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Sitting alone on a day like this should be forbidden by Eywa.
Kiri of the Sullys, daughter of Grace, felt coarse sand dig into her rear as she lowered herself onto the rough ground. The edges of foaming water only just managed to reach her feet, tickling the space between her toes.
The sun was burning down upon her back with inhumane ferocity. It shone as if it wanted to burn away the very sights it had had to witness that day.
She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her shoulders firmly.
An attempt to create at least some sense of certainty in a world that had, until recently, solely consisted of swimming, diving and trying to be somewhat less different than her nature commended. What else was she to do, who else to turn to when all reference was lost?
Her ears twitched slightly, rising ever so slightly away from her head. There was the mournful whistling of wind racing through wooden support beams and tightly woven walls of brushwood behind her. Male and Female shouting that grew incoherent with rage and grief. Screams of the wounded as they lay helplessly, waiting for relief that would never arrive.
Her shoulders hunched more than they already had, her tail tucked underneath her. She tried to breathe through her mouth. If she didn't, the scent would hit her nostrils. The smell of blood. The smell of offal that belonged in ilu, tsurak and na'vi, not on the open air to be judged by sun and People. She could still taste it at the back of her throat. A sickly sweet reminder of mortality. The smell of death itself.
She swallowed heavily. Felt a cool breeze brush over her back, causing her slim frame to erupt in a shudder.
She wished for her Mom. For her Dad. Wished for her brothers, Lo'ak, Spider and Neteyam. Hoped that Tuk was kept away, safe from this madness.
They were all inside. Inside the small hut which they had called home for the last difficult months. Her mother and her father were probably hunched over a body, cold and stiff by now. Lo'ak slumping next to Tsireya, both of them giving each other a modicum of comfort. Spider standing in the back, lonely and forgotten in the chaos, trying to help, attempting to give his support by presence alone.
She was not as strong as him. Not as brave. She could not bear to join them in their wake.
Because Neteyam...
Golden eyes strayed down to blue palms, 10 bloody fingers defying her every plea by their mere existence. It was his blood on her hands. His blood as she had helped drag his corpse back home. A piece of his essence. She lowered her hands down to the sand of the beach. Watched unblinkingly as the water approached and hungrily lapped at her skin. And just like that, he was gone.
-
Small delicate hands applied a dark green paste to bruised blue skin. Kiri winced as Spider continued massaging the ointment into her pulped shoulder. It's smell was acidic and vile, like overripe banana fruit that had laid too long in the sun. She whimpered as his calloused palms stroked directly over her swollen joint.
A voice called out, amused but not unkind. "If you could stop squirming for a second, I would not have to hurt you, sis." His smooth tenor was like balsam to her sore ears.
She opened her mouth to respond and instead winced, her bloodied lip having torn open with the movement.
"Let me have a look at that for a sec." Her brother laid the little bowl to the side and bent over her hammock from the right, his hand grasping a healing leaf prepared with a fast acting coagullant.
With a gentle touch, he started treating her split lip with it, his transparent mask hovering mere inches from her face. Inadvertedly, her left hand came up slowly to rest against the side of his head. He stopped moving and stared at her. His own green eyes looking searchingly into hers. Once again, her hand started moving on its own, thumb stroking delicately across his ear, his temple and following the edge of the glass down to his jawline. She raised her head and, as if in a deep trance, pressed her bloody lips to his faceplate. He stood frozen, the shape of her mouth having left a bright red imprint barely an inch from his own. His mask started to fog up at the edges.
Kiri looked up at him, expectantly. Quickly, the boy inhaled one last breath of air, reached up to unseal his mask and pulled it up. He bent down just a bit further and kissed her back.
Fireworks in the girl's mind. Her hand tightened on the back of his head, holding him close. Her closed eyes stung with unshed tears.
But nothing lasts forever. After several too short moments Spider drove away again, breaking from her grasp, resealed his mask and started breathing again with deep, ragged gasps.
Wide eyes exchanged glances. He raised his arm.
"I... I need to go."
The human spun around and stormed outside.
The void in Kiri's chest returned with a vengeance.
-
There were raised voices amongst the Omatikaya High Camp. They had left after the attacks on her person at Awa'atlu had gotten out of hand. Now the conflict seemed to have followed them in kind. Ears pressed close to her head and tail raised behind her, Kiri sprinted towards their ancestral home, a little tent like hut at the relative center of their village.
She had been resting, outside, near the roosting banshees, when she heard the first roaring shout. Her legs dangling daintily from the edge of the gigantic cliff overlooking the vast teeming jungle below.
It had been the voice of her father. Bellowing in a rage she had never heard in him before.
"You have WHAT?!"
She couldn't hear the response, yet the small and helpless tone was distinctly her Spider.
Her hackles raised as the one sided argument intensified. Dad was provoking himself to ever greater heights, his voice breaking and crackling like the front of a huge storm in the moment before lightning crashes into the earth. Spider just kept apologizing. Saying nothing but that he was sorry to the ever increasing accusations.
She reached the hut, throwing back the leather tarp that served in the stead of a door and stormed inside. Mom and Tuk were huddled at the back, both flinching with each and every one of dad's exclamations. Her brother was hunched over, Dad looming over him like Toruk itself. Jake Sully had seemingly lost his mind, gesticulating wildly as he screamed. His spit flying in wide arcs, his mouth nearly foaming.
With one last barely intelligible "Traitor!" his arm came back, huge striped fist ready to drive down on the cowering boy's head.
Kiri leapt forward, interposing herself between her father's wrath and Spider without a single moment of consideration.
With a loud yelp and one last long look into the young man's eyes, she felt the strike coming before it hit her.
A sharp agony shot through her neck as a fist driven by monumental force connected with her nape. She saw herself falling. After that, only darkness.