Neteyam

Game Night

The newly established couple sat as they watched their sisters eagerly staring at Norm as he looked over the camera. "I think I can get the pictures out, but it's probably due for a cleaning." The man, in his true body, looked almost comical with the too big camera. "It's crusted shut from the humidity and the dust. It's kind of gross." "Thank you for sharing." Merq'ena leaned away from the small machine. "How long will it take?" Kiri also took a small step back. "I'll finish it in, an hour?" A piece of the camera broke off to reveal a compact series of roots pressed into the camera. "Make it two." The two girls groaned impatiently. "What's even in there that you guys want so bad?" Neteyam asked. "Pictures of my mom. Merq'ena found it at the school she used to teach at." Norm lowered the camera to look at Merq'ena. "You went to the school?"

"Viryn and I, we would have stayed longer but then the Sky people came." Neteyam looked over to Viryn with furrowed brows. She patted his arm but was looking at Norm. The man had shifted his eyes nervously at the new piece of information and she could see he swallowed nervously. "What did you find?" He knew something, the way he asked the question was clearly a bad attempt at probing to know what they knew.

Merq'ena looked to Viryn and they shared a look that only the other would understand. Norm was hiding something from them and it was important. Very important. "We found a camera." Merq'ena shrugged. "That's all?" Norm grabbed a wipe and tried to soften the hard pressed crust. "Brooo!" Spider sat up from his place on the other side of Neteyam and rushed to the door. Lo'ak and him did a slappy handshake before he even acknowledged his siblings. "You made it." Kiri looked at Tuk who was holding onto his hand. "Sorry guys, mom said I had to bring Tuk." The little girl stood almost at her older brother's hip. "Teyam!" She pushed off from Lo'ak and quickly jumped into her oldest brother's lap. Neteyam opened his arms to give her room to settle. "Did Neytiri know you were going here?" Viryn knew how their mother felt about the scientists. "Not really, I just said I was going where you guys were." Lo'ak sat down in one of the avatar sized rolling chairs.

"Well, we have time to kill. Norm says it'll take a while to get the camera cleaned." Kiri sighed. Merq'ena hummed and sat next to her friend. "What's there to do?" Spider shrugged. "Nothing. It's boring in here." "Hey." Norm paused from the camera. "We have board games. You guys can play those." "Board games?" Kiri asked curiously. "Ya, and we have a jumbo set of cards."

Norm pointed at the shelf behind him. Kiri moved to investigate the piece of furniture with dusty boxes stored on its shelves. She blew the dust off of one of the smaller boxes and coughed. "Uuno?" She read the big bold letters on the box paired with pictures of what the cards looked like. "What is this?" The girl turned to show it to Spider. The only human kid walked away from goofing off with Lo'ak and moved over to Kiri.

"Uno. Oh it's this game." He held the box in his hands. Viryn got up and went to the hangar and grabbed one of the breath things. They had a name, she just could never remember it. "It's like, you got to get rid of all the cards and the first person who does wins." She walked back and handed it to Neteyam. He placed the string over Tuk's head so it hung around her neck. "You have to breath out of it." He whispered to not interrupt the explanation. "You can sabotage with the plus 2 card and if you don't want to and if you have your own you can stack-." "You can't stack the card." Norm spoke over his shoulder. "That's now Sarah plays it." Spider defended.

"Like this, Tuk." Viryn lifted the mask to her own mouth and took a deep breath. Her breath fogged up the mouth piece. The little girl looked hesitant to put the air mask towards her mouth. "Try it, it doesn't hurt." Neteyam nudged it to her face. Tuk had her small hands on his wrist as he slowly placed it on her mouth and nose. "Breathe." She blinked nervously as she sucked in the air and giggled at the hissing sound. "See, it's not bad." "The instructions say you can't." "It's more fun that way, how about we just play it like that?" Spider looked at the group.