I Feel You

Chapter 22

The sounds of drums echoed throughout the tree as the clan began preparing for Uniltaron, or the dream hunt.

Amhul and Tsu'tey were in charge of preparing her with Neytiri preparing Jake. They would be going first and the beat of her heart drowned out any shaking thoughts as they painted lines across her body. She blinked slowly as Tsu'tey trailed one down her temple, across her lips and further down her throat to then curl under her left breast. Amhul painted her back, the lines spiraling in feeling as they swept down to her hips and joined Tsu'tey's own lines.

"Are you afraid?" He asked in the silence between them and the answer came without thought. "Not anymore." The fire she received for that had her tail curling, Amhul briefly stopping to uncurl it and paint it.

"Good." She accepted her jar from Amhul, the older woman smiling warmly at her.

"While you did not come from me, I still consider you my own. Be strong." If she was not covered in paint she'd have embraced Amhul as tight as her arms would have allowed her. Instead she settled for a grin that split her face and almost hurt.

"I have never known the love of a mother, but I imagine it is the care you have shown me Amhul. My heart is full to know you care for me as such."

"Good. I shall be there when you awaken my child." 

Tsu'tey was quiet as they descended into the tree, the lights steadily growing dimmer but never extinguishing till at last it opened into a room where other Navi waited with the Tsahik and Olo'eyktan.

She keeled before them, accepting the glow worm and biting it to end its suffering before swallowing. Eytukan released the kali'weya she'd captured, the insect's mandibles clicking together in anger but she did not flinch as he brought it to her hand and it stung her. A feverish pain began to spread almost immediately, the beat of the drums becoming faster and louder as the world began to blur. Her breath stuttered as the clan members drew closer, eyes widening as they lunged with a collective hiss before retreating.

Her heat beat against her ribs to the rhythm in her ears, or was the beat pounding her heart? She fell down onto her arms, breaths sounding harsh even to her own ears as she fell over and over and over again. She was falling somewhere, eyes opened or closed she could no longer tell as the spider web opened before her.

A static sound crescendos into silence around her and she suddenly could breath once more. From thread to thread she grasped, her limbs shifting and changing each time. The beat of wings as she crested over a tree covered mountain, head dipping under the falls before reemerging to breath from the hole in her head. Fins replaced wings and fingers and hooves. The beat of the hooves beneath her as they rushed over the ground. She could feel the beat of her heart, hearts and the beat of the drums as it beat against her like her hooves on the ground.

A hiss and she was rushing over the trees, barks escaping her mouth while the braying of the Yerik ground its way from her belly and to her fingers. She grasped at the ground tightly, fingers digging deep into the earth, all four and eight and twenty four as her legs propelled her forward into the river after her prey.

She huffed at the pack of nantang rushing past, great head lowered and frill raised. She would protect her child, the great beast grazing not that far when she burst forth from the brush and sunk her teeth into tough hide and tender flesh. The massive calf cried out and she cried out in turn, hands scrambling for purchase before she was lunging once more from tree to tree, vine to vine. She chittered and stopped for a short time to watch her troop rush past before looking down into the pitcher plant and spying her reflection in the water. Large eyes blinked at her before they were turning to the cry of metal. Flee. Flee. They needed to flee. Smoke. Fire. Where was she?

Blood and skin and nails and claws. Her hands blended together and faded with each blink as she used them to propel her through the trees. Danger. Danger. They were in danger. A Pali cried below and she fell from the noise, small body grasping onto the creature tightly as it tried to run full of metal. It was full of metal. It was dying. Blood and skin fell away for four fingered paws and then nothing.

Like a candle snuffed out everything stopped and she was left disconnected from the great web as it expanded before her once more. Her heart hurt from where it stabbed her bones, breaths shaky. What had she just seen? What had she just experienced? Her breath quivered as it left her, lungs rattling between her ribs.

Eighty six percent. That was what she had calculated for hers and Jake's survival. Of course this had been a rounded number which did not directly factor in their mental state nor her lack of a true body made of flesh and blood. There wasn't enough research done on the ritual, not enough know because they were too cautious and now she was stuck reeling from the experience. She felt Alive. Not in the way Tsu'tey had said, or the way she had perceived, or even in the way so many of the creatures were. This was different from her time connecting to them. If connecting to her Ikran and the Pali was like finally breathing after holding her breath for so long, then this was like her first breath, never known before until the moment it happened. Something had changed. No that wasn't right. Something had finally finished changing and she wasn't sure just what that meant for her.

Mo'at had said she was healing. Had said to let things simply be and that all would be fine. Was this what healing felt like? Like she had been ripped from one connection to another? Like she on fire yet frozen?

One breath in, one shaking breath out. She watched the ebb away, each thread lighting up before fading away as sound returned to her first. Then touch and then the taste of the worm she'd eaten and dirt. She inhaled deeply the scent of fresh rain and Yerik stuffed mushrooms that was carried on the breeze below her. Finally her eyes opened to the world above her and Amhul's smiling face. "Welcome back, My child."

Woo, the plot is moving along and through a stroke a luck I wrote this all in an hour with the full intent of it being like a drug trip.