Chapter Text
The foreign white sands seemed to sink under my weight as I dismounted my Ikran. One arm held my youngest daughter against my hip while the other gestured for my three eldest children to stand down and lower their guards. I felt the weariness and apprehension radiating off of them, and understood it, but knew more in the ways of diplomacy than I ever thought to pass on.
The people emerged from their dwellings in droves, peering out into the open sands at the new arrivals from beyond the horizon. Tuk began to stir in my arms as I hoisted her up higher. My legs threatened to buckle underneath my body with every suggested movement. I hadn’t stepped foot on solid land since we first disembarked from the forest floor. I couldn’t afford to.
A low hum rose from the curious silence as the people’s wonder turned to fear. Who were these people? Why have they come to us?
I threw my head in every direction, searching through the many faces for that of Tonowari, who met the sky people in battle alongside me many years ago. He of all people would understand our dire situation. My stomach churned when out of a thousand faces, all melted into a rippling sea of coral blue, none made any move to come forward. Instead, I began to take notice of the pointed spearheads prodding out of the makeshift barricade. They were arming themselves.
A commotion behind me made me whip my head around just in time to catch Neteyam making a grab for the bow strapped to the saddle of his Ikran. “Tiftang,” I hissed. Stop it. If these people saw us as a threat in any capacity, it would be onto the next clan, then the next, and the next, until we came across someplace stupid enough to harbor five fugitives from the forest.
Neteyam met my eye and hesitated before lowering his arm helplessly to his side, a dejected look quickly masking the curiosity that I detected in him immediately after landing. Just as soon as the whispers ceased, they returned tenfold. When I looked back down the beach, it didn’t take long to establish why.
A single figure emerged from the wall of defensive clanspeople, stepping across the platform of pliant sand as if it were a marble runway. It was effortless in a way that should have made me uneasy but instead inspired a rush similar to adrenaline in my cold and wind-beaten body.
The very first thing I noticed was the flowing white cloth draped over your waist — a type of fabric I would have assumed was cotton back on Earth, but on Pandora, I couldn’t be too sure. A long slit ran all the way to your outer thigh and billowed like a sail on the open sea. Strings of beaded pearls twisted around both your legs like thin aquatic vines, and when you grew closer, I would soon notice how similar beads had been woven into the hair framing your face.
I had never seen anything quite like you – on my native planet or this one.
Swallowing, I lowered a wriggling Tuk to the sands where she quickly disappeared behind her sister. I intended to meet you in the middle of the small peninsula, but as soon as I found the strength to move, you had already come within a few feet of where we landed.
There was something so regal in the way you composed yourself, with a sense of majesty that commanded the attention of all those around you, including myself. Anyone could have whispered in my ear just then and told me you were something ethereal — something larger than life — and I would have had no choice but to believe them.
I immediately moved to make myself smaller, afraid of coming off as too imposing. Before I earned the respect of the Omaticaya, I was the oaf, the fool who didn’t consider his own size before running blindly into conflict. I refused to inherit that same legacy here.
Touching two fingers against my temple, I brought them down in a wide arch away from my body. “Oel ngati kameie.” I see you.
Boy, did I ever.
You met my display with a bow of your own, bringing two fingers to the space between your eyes. Your wrist was cluttered with bracelets woven from strong green fibers and I studied you shamelessly, assuming your eyes were closed when in reality, you were studying me back beneath your curtain of long eyelashes.
⥼ ❋ ⥽
You heard them well before you ever saw them — the mighty flying beasts whose wings beat up the waters flying low over the edge of the reef. You were raised on stories of the Ikran and of the Toruk who ruled over them in the forest regions. But more often, you were ensnared by tales of Toruk Makto who fought alongside your father in the war against the sky people — those who hunted your tulkun siblings over the horizon.
You were barely able to hold your own in those times of great sorrow, buried in your studies as you learned the ways of the Tsahìk – the role you were blessed to one day inherit from your mother. You long outgrew the audience of the village storyteller, but you had to have been blind not to recognize who now stood in your presence, bowed to offer you his deepest respects.
“Oel ngati kameie,” he spoke, voice low and tinted with a guttural edge. His eyes, a startling yellow that rivaled the burnfibers that grew in the underbrush around the clan border, moved not once from yours.
Your face began to burn from the heat of his gaze – evaporating whatever seawater still lingered on your cheeks from your morning swim. A man who not once in his life reduced himself to beg was now pleading before you, empty hand still outstretched as if for you to take.
In an attempt to hide the effect he was having on you, you quickly moved to fulfill your end of the gesture by touching your own two fingers to your temple. It was only polite by way of your people. Before you could part your lips and repeat his own words back to him, however, you heard furious footfalls upon the sand and staggered backward as your brother Ao’nung appeared out of nowhere and drew you close behind him.
“We have no peace with these forest people,” he seethed, turning back to glower at you before glaring straight forward at your unexpected guests. You were six cycles his elder, but no one would ever guess it by how closely he mirrored your father in both leadership and combat. Despite this, Ao’nung was undeniably a child; a child who did not yet wield the power of clan leader.
Your brother had far to go in his studies, but if he were to become Olo’eyktan one day like he so planned, the village was better for it.
You watched as Toruk Makto — Jake’sully — drew his ears flat against his head like a wounded animal. Only then did he finally drop his hand and a wave of regret washed through you for not showing him his owed respect when you had the chance.
Planted all around him was a small army of children, all cowering at his side. Two boys looked around Ao’nung’s age, or close. Beside them, bearing no signs of fear, only weariness, a girl with choppy black hair who reminded you very little of your sister stood before an even smaller child who was too far hidden behind the others for you to see clearly.
“That is Toruk Makto,” you whispered in warning, placing a hand on your brother’s shoulder. He huffed at your display of seniority but did not back down. “Ao’nung.”
“His title makes no difference to me,” he scoffed. “Outsiders are unwelcome.”
Pursing your lips, you stepped back. “Where is father?”
Any efforts you could have made to remedy the situation proved to be in vain as both your parents surfaced from the flood of villagers standing at the shoreline. Neither of them looked as forgiving as you might have hoped to be.
You could stand up to either of your siblings in a heartbeat, and you’ve done it a thousand times before, but both you and your brother knew better than to test them. Especially now, when human gunfire could be heard over the horizon in the deadly stillness of night.
Stepping aside, you allowed the Olo’eyktan and Tsahìk past so they could cast their own judgment upon the forest refugees.
⥼ ❋ ⥽
There was a flurry of mixed reactions when Tonowari announced to his people that my family and I would be allowed into the village. More whispers, which were expected, but no thunderous applause. Definitely no applause.
The Metkayina looked down upon us like one would look upon a child struggling to stand, but with pity where hope should have been found. I could only swallow the last of my shame and give all the thanks I could muster.
“Dad?” Tuk tugged on my tunic, wet with ocean spray and sweat from several days’ travel. I lifted her once again over my hip, using my free hand to unhook the leather satchel that hung from the saddle of my Ikran. Kiri and the boys watched me closely, waiting for the go-ahead to do anything but stand there rigidly.
I nodded toward their Ikran. All three had been locked in a conversation entirely their own, comprised of clicks and caws I couldn’t even begin to understand. Not like Kiri miraculously could. “Get your things,” I commanded. No time to sit around and sunbathe. Not while Ronal could easily whip her head back around and overpower her mate’s decision to allow us refuge, sending us right back out into open seas with nothing but the last of our rations and a week’s worth of exhaustion.
They snapped to it immediately, grabbing the netted sacks that held the last remaining fragments of their previous lives and dismissing their Ikrans to the skies. I followed suit before turning to face the village, our home for the foreseeable future, for a final time.
Everyone else had long since wandered off, returning to their duties just as Tonowari ordered. Those that remained sprinkled across the sands were doing a half-assed job of pretending there weren’t five foreign faces walking amongst them. They watched from the shadows of their straw buildings, or from underneath the surface of their crystal clear waters.
But you?
You were standing right where I left you, hands clutched together in front of your body with a gentle smile pulling at your lips. I tried not to replay your first impression of me in my head for fear of ruining a second. I see you, I repeated to myself in the furthest reaches of my mind. I see you, I see you, I see you.
“May the great mother look upon our meeting with favor,” you beamed like you had been waiting your entire life to roll out the welcome wagon. Considering the clan’s attitude toward outsiders, this was likely the case. “I will show you to our village. May I?”
The last of your words were directed solely to Neteyam, who was struggling to haul both his and Kiri’s luggage over his arm. He froze instantly in the presence of your warm smile and did nothing to deny you as you stepped forward and took his bag into your hands.
You made a point to greet each of the children with a welcoming smile, even going as far as to offer Tuk a private giggle before meeting my gaze with a neutral, diplomatic air. “Right this way, please.”
A true leader in the making.
If I stopped to ponder it long enough, I could force myself to remember you. In my first tour of the neighboring clans, when Toruk Makto was called upon to unite them against the sky people, you had been there. Hidden behind Ronal, I remember your eyes as clear as day. They were your father’s eyes, though brighter and filled with hope rather than wise resignation.
When your back was turned, I watched my eldest son gulp and shift his remaining bag higher over his shoulder. Lo’ak snorted and socked him roughly in the arm before taking off after his sisters, who hounded close behind your retreating figure as if it was a beacon in the dark.