Na'vi...A Tsu'tey FF

Log Entry: 10

The next morning, Jake looked refreshed and ready to link again. Nyami was proud of her plan. Tsu'tey questioned her as to why she never woke up. She answered with that in her other form, she wasn't allowed to sleep to take care of Jake. Tsu'tey looked down, almost regretting asking.

Tsu'tey and Nyami move through the night forest, surrounded by galaxies of shimmering bioluminescence. They move gracefully, soundlessly, as two forest spirits. The pupils of Nyami's cat eyes dilated. The night forest floods her brain with its million bio-sources. Nyami and Tsu'tey were bow-fishing from a dugout canoe over huge glowing anemones at the bottom of a pool. A large fish swims silhouetted against the pastel glow. Nyami drills one. She holds up the fish, triumphantly. Tsu'tey nods at her with a smile. Tsu'tey was more so watching Nyami fish, rather than fishing himself. He watched as she apologized to the fish in Na'vi, as she continued to do with the 4 other fish she caught.

Tsu'tey stands close behind Nyami, adjusting her position as she draws her bow. Only now his hands are slow, and gentle as they move on her arms and shoulders. Aware of his touch, Nyami's focus was broken. Their eyes meet, but he pulls away quickly. Tsu'tey nods at her form and then gestures for her to take aim. That was another thing they had been practicing. Guns weren't like bows. Bowes were more free, and required more focus. It required a thought or two before releasing. Guns weren't so merciless. It was too easy to kill with a gun.

They entered a clearing in the night forest filled with chest-high ferns. Tsu'tey signals her to move slowly. They approach a creature on one of the ferns. An ugly, stick-like lizard-thing perched on a frond. As Nyami approached the thing, she stepped on a branch accidentally. A long spine whips in a circle, unfurling a bioluminescent membrane, a disk a meter across, opening like a Chinese fan. It flies off, a living Frisbee. Nyami laughed silently to herself at the joke she thought of. Tsu'tey watched her closely. The fan lizard floats across the clearing. Tsu'tey plunges among the ferns with a sharp cry. He knew there would be more lizards and he wanted Nyami's expression. An explosion of color as dozens of fan lizards take flight. Grinning widely, she hops into the ferns around like a little girl, until they are all flying. And for the first time, she is unguarded and joyful, unapologetically herself with him.

Tsu'tey watches a little ways away as Nyami silently draws her bow. Her eyes focused in intense concentration. A beat and the arrow flies. Nyami rushes to the body and pulls the arrow from the twitching body of a hexapede. She dispatches it with her knife. She speaks gently and softly, but with feeling, in Na'vi.
"I See you Brother, and thank you. Your spirit goes with Eywa, your body stays behind to become part of the People."
Tsu'tey watches with approval. He approached her quietly and stood behind her.
"You are ready." Tsu'tey claims.

Tsu'tey leads three direhorse riders up the trail. Two teenage hunters and Nyami, who's riding perfectly and is able to keep up. The horses' hooves clop right next to a sheer drop into a misty canyon. Iknimaya translated roughly as stairway to heaven. It's the test every young hunter has to pass. Tsu'tey signals a stop. Up-slope ahead is an astounding formation. Thick vine-like trees have trapped large floating boulders of unobtanium in their gnarled grip. A hundred meters above them more boulders are woven into the twisted vine-trunks. This is some sort of freak natural occurrence, like the mythical beanstalk, going up into the clouds. There is a thundering roar, like an artillery barrage, and the ground shakes. Nyami looks around at one of the floating mountains grinding against the flank of a nearby mesa. A huge rockfall is set loose. The mountain is drifting toward them, filling half the sky. The Hunters dismount.

Nyami looks up at the beanstalk going into the clouds. She turns to Tsu'tey, who is checking the young hunters' gear. Most of the time she forgets that Tsu'tey was considered royalty to the Na'vi as the next clan leader. She treated him like she treated everyone else. He was teaching two other hunters while teaching her. She knew of them but had never met them. Nyami stood in the back, watching Tsu'tey give last minute advice to the other hunters. She admired his tone and posture while talking to them. He was tense and towered over them. She found him attractive in leader mode.

Nyami leaps to catch up with Tsu'tey and the hunters as they swarm up the base of the beanstalk. 200 meters up the beanstalk, the hunters nimbly climb along the vine-trunks. They clamber over one of the unobtanium boulders, which is lifting this incredible tree. Nyami looks down, the massive trunk dwindles to the size of a licorice stick. She smirks, loving being in the air. A chunk breaks off a boulder as she climbs over it, it floats upward. Her smirk falls and she focuses back on climbing. They reach the upper branches of the beanstalk. Above them, the craggy underbelly of mons veritatis looms. Spray from one of the waterfalls hits them. Some of the hanging vines are brushing over the upper branches of the beanstalk with a crackling hiss.

One by one the hunters grab onto vines as they pass. Nyami shrugs and leaps to a passing vine, her feet dangling over nothingness. They climb toward the floating islands above. Tiny figures cross a causeway of vines connecting a small island of unobtanium to the main mass of Mons Veritatis. Banshees circle next to the cliffs, flashing in shafts of sunlight. Waterfalls dissolve into nothingness below. A waterfall thunders down into the void like a faucet of the gods. Nyami looks down the sheer cliff at the world far below like a view from Olympus. A shriek and the sound of leathery wings. Tsu'tey leads them through the cave until they emerge onto a cliff face. And Nyami sees the banshee rookery. Hundreds of banshees huddle on rock outcroppings as far as the eye can see.

They cling to the walls with the fore-claws on their wings, or perch on ledges. Tsu'tey, despite his better thinking, makes Nyami go first.
"Nyami will go first." He hides his nerves well as he smirks at Nyami, a challenge in his eyes. The two teenage Hunters are scared but trying to act tough. Tsu'tey softly grips Nyami's arm as she goes to walk past him.
"Now you choose your ikran. This you must feel, inside. If she also chooses you, move quick, like I showed. You will have one chance." Tsu'tey whispered.
"How will I know if she chooses me?" Nyami asked.
"She will try to kill you." Tsu'tey gulped.
"Outstanding. I was really feeling death today." Out of sight of the other hunters, Tsu'tey takes her hand and squeezes it. Nyami feels a rush of emotion, but she breaks away like it didn't happen. She is on her own, on the ledge with the banshees. They eye her as she approaches.