Little Miss Perfect | Neteyam¹

Chapter 35: Betrayal

"The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies."

Trigger Warning: Mentions of abuse. 

Italicize - someone's thoughts or a story from the past

Bold - sign language 

Spider looked like he had seen a ghost as Marali's words echoed in his head. They were going home. Why were they going home? He thought that they were perfectly happy here. Spider felt confused, angry, and guilty all at the same time as he looked at Marali with wide eyes.

"Are you okay, Spider?" Kiri asked worriedly as she walked over to the human boy.

"I'm fine," Spider said, causing his voice to crack as he craned his head to look at Kiri, "I'm just a little shocked. I didn't think we were ever going back," He said as his voice grew quiet.

Marali watched Spider and observed his behavior to see if she could decipher why he was acting so strange, however, she came up empty-handed when she saw indescribable emotions on his face.

She decided to shrug off his reaction to go sit beside him and talk about how excited she was to go home.

"Jake, I thought you couldn't go home? Because the people have to pretend you are dead?" Spider said as he furrowed his eyebrows at the older man.

Jake sighed as he looked at Spider, "I'm not going with you guys,"

Of course, the fact that Jake couldn't go with them had diminished their excitement a little, but Jake assured all of them that he would be fine staying in the Metkayina clan. He informed them that he and Tonowari had grown quite close and that he still needed to continue his training, so that's what he would be doing while they were gone.

Spider nodded his head deep in thought before he spoke again, "Why exactly are we going home?"

"We are going to teach Tsireya, Ao'nung, and possibly Rotxo the Omatikayan way because we learned their ways," Kiri explained.

"And also because Tsireya and Lo'ak like each other so her parents felt that it was fair that she visits our home back in the forest," Marali added. Spider made an 'o' shape with his mouth as he absentmindedly nodded his head.

All of the teens gave each other confused looks, but as they were going to ask Spider what was wrong, Tuk came crashing in as she leaped towards Marali.

"Woah, Tuk." Neteyam said as he caught Tuk, "Mari's still hurt remember?" The boy reminded, and Tuk's smile dropped. "I'm sorry, Mara," Tuk apologized.

"It's okay, Tuk Tuk." Marali assured as she used her good arm to get ahold of Tuk. "Do you want to tell me what you are so happy about?" She asked and just like that, a smile had been brought to Tuk's face once again.

"We're going home!" Tuk cheered, wrapping her arms around Marali's neck.

"I know," Marali informed.

The three Sully teens looked at the scene in disbelief as Tuk continued to talk to Marali about how excited she was to be going home. They knew that Tuk loved Marali, but they didn't expect her to not even pay attention to them also being in the pod so that she could celebrate with them as well.

"Aren't you going to hug us too, Tuk?" Kiri asked, and Tuk glanced at her sister before she shook her head.

"But you're hugging Marali," Neteyam said.

"Marali is my favorite," Tuk said with a smile.

Their jaws dropped as they looked at Tuk in betrayal, "But we're your siblings," Lo'ak scoffed.