Like A Dream

Prologue

The planet in his dreams was beautiful, much more pleasing than his own dying world.

There was green everywhere, green trees and green grass and greengreengreengreengreengree-

Blue.

In the beginning, there were only flashes of the blue. A blue arm here, a blue hand there. A flat, blue nose, and a pointed blue ear that flicked in any and every direction when a noise occurred. A long braid, tight enough to stay but loose enough so that it didn't damage what it was protecting.

What was it protecting? Harry didn't know, but in reality, he really didn't care. As long as this beautiful creature continued to stay protected, then Harry would continue to enjoy whatever he could.

As he grew, the flashes in his dreams eventually turned into full images. Smiling faces of children that Harry didn't know, but did all at the same time, were frequent. An older boy, Arvok, and two girls, Neytiri and her older sister Sylwanin. He called them brother and sisters in a language that Harry didn't know but understood all the same.

And they called him Brother and Tsu'tey, and then he knew that day, when he woke up, that Tsu'tey meant something to him. It was still uncertain, but fourteen-year-old Harry couldn't help but take comfort in the familiarity of it all, even though it felt like he was wearing someone else's skin during his dreams.

One day, when Harry was sixteen, Tsu'tey and Neytiri were at a school that Harry had often seen in his dreams. Tsu'tey never did trust the uniltìranyu, and even though Harry knew that Grace Augustine and her cohorts were there to learn and teach, he couldn't help but trust them either. Not in the way that Neytiri always seemed to. Sylwanin, just like Tsu'tey and Harry, couldn't come to trust either.

Apparently, her mistrust extended further than Tsu'tey, Eytukan, or Mo'at could have ever anticipated, and Harry woke up screaming after Tsu'tey had been caught in the crossfires of a shoot out between the taronyu and what Grace had once called the RDA.

The next day, Harry found out that Sylwanin had been amongst the taronyu at the school, the same group that had apparently attacked one of the dozers the RDA had sent out earlier. She did not make it out alive, and Olo'eyktan had declared war on the vrrtep and the uniltìranyu.

But, that was a challenge for another day.

And so, during the day, Harry lived out his days locked inside an orphanage in London, terrorized by Dudley and Piers, two older kids, and the Matron, Petunia. Sometimes, on more occasions than Harry liked to think about, Petunia and her off an on fling with the military man, Vernon, that came around the orphanage to 'check on supplies', would encourage Dudley's games to the point of actual, physical violence.

One such incident, days away from Harry's eighteenth birthday and subsequent escape from that hell hole, Dudley and Piers nearly succeeded in ridding Harry of not only his right leg, but also the pinkie fingers on both of his hands. Whatever the two boys didn't tear off with their inventive use of 2000s beartraps mixed with a more modern hunting style, the doctors' had to rid themselves.

Harry woke up four months later, eighteen years old and a few appendages short, but fucking alive and with a doctor's rec to never have to go back.

On the first night he slept, actually slept and not drugged out of his fucking mind, Harry nearly cried at the sight of Neytiri.
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The first time he had dreamed of this planet, he wanted to recoil.

The air stunk, the sky was always grey, the ground was always wet, and he was so short.

He saw pale faces everywhere he went. Pale faces that looked at him with something that Tsu'tey could only describe as disdain. No compassion could be found in this dark and grey place, and Tsu'tey couldn't help but wish that Eywa would have mercy on this world and destroy it.

The people called him demon, a word that he knew in a language he knew but didn't know why he knew it, and it took many cycles before he figured out that his name here, or rather, this body's name was Had'rian, but the karyu calls him Ha'ri and Tsu'tey supposed that both names sounded better than GraceAugustine, the karyu at the school Neytiri always insists on dragging him to.

When Had'rian was twelve cycles and Tsu'tey fourteen, Tsu'tey went to Tsahik, hoping that maybe Ewya knew why he was seeing visions of this pale face vrrtep planet. Why he was seeing through the eyes of another like the uniltìranyu, like GraceAugustine and her uniltìranyu vrrtep.

He didn't get any answers, none from the Mother anyway. Had'rian, when Tsu'tey eventually fell asleep that night, attempted communication for the first time. Still bitter and hurt from Sylwanin's death at the hands of those kewong, Tsu'tey would continue to ignore every attempt for over a cycle and a half, only finally answering after his sixteenth cycle when he realized that Had'rian would continue to talk to Tsu'tey because Had'rian had no one else.

And then, on the eve of his twentieth cycle, Tsu'tey's dreams went cold and black, and his unil za’ärìp appeared to be kerusey, and for the first time since Sylwanin's own death, Tsu'tey felt truly lost.

And then, for almost half of a cycle, Tsu'tey walked through Kelutral, feeling unsteady and looking like a lost and uncultured uniltìranyu until finally, Tsu'tey fell asleep.

And woke up again with his unil za’ärìp.
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Not too long of a prologue for you guys yet, but I am hoping that I have hyper-fixated on Avatar again to the point that I can give you a new take on Extraterrestrial Attraction. I know that many of you have been wanting a sequel to that story, but just like James Cameron himself once said about his movie, it was never really meant to have a sequel. At the time, I tried to take on too much all at once, so this is my apology!

Words:

Karyu: Teacher
Kelutral: Hometree
Kewong: Aliens
uniltìranyu: Dreamwalker
Unil za’ärìp: Dream Pull
Vrrtep: Demon
Kerusey: Dead
Tsahik: Na'vi Spiritual Leader
Eywa:  Na'vi All-Mother