Tsaheylu

Happy Birthday

The next day wasn't particularily intruiging, everyone had had a bit too much excitement and stress from the day before and Kiri was still unable to keep herself awake for much more than a singular conversation. Everyone went to go and visit her, and Tuk stayed behind with her after we all left to go swimming. Jake and Neytiri wanted to spend part of the day with their children, which worked well as Tsireya, Aonung and I had all been called to our duties by Tonowari and Ronal. Tsireya had to feed the Ilus and do a few other bits around the village for the day, and Aonung was still grounded, having to learn his future duties as Clan Leader with Tonowari. Ronal had called me to help with the sick bay once more, and had given me due praise for helping bring Kiri back.

She commented on how close the family seemed to be with me, but shrugged it off for the most part. She was still very unsure about them as Jake had been a Sky Person, but I think she was starting to realise that at heart he was a Na'vi now. Even if she didn't want to admit it, she was starting to accept them more and more each day.

We all came back together for dinner, mostly very tired from our own adventures during the day and none of us were particularily up for a deep conversation. Lo'ak and Tsireya had been eyeing eachother up all day, seemingly done with their argument now. And Neteyam had been keeping his distance, even now he sat on the opposite side of the circle to me avoiding my eye. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I knew it had to have something to do with the fact that Aonung had been staring at us all day.

"Alright, I'm gonna head to bed." I say, breaking the silence across the circle. I look over to Tsireya and notice she was watching Lo'ak intently. He was on his 3rd helping of dinner and was still wolfing it down, surprising the girl by how much he could eat. I didn't want to break apart their moment, but equally wanted my best friend to stay with me tonight. We'd had a sleepover before each of our birthday's every year since we were crawling, and I wanted to have one one last time.

"Reya, you joining me tonight?" I ask, peering over to her in hopes to grab her attention. She turns her head to look at me sadly, shaking her head. "Mum and dad said I couldn't tonight, that I had to let you enjoy your last night as a teenager before becoming a woman tomorrow." She scruntches her nose up at the words and apologises, telling me how she wished that she could but can't do anything as her parents had instructed her.

"No, that's ok. I understand," I respond, trying to hide the sadness in my voice. I could see Aonung giving Tsireya confused looks from the corner of my eye, but decided to ignore it. Aonung was known for not listening to what his parents had said, so it was very likely he had just tuned the whole conversation out.

"I'll see you all at some point tomorrow then, good night," I say to the rest of them, waving briefly before leaving the group. I really didn't want to be in my Pod alone tonight, and I knew there was little chance that my mum would come back any time soon. It sucked, the loneliness really sunk into your bones and made you feel empty, and on a day such as tomorrow I didn't want to wake with that feeling.

Regardless, I made my way to my Marui Pod and walked into the darkness, unsurprised to see that there was no sign of my mother. Not even her paperwork had been moved, telling me that she hadn't even stopped by to grab any of her work at any point over the last few days. I sigh and light the candles round the pod, then sit at the table and stare at the mess in front of me.

It was frankly overwhelming how much was cluttered over the table, I didn't know where to start. None of it stood out to me and nothing made any sense when I took a closer look. It was all written in the Sky People language, which my mother had been learning for years now. As far I knew she was trying to intercept and decipher the correspondence between different camps and bases of the Sky People. There was one a days swim from here that she stole documents from all the time, and I assumed that was where she was at the moment. She must've found a halfway point to call her own that she holed up in for days until she made a breakthrough in either her work or her mental health, but it always took a little while until that happened.