Safe Haven

Home Camp

Four Weeks Later

Neteyam stood waiting at the entrance of his grandmother's healing tent with his back turned because Xilä was getting changed or should he say being persuaded to.

He pursed his lips to hide a smile that was threatening to escape as he listened to the amusing conversation between the four female voices behind him.

"Come on Xi, you can't keep wearing that beastly thing forever! You're going to get a heat stroke outside. We're in the middle of a solar cycle for Eywa sake!" He heard his sister Kiri say.

"Oh...I'm used to it, it's comfortable. How does this protect me? All my... bits could fall out," she hushed, sounding a little embarrassed. He cracked a grin at that one.

Kiri cackled, "Oh sweet Xilä, it's more than what I'm wearing, and I'm not worried, see?" Neteyam heard a shuffling shake from the beads attached to Kiri's top and loincloth. "All intact still."

"Here child. Try this instead," suggested Mo'at.

"Xi, can I put some pretty beads in your hair later?" He heard Tuk ask. "And maybe I could also practise my braiding again, like last time?" She asked hopefully.

"I would like that Tuk, thank you," she said softly and Neteyam could only imagine the massive beam Tuktirey had given her, for agreeing.

In the four weeks that flew by, Xilä had become more vocal- mainly with a very selective few- not that she'd been out to meet anyone else.

The first week of her arrival, Xilä had been under the very strict watchful eye of Mo'at who oversaw her healing treatments and ensured that she rested and was fed at least three meals a day.

Neteyam remembered during one particular family dinner his grandmother had described the poor girl to them as walking death, citing that she had come to the clan just in time.

In not so many words she basically explained that her body was all fucked up from lack of food and nutrition- so suffice to say her healing had taken a much longer period...Neteyam couldn't finish his dinner that night.

His grandmother was soft for her, he noticed. She had even given him an ear full just last week for simply asking when she thought he could begin training with her.

In the second week of Xi's arrival, the Tsahìk had finally allowed visitors and thus, Kiri had made it her business to try and befriend the quiet Li'ona girl.

Tuk was the one who gave Xilä her new nickname Xi, and even Neteyam found himself using it once or twice in the few times he had stopped by- it suited her, he thought.

Xi had never had friends before and still wasn't quite sure what the rules were, but as much as it was overwhelming sometimes, she liked it when they came to visit her.

She was still very cautious of Kiri's "monkey boy" at times, but eventually her curiosity would win over and she would muster the courage to ask him questions whenever he came along with his female friend.

"Why do you have to wear that thing on your face?"

"Do you really have no tail?"

"What is a dude?"

On one such visit from the human boy, he abruptly stopped talking mid sentence and started speaking to a Lo'ak, who she later learned was a Sully brother.

The strange thing though, it was just like what Jake had done on her first day. There was no one else in the room with them besides two sleeping patients. No Lo'ak to be seen- Spider was basically speaking and laughing to the air.