I See You (N. Sully)

Chapter 5

With her hair braided, and Neteyam feeling more like a chaperone than a guide, Ahurewa felt more like a wandering traveller after her first morning there than anything else. Everything was still so unfamiliar to her, yet being around more Na'vi was refreshing. Anything that took her interest, she explored, Neteyam trailing behind her.

He hadn't wanted to force her to do anything or scare her back into how she was when she first woke up, so he remained quiet, observing her moves and only then noticing the very subtle difference in how she spoke, and the almost silent way she walked, the only sound coming from her newly acquired clothes. A small leather band wrapped around her chest, underneath the only item that she had held onto - the intricate floral wiring that Tuk had first noticed in the forest. Hanging off her waist were beaded strings, clicking together as she walked. Apart from the chest-piece, she was significantly more understated than what they had found her in - being away from her clan meant being away from their expectations and traditions, something Ahurewa couldn't enjoy fully. "You look good."

She looked up at him, not saying anything at first, hanging her old clothes outside of his family tent. They hadn't spoken much, considering they had spent the whole day together, so it was unsurprising that it was slightly awkward for her to hear. "Thank you," she muttered finally, turning back to face what she was doing.

Neteyam had wanted to ask her about her family, ask her about what happened, but more importantly what they were like before. What were her clan's traditions like? Where did she live? How different was it to his own home in the caves? "I've been meaning to ask--"

"--brother!" The male from earlier had jogged over, hopping over the tent pegs as he made his way over to them. "You finally got her out and moving then, ay?"

Ahurewa observed them with interest, eyes flicking between them both as they spoke.

Neteyam scowled, more frustrated than embarrassed. "I thought you were with Kiri and Spider at the lab."

He rubbed the back of his neck and smiled sheepishly, glancing to Ahurewa as he said, "I got bored." Fully turning to face her then, he exclaimed, "And anyway, I wanted to meet her properly. I am Lo'ak."

"Ahurewa." A calm aura surrounded her, the only tell of her uneasiness of everything around her was her fiddling with the beads of her skirt with her right hand.

He nudged his brother's shoulder, "You will hate him soon." When she tilted her head in confusion, he laughed. "Give it a few days of "do this, don't do that, do what I say," he mocked. "So try to teach him to chill out a bit, yeah? He needs to stop being such a pain in the ass."

"skxawng!" Ahurewa noticed they did a lot of scolding here by smacking each other on the head or arm. Her grandmother used to clap to get her attention instead, force the point across with her words. If Neteyam was considered uptight, then she dreaded to think what it would have been like had they met her family.

"Ow!" Lo'ak rubbed the back of his head, eyebrows pulled in as he glared at his older brother. "I only came to ask if you wanted to come to the old crash sight before dark."

"That's in an hour." He deadpanned.

Lo'ak shrugged, "we are going regardless." He turned to Ahurewa then. "You can come if you want."

They both looked at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. She shrugged her shoulders, a barely even noticeable movement.

Sighing, Neteyam started heading towards Lo'ak as he was slowly walking backwards as time was running out for an answer. He laughed then, "let's go then." Taking off into a run, they climbed the roots connecting the hallelujah mountains, passing the ikran nest, and manouvering through the forest for a while until they made their way to an eerie area of disturbed land. The signs of Eywa reclaiming her forest could be seen through the overgrowth of greenery making its way through the cracked windows of the aircraft. Ahurewa could tell it had already been looted by what little was left over.

"What is this?" She dragged her fingers along the metal of the open door, testing the stability of the craft with her weight. Eyes widening with surprise, Kiri leapt inside, reaching straight for a bag on one of the chairs, unzipping it and emptying it's contents.

"It's an abandoned aircraft after we fought the sky people." Kiri sighed, "We've been here that many times there's nothing new to find."

Everything was new to Ahurewa here. While Neteyam, Lo'ak and Tuk had gone over the massive crates on the other side of the open stretch of land, Kiri had followed her over to the aircraft, unfortunately bringing Spider along with her. "Hey look at this!" Pulling something from the dead body sat in the front, Spider wore a pair of black aviators, which Ahurewa could only understand to be another death-filled creation of the sky people.

Rolling her eyes, she moved into the back, away from the two of them so she could save her ears from bleeding at the sound of his voice speaking their language. She couldn't understand how he could ever be one of them, his fleshy skin was open and vulnerable, and his lungs could not even breathe their air. He belonged on his world, with his people - but she couldn't tell them that.

Rifling through a pile of half empty bags, she was growing bored with how little she had actually found, only seeing strange items of clothing and expired food packs. However, beneath it all she felt the stinging cold of something buried right at the bottom of them all. Using her hand to dive as far in as she could to grab it, Ahurewa pulled with all her strength to lift the heavy object from underneath the weight and inconvenience of all of the other unnecessary things inside. Faintly, the sound of everyone else yelling came from outside, Kiri and Spider must have moved out to see what they had found as well. What Ahurewa had found though was much more interesting to her than anything else. The rusty metal machine was similar to those she had seen people at the Omatikayan camp lugging around, but she never knew what they were for. Twisting it around, and fiddling with al of the little switches and buttons, she lifted it close to her face, examining the function of it. Pointing it at the wall of the air craft, she pressed the trigger,the recoil sending her onto her back, head awkwardly bent at an angle. "What happened?!" She heard from outside, the unnatural ringing in her ears leaving her disoriented.

"What the hell just–" Lo'ak began.

Then she heard Kiri frantically yelling at Spider. "Spider, are you okay?"

"Move out of the way Kiri." Neteyam had joined them. "Spider show us where you're hit."

"Hit?!" Ahurewa jolted upwards, stumbling out of the aircraft, holding the side of her head.

Then she saw everyone crowded around Spider who was sat up on the floor, blood pouring from his hand. "I'm okay, it's just my hand."

She felt sick. "Oh great mother," she muttered, falling to lean on the side of the aircraft.

"No, it's not okay, we have to get you back now to stop the bleeding." Neteyam glared in her direction, instructing Lo'ak to take Spider and his two siblings back to camp as quickly as possible.

"Are you not going to help?" Lo'ak asked incredulously, wiping his blood stained hands on the ground before lifting spider up, over his shoulders.

Not taking his burning eyes off of her, Neteyam answered, "I'll be there in a moment."

Lo'ak must have known not to argue with his brother while he was like that. Even Ahurewa, after knowing him for a day, could sense the shift in tone.

"Are you out of your mind?!" He yelled, "what were you thinking?!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't know!" She pleaded, "I don't even know what happened."

"You shot him." He glared at her, "you know if that was any lower you would have killed him."

Her head fell, the reality of what she had done hitting her. Though she didn't care for the boy, she still felt the wrongfulness of her actions.

"You're going to follow us back to camp, and not say a word. Got it?" He had moved closer to her, finger pointing up at her chin as she backed into the metal wall behind her.

"I will carry him. I can hel–"

"You've done enough." He dismissed her, turning away and stalking into the forest after his family.

She followed without saying anymore of course. But in that moment, even though she knew she had done it to herself, she had never felt more isolated and alone. The Omatikaya were not her people, and they were not her friends. She was more of an outsider than ever.