❝ Had he died, he wouldn't have felt it. His heart was kept in the chest of his beloved. ❞
Neteyam is traversing his teenage years with his family in the forest, it's his sixteenth birthday when the sky people come back to their world. The last year...
CHAPTER EIGHT viii. ( Milena, if no one loved you. )
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NETEYAM NEVER THOUGHT he would see Kew'Itan cry, with his eyes glossy because of overstimulation or when he talked about his siblings when they were still babies and climbed him to enjoy rides along their village.
His cry cut deep into him, the sky seemed to cry with him and the rest of the metkayina as they mourned the loss of their sister and her calf.
Kew sobbed on his chest while Neteyam took control of the ilu from behind, with an arm wrapped around his waist as a comfort.
Ronal's pained scream echoed in the storm, booming yellow in the distance.
"Ro'a.." Kew whined between suffocated sobs, uncaring of the hair sticking to his forehead from the rain. Neteyam looked away when he caught sight of the calf floating beside his mother, without the joy he had previously.
"What is this Tonowari?" The tsahìk whimpered "What is this?!"
They had been separated when they went back to the communal marui, Kew comforting a heaving Tsireya with his hand holding hers. Neteyam was behind his own parents looking up at the distraught couple.
"My spirit sister and her baby.." Ronal began, the trace of her sadness well mixed with anger "Have been murdered by the sky people!"
"This war has come to us!" Tonowari hissed, clenching the spear in his hand so hard that Neteyam though it would break in a matter of seconds.
"We know about this hunting of our tulkun people." He pointed to the south "But it was over the horizon, far away!"
"Now it is here!" His people hissed with him.
"No, you don't.." Neteyam's father tried to interrupt "You gotta understand how the sky people think. They don't care about the great balance."
"We don't answer to sky people!" A metkayina yelled back.
"The sky people are not gonna stop. This is only the beginning. You gotta tell your tulkun to leave." His father pointed to where their tulkun had gone too.
"You gotta tell them to go far away!"
"Leave?" Kew's mother hissed "You live among us," she spat "and you learn nothing!"
