Towards Love

1.run

Footsteps. Heavy breath. In the forest of Pandora, someone was running for their life. A young woman. She was running as fast as she could, her long dark hair slapping her face each time she turned around to see if she was being followed, causing her to trip on tree roots from time to time.
Her military boots felt heavy on her feet as if they were slowing her down. Her oxygen mask felt like she it wasn't oxygen coming out of it. She was expecting to be caught at any time. Or killed. 

"Don't stop Lola." 

She clearly didn't know where she was heading. She just wanted to go as far away as possible from those people. The people she once thought were good people. People she thought were there to save human kind. She had soon realised it wasn't the case when she arrived a year ago on Pandora. She discovered their secret missions and that they were doing to this planet exactly what they had done to Earth. Humans hadn't learn their lesson. She couldn't be a part of it anymore.

"Oh, you think you're better than us? You think that the world is all white and that nothing bad has to happen for something good to be taken out of it? Think about it. You have to burn the earth to make it more fertile."

What scared her even more was that she had to leave her avatar behind. With those people. She hoped that they wouldn't hurt her because of her betrayal. She hoped that she could come back for her. To save her.
The only thing she had tought about taking was her tablet. In case she ran into Omatikayans, she could communicate with them by translating. She was learning their language but wasn't fully fluent yet. One day she hoped so could be. It was such a beautiful language and she really wanted to meet the Na'vi. Studying them was not the same as interacting with them.

Which is why she came to Pandora in the first place. She always had wanted to study anthropology thanks to her grandfather who had been one himself. Little, he told her stories about all civilizations. She dreamed of being a pharaon, a viking or evenc a samourai. She wanted to explore. 
When she heard about the explorations going to Pandora, she thought it was her chance to discover a new world. At first, these explorations where only for professional due to the hard and long travel and the dangerority of the planet. But then, a pilot project was openened for students wanting to specialize in the world of Pandora. She was in her second university year at the time. She didn't hesitate to register. She passed the first round. Then the second. All the way to the final selection. Five students got to go. She was one of them. It was hard thinking that she was going to leave her family and friends but it was her dream. She wanted to do it for her grandfather who couldn't live to know about the Na'vi but would have loved to know everything about them. 

So after months of training and learning about the planet and the ways of living there, they finally left for Pandora. They were placed in hibernation and after 5 years, 9 months and 22 days, she opended her eyes to a scientist telling her that she made it to her dream destination.

And now she was running away from them.

She was starting to slow down feeling more and more out of breath. The trees were not passing as fast as when she started to run. Lola was now able to anticipate the branches and the roots on her way. Hopefully they had thought that she was too insignifiant to go after her. 

She finally stopped to hide under the leaf of a plant large enough to hide her from potential predators. She sat, breathing heavily. "In ...out. In ...out." She tried to control her breathing in order to calm down and not make to much noise. 

She couldn't hear the sound of the helicopter's propellers. It was a good sign. Or not. Either they were tracking her down to force her to come back with them to the base, or she was far enough not to hear them go away without her. Lola was praying for it to be the second option. 

Looking at her watch, she noticed that the eclipse was about to go down. She would soon be in the dark. Without a torch she won't be able to see much. And she didn't have any weapon. She always refused to take one. Humans were not on their land. Na'vi were. There was no reason to increse their hostile potential. Let's just say that not many people thought like she did. But in that moment, she would have loved to have something to protect her. Just in case. "Shit."

The young woman opened her backpack to take inventory : drawing set, spare oxygen mask, cereal bar, water bottle, communication tablet. That was it. "Great. That is just great."
She looked up to see if she could climb on one of the trees surrounding her. The problem was that she wasn't matching the planet scale. Everything was bigger here. And even though she was pretty tall for a human, she was definitely not on the scale of Pandora. 

Lola finally spotted a branch she could reach. She got up and climbed as fast as she could. When she thoght she was high enough, she stopped and settle in her spot for the night. From up there, she could see the plants glowing, now that the night had fallen. It was beautiful. The bioluminescence made every single living organism glow. Colours were everywhere, pink, purple, blue. Lola could see in the night. 

Watching this kind of art brought peace to the young woman. All the stress from runing away, not knowing where to go or what would come next evaporating. She soon fell asleep, exhausted by her first moments on the run. Unfortunately, not a quiet sleep.

Autho'rs note
Hey ! So I wanted to write something inspired from the Avatar movies but still different from just adding one character to the already existing stories. I hope you'll like it and that there will not be too many typos (sorry, English is not my first language). 

Don't hesitate to comment so I know what you think, Lola will soon meet the Sully family ❤️

Enjoy what's coming ;)