Ivory Hill had spent the majority of her adult life running. Throughout her twenties and the first part of her thirties it was from bombs and bullets. Now, at thirty six years old Ivory was running from something that she could never truly escape fr...
"Huh?" Grace jerked awake, almost knocking Tigger out of the bed. She grabbed her phone from the bedside table, the screen lighting up to show a picture that she had taken of Ivy cuddling Tigger. "It's two in the fucking morning!" She whisper-shouted.
The redhead was suddenly fully alert. "Seriously?"
"Yes."
Grace couldn't help but grin. "Oh, thank god." She shook her curls out of her eyes.
"Jake wants me to go with him and explain it to the Na'vi. He's been gathering them. It's not just the Omaticaya clan any more." Ivory rubbed a thumb over the engravings on her dog tags.
"I can come with you if you want."
"Going through a link when you've been shot is to risky." Ivory said flatly.
"I did it last time."
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Ivory stood at the edge of the clearing. She watched as Grace, in her Avatar, approached the Na'vi children. They immediately crowded round her, all talking at once. The children tugged on the hem of Grace's scarlet Stanford T-shirt and tried to catch hold of the skinny plaits that hung down by her ears. Grace crouched down and pulled the kids closest to her into a hug. Her green eyes filled with warmth as she spoke to the Na'vi in their native tongue.
Ivory undid her scarlet bandana and knotted it again to give herself something to do with her hands, trying to keep out of the children's way. Although none of the children were even half her age they still towered above her. Their giant blue hands could have circled Ivory's body twice.
"Ivy?" Grace asked suddenly, looking up from a woven doll that one of the children had pushed into her hands.
"Yeah?"
"Jake's waiting for you." She gestured towards the group of adults that Jake was speaking to.
Ivory couldn't help but stare. She had forgotten how tall Jake's Avatar was but she was sure he hadn't been this tall the last time she had seen him. To Ivory he seemed even taller than the giants in the storybooks that Kiko had read to her as a child.
"Ivy? Go on, we don't have the luxury of time."
"Aren't you coming?"
Grace shook her head. "I'm staying here, someone needs to keep the kids distracted."
"But I don't speak Na'vi."
"Jake does. And I-" The woman broke off, her voice becoming weary. "I taught some of them English in the school."
"Ah." Ivory let out a long, slow breath then went to join Jake.
In spite of things the man turned around and grinned. "Took you long enough."
"My legs aren't three feet long like yours are."
Jake looked down at his blue feet. "Point taken." He turned to the rest of the group and said something in Na'vi.
One of the women tapped Ivory on the shoulder with an enormous blue hand, almost knocking her into the dirt by mistake. "Aynga pn srung n nivi?"
Ivory struggled to remember the gobbets of Na'vi that she had heard Norm and Grace teaching to Jake. "What?"
"You will... help defend... us?" The woman asked in broken English.
Ivory nodded. "We will." She pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket. "What's your name?"
"Tsawke."
"This is the battle plan." She pushed the sheet of paper into Tsawke's hands. The large sheet of paper looked like a pocket diary compared to Tsawke.
"Pehem po ral?" Tsawke called to Jake.
Jake, who had been explaining things to the rest of the Na'vi broke off and came over. "Tìhawnu fpi olo' sì e da nárìng."
Ivory looked mystified.
"I'm telling what's on the sheet." Jake explained.
"I really need to get a Na'vi lesson from Grace." Ivory sighed.
A/N: I read something once that said write when your life isn't going well and it'll make things seem better so this slew of updates is either going to help or give you a front seat to me slowly losing my mind, I'm not sure which yet 🤔 I need to stop treating author's notes like a diary
