Petrichor

Fpxamo

One thing that Jake noticed about Ilhia was that she was a very impatient woman. She was always dragging him around everywhere, and was always annoyed if he didn't pick things up quickly. 

She'd made him finish his training session with a pa'li earlier today, because she wanted to start on the language. He had a feeling she didn't particularly want to teach him the language, purely because she was still smack-talking about him to his face. But he supposed he'd have to get it over with. 

Norm and Grace were trying to help him learn as best as they could, so he had at least a basic understanding of some of the words, but it wasn't the best. 

They were sitting in a clearing away from Hometree, but not so far that they had to be on lookout for any animals. Ilhia had still brought her spear with her, the weapon lying flat on the ground next to her. He'd never seen her leave it anywhere, not even for bed. It was always in reach for her. 

She'd let him have a look at it one afternoon, reluctantly. It was made from the wood of Hometree, she'd told him. She'd carved patterns into some parts of it, making it look a lot more elegant and sleek. 

"What's spear in your language?" Jake asked her as she finished removing her headgear. She'd been with her ikran this morning, away with Neytiri and Tsu'tey. 

"Tukru," she replied, glancing up at him. She motioned for him to repeat it, and he tested it out. "Too-ka-ru," she pronounced, picking up her weaving things. 

Jake never had an artistic bone in his body, so for her to so easily fashion clothes and accessories from the items that they collected in the forest and teach him Na'vi at the same time? Unbelievable, really. 

They sat in silence while Ilhia got her project started, which looked very fiddly from his point of view. Then they began. 

"What has Dr Augustine taught you?" Her focus was not on him, and for that he was grateful. He felt hotness climbing his spine and his throat. 

He hated feeling helpless, being out of his depth. Being a Marine? Easy as shit. Fighting? Easy as shit. Physical stuff in general? Easy as shit, apart from learning tsaheylu. Languages, on the other hand? He'd never been able to keep up with them, and Na'vi was probably one of the hardest languages to be taught. 

"Uh, the basics. Very very basic." 

He didn't miss the irritation that flashed over her face, before she put her project down and exhaled slowly. She met his gaze, and his face burst into flames. Thank fuck the Na'vi don't blush the way humans do, because his entire body would be bright red. 

"Hello?" 

"Uh, uh. Shit." He looked down at the ground for a moment. "Kaltxì?"

She stayed silent until he looked up, and then nodded. "You are right. Kaltxì."

They continued for a while until Ilhia was satisfied with the amount he'd learnt. It had been eerie to have the Na'vi woman's undivided attention, as she'd completely abandoned her project. She did poke him a few times when he wasn't pronouncing words correctly, and smacked him in the head too, but Jake was happy with his progress. Best way to beat the enemy was to understand it. 

Ilhia sat cross legged for a few more moments after stating their finish. Her tail flicked over her shoulder as emotions flashed all over her face. Jake waited expectantly, her body language clearly expressing the need to speak. 

"Whatever you want to say, you can," he finally said when she made no move. 

"You may be skxawng, but you are not stupid. You will not be here forever, and I have been reminded you are a guest. I apologise for how I have made you feel." The words were awkward coming out of her mouth, and her entire body was tense. "Jake Sully, we can ... how do you say in English? Lewn?"

"Tolerate?" he suggested. She nodded.

"We will tolerate each other for the rest of your stay."

Jake extended his hand out. "Friends?" 

Ilhia just glared at him, and his outstretched hand. "I would not say friends, Jake Sully. But I will live with it." She grasped his forearm and waited for him to do the same. "What is your greeting?" 

He made a face. "A handshake?" 

She nodded. "You were not expecting my arm. My hand?" 

Slowly, so he didn't fettle her out of this oddly pleasant mood, he got her right hand and put his into hers, palm to palm for a handshake. He brought it up and down twice and let go. "We call it a handshake." 

Ilhia nodded. "Handshake," she repeated softly. "You creatures are strange. Grace said impersonal, is that the right word? There is no direct translation." 

He chuckled. "I guess you could say that. There's so many humans on Earth they don't have room to bury their dead now." 

She gasped, her hand going to her chest. "How do they honour?"

Jake's tail flicked up over his arm, and his ears pinned back against his head. He understood what she meant, for the dead. They'd seen a service just days earlier, with a Na'vi buried with an atokirina. Ilhia's sister Neytiri had been the one to place the seed into the grave.

Ilhia had explained that in this world, all energy is only borrowed. Those who pass on live within Eywa, and their body is left behind to complete the cycle. The way Jake had understood it, the body fed the nature, which fed the animals, which fed the Na'vi. 

It had been a beautiful way of looking at it, which Jake had never considered before. 

"They have mass cremations now. So big that it could burn like, a hundred bodies at once. It's separate boxes the bodies go into though, so it's not like they're unnamed." Jake briefly thought of Tommy's ashes in his room at the compound. "You keep the ashes afterward as a way to remember them." 

"Why so many?" 

"So many cremation sites?" Ilhia nodded. "Earth's overpopulated. When I left, the statistics were like thirty to forty people dying a day in my city alone. It'll probably be more now." 

He didn't want to tell her the true reason, that Earth was now so overpolluted and overpriced that people literally couldn't afford to live. People had to wear masks in public because of the air toxicity. Inflation at an all time high so only the rich could buy good quality, healthy food.

Nope, he wasn't salty about it at all. 

"It sounds terrible," Ilhia said after a moment, cocking her head to the side. "Here is another word for you, Jake. Fpxamo." 

"What does that mean?" 

She smiled faintly. "Terrible." 

It wasn't until they got back to Hometree, where she abandoned him to find Neytiri, that he realised, for the first time, she'd called him Jake. Just Jake. 

This mission might be easier than he'd originally thought.