the earlier answers did. Her shoulders drop. You finish the second braid, then begin weaving the smaller beaded ties into place, your fingers moving with slow precision. For a while neither of you speaks. The silence is soft, companionable. A green lizard-like creature darts across the bark above and vanishes into moss. Wind stirs the leaves. Sunlight inches farther over the platform.
Then Kiri says, almost shyly “Do you think she would have liked me?”
You laugh under your breath, unable to help it. “She would have adored you.”
Kiri goes completely still. “Really?”
“Yes. You would have driven her to distraction. You would have asked too many impossible questions. You would have followed her into every place she meant to work in peace. You would have touched things she had just organized. You would have listened when she forgot to simplify. You would have stared at her until she explained things a second time.”
Kiri’s face slowly blooms into a smile.
“And” you add, tapping the end of one braid “she would have pretended you were a nuisance while making sure you had eaten and slept and not walked barefoot somewhere dangerous. She would have been terrible at softness and perfect at devotion.”
Kiri tips her head back enough to look up at you. Her eyes are bright now, no longer wet, but full of feeling. “Like you?”
The question catches you off guard so cleanly that for a heartbeat you cannot answer. Then warmth moves through you, low and aching and almost too large for your chest.
“Sometimes” you say softly. “A little.”
She turns and throws her arms around your neck so quickly that you nearly lose the bead string in your hand. You laugh and hold her, one arm around her narrow shoulders, the other bracing against the platform. Her braids brush your wrist. Her cheek presses under your jaw. She is still more child than anything else, all long limbs yet to come, but there is something steady in the way she clings to you now. Not desperation. Trust.
“I am glad you knew her” she whispers.
You close your eyes and kiss the side of her head. “So am I.”
Below you, someone calls Kiri’s name in a sing-song voice that can only belong to Lo’ak. Another voice answers with even less patience, which means Neteyam is with him. A moment later there comes the unmistakable sound of Spider laughing at something he absolutely should not be laughing at. Kiri pulls back enough to grin.
“They found something” she says.
“That usually means trouble.”
“It could mean something good.”
“With those three?” You arch a brow. “I admire your hope.”
She scrambles up before you can catch her, then freezes when she remembers her hair and touches one braid with delight. “It is pretty.”
“Of course it is pretty. I made it.”
Kiri beams, then leans down and presses a quick kiss to your cheek with the absolute, thoughtless affection children offer when they feel safe. She is halfway to the ladder before you call her back just long enough to straighten one bead and smooth the crown of her hair. Only then do you let her go.
She disappears downward in a rush of limbs and eager energy, calling out to her brothers before her feet even hit the lower platform. You rise more slowly, stretching the ache from your back, and move to the edge to look down. The camp below is fully awake now. Neteyam stands with all the put-upon dignity of an eldest child trying not to be dragged into chaos while already being dragged into it. Lo’ak is barefoot and animated, explaining something with both hands and almost certainly making it sound grander than it is. Spider is beside him, hair wild, face bright, balanced like he was born to move through this place despite the difference of his body. Kiri joins them in an instant, and the boys all stop long enough to look at her hair.
Lo’ak says something you cannot hear. Kiri swats at him. Spider grins. Neteyam, ever wise enough to choose survival, appears to say the appropriate admiring thing.
Then Jake arrives.
He comes up from the lower paths carrying a bundle of cut wood over one shoulder like it weighs nothing, broad and loose-limbed and warm with sweat and morning. Even from above, there is something in him that always reads as momentum barely contained. He looks up when Lo’ak points, and his expression changes the way it always does when he sees the children gathered together. Softer first. Then amused. Then mock suspicion, because experience has taught him caution.
“What’s going on here?” he calls.
You hear the answer in fragments.
“Nothing.”
“Kiri’s hair.”
“It was Spider’s idea.”
“It was not!”
Jake looks up toward you then, one hand lifting to shade his eyes through the leaves. When he spots you above, his mouth curves. The look is brief, easy, full of the quiet familiarity that still sometimes leaves you reeling when you let yourself feel it fully. There had been a time when all of this was impossible. Now his gaze finds you as naturally as breath.
“You’re responsible for this?” he calls.
“For which part?” you call back. “The hair or the trouble?”
His laugh drifts up through the branches. “Both, probably.”
Neytiri appears not long after, moving along the root-path with a basket on her back and a knife at her hip, beautiful and intent as the forest itself. The children notice her at once and reassemble into something closer to order, though only barely. Her eyes go first to Kiri. They always do, in that quick counting way mothers have, checking for cuts, dirt, mystery bruises, invisible hurts. When she sees the braids, she stops.
For one small moment her face is unreadable. Then she looks up at you.
There is no need for words. You know what passes there. Gratitude, yes. Affection too. But also the old thing beneath both of them, the shared understanding that family is not a simple line. It is chosen and fought for and woven together again and again. Neytiri had lost much before this life was built. So had you. So had Jake. The children did not erase those losses. They made meaning in spite of them.
Neytiri touches Kiri’s braid, says something low to her, and Kiri all but glows under the praise. Lo’ak immediately demands to know why his hair is never adorned with beads. Neteyam, to his credit, looks offended on Lo’ak’s behalf for perhaps half a second before losing the battle against laughter. Spider says he could also use beads if anyone cared about fairness. Jake declares he wants beads too, which earns him a look from Neytiri so dry it should turn him to dust.
You laugh aloud then, unable not to, and climb down to them.
The children converge before your feet even reach the lower platform. Lo’ak is talking before you stand fully upright. Spider has clearly found some object he means to present as treasure. Neteyam is trying and failing to impose order. Kiri slips under your arm as if that place has always belonged to her. Jake sets the wood down and leans into your side for the briefest touch, shoulder to shoulder. Neytiri comes to your other side a moment later, close enough that her arm brushes yours. Around you the children surge and argue and laugh and demand.
“Show her” Spider insists.
“No, tell her.”
“No, let me—”
Neytiri’s hand comes to rest briefly at the small of your back as she peers past the children. “What have they done now?”
“Nothing bad” Kiri says immediately, which is the least convincing sentence ever spoken.
You look from one bright face to another, at Spider’s badly hidden excitement, at Lo’ak’s inability to stand still, at Neteyam’s reluctant amusement, at Kiri half tucked against your hip with her fresh braids and searching eyes. And then you look beyond them, just for a breath, into the forest. The light has grown fuller now. Leaves whisper overhead. Somewhere far off, water moves over stone. The camp is not Hometree. It never will be. Some absences do not close. Some names still ache when touched. Grace is still gone in the way that matters most to a child. Sylwanin is still gone. Much was lost and cannot be returned.
But here, in the living center of the morning, with Jake warm at one side and Neytiri steady at the other, with children pressing close in all their untidy noise and need, you feel the shape of something no fire managed to take. Not just survival. Not just duty. Something gentler and harder won.
A family, imperfect and mended and still growing.
You bend toward the children with a grin you cannot hide. “Very well” you say. “Show me.”
And because they are children, because grief never wholly defeats the young, because love keeps making room for itself, they do.
