𝐍𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐘𝐀𝐌 𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓

015

Avatar's First Braids By DefaultTwig on ao3

ʚ ✦ ♥︎ ∞ ☾ ɞ

At fifteen years old, you could not describe the bizarreness of watching a tiny body, your body, float in an amnio tank. Your very own avatar, steadily growing at a pace beyond the growth rate of native Na'vi, twitched in a dreamlike state.

Tiny blue hands curled around a chubby blue face. Small tendrils of nerves floated out of the base of the skull, surrounded by baby hair. You could not believe what kuru looked like before the braids. A bit creepy, if you had to be honest.

You weren't alone. Spider stood right next to you with Tuk in front of you two. Lo'ak and Kiri stood on his other side and Neteyam was right next to you. His forearm rested against the glass of the tank as he leaned into your space, tilting his head to observe the baby. The Na'vi half of your group each had a rebreather in hand, inhaling from it every so often. All six of you watched the small twitches, mesmerized by the little thing.

It had only been a few weeks since you watched it grow from an embryo. You had been the most fascinated watching the rapidly growing progress of the avatar, coming nearly every day to watch. It led to Neteyam and Spider hanging around, then Lo'ak and Kiri, and finally Tuk could not be left out. You could stand around all day and watch. This was your avatar.

"So," Spider spoke over the silence. "What if it's an outie?"

Lo'ak scoffed, already biting back a smile. "Bro, that's what you're thinking about?"

Spider gestured to the umbilical cord attached to the baby's stomach. He huffed in defense of himself. "You guys all made fun of my avatar having an outie."

You snapped your head in his direction, offended that he lumped you up with the rest of them. "I didn't."

"That's because you're you, Spider." Neteyam teased, leaning forward past you to make eye contact. He pressed the rebreather to his mouth for a breath. "Besides, yours was the first with an outie belly button."

Tuk looked down at her stomach and traced her belly button. "I can't imagine having my belly button out like that."

"It's not that weird," Kiri countered. "Only at first, it was."

"Bro, look at you. You're fine." Lo'ak reached over and stuck his finger in Spider's belly button, earning a shout and a smack to the hand. Spider laid his palm over his belly button while Lo'ak laughed and straightened himself. "You know we didn't mean it."

Yeah, when Spider first entered his avatar after decantation, the immediate thing the Na'vi children noticed was the protruding belly button. It was then you realized that none of the Na'vi had outies, unlike humans who could have either innie or outie. While they could excuse the appearance of an outie on a human, given the many physical discrepancies between humans and Na'vi, they teased Spider for having one on his avatar. Just another physical difference on top of eyebrows and five digits on the hands and feet of avatars.

You rolled your eyes. "Can we stop talking about belly buttons?"

"Okay," Neteyam agreed. He gestured with his hand above the amnio tank. "How long does this take, again?"

"Five years," a voice behind caused you all to turn. Norm approached your group with a grimace. "Why are you all hanging around the test tube avatar?"

"So why couldn't this avatar," Tuk pointed at the tank while inhaling from the rebreather, ignoring the question, "grow at the same time as Spider's? Wouldn't that save time?"