Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."

In the end, Norm ceased to accompany Jake on the searches, as the wind of sorrow and guilt blew his ikran and himself away, he needed a rest. And so did his friend, who stubbornly, like a bull with its horns, adamantly refused to give up for at least five hours and simply close his eyes. Perhaps then he would see Neteyam, and perhaps that's when he feared sinking into melancholy. The man had been drowning once before, but even then, when his burning lungs were failing, it wasn't so painful, it wasn't so cut off from his heart. His heavy burden of being a battle chief and a father who clung to his family with an iron grip was unbearable, but Jake bore it. Involuntarily, he recalled those printed pages of the old Bible describing a long path to Jesus' crucifixion. However, he couldn't even think about that. For he was no son of God, he was Toruk Makto, whose destiny was waging war and begging for the dead souls of those who had fallen into arms of the Great Mother. Prior to that, he was a young veteran to whom fate had given both happiness and suffering, woven together like branches of rose and blackthorn into a crown framing his head. Blood dripped from the crown just as his tears flowed in the dim nights.

By his side all the way walked his wife. Her warrior heart beat in rhythm to his. They had sung and created that rhythm when they first mated with each other under the Tree of Voices. Then Jake and Neytiri's hearts appeared to stop for a brief moment in a passionate kiss, and a bond was formed between them that lasted through the storms and hardships, through the death and loss.

Yet, the dark storms didn't always end with the rising sun on the forecastle, sometimes sludge and mud that had been lying forgotten on the bottom for years washed ashore. Memories of Hometree, last glances of those she loved before they were killed, her son's smile. And watching her dear husband, her stronghold, scour his arms and shoulders to find the one who had probably died, only brought anxiety to her body and mind. Sometimes they would argue about it, briefly, and eventually embrace, listening to the souls of each other. That is, until he would leave the house in the early morning, giving their children kisses one by one, and then fly off into the wilderness.

"Ma Jake, wait."

She dismounted from her ikran and, detaching the kuru, pursued Jake. His dreadlocks, which had become unaccustomed to the salt water and were now loose and disheveled, somewhat hid his face. He didn't want to avoid her, keeping his tail between his legs, but he couldn't be distracted by her calling "I'll stop when I'm dead." Yesterday, there was a raid on the train, a piece of shrapnel hit him, luckily leaving only another awful bruise on top of his scars.

Neytiri's face contorted, she approached quickly, grabbing his arm. "Your people need you, your children too." her voice was low in the din of animals around her, drenched in harshness. It was breaking her heart to see the war tearing apart again what they'd built together over the years.

"And he needed me. He always did." Jake brought up that subject again, his words sounded mortified. Unlike the way he'd always given in to his wife and left the kid somewhere on the periphery, where he couldn't see him from their marui, he was more forceful now.

"It's not your problem, it's not your son, how many times I have to tell you?" she almost hissed, but her throat tightened in plea and mourning. What Neytiri wouldn't do to get that sick idea out of her husband's head. Couldn't he see, or perhaps he simply ignored, the fact, the mere fact of cursed blood in someone he cared so much for? Someone who, just like his father, had given her a scar. How could Jake allow that ignorant boy to call Toruk Makto himself a tawtute, a death-bringer. She felt terrible recalling that evening, as her children were once again terrified of her, and once again the blood flashed before their eyes. Blood of their friend, blood of their Mother.

"It's called atonement." Jake spoke it so quietly that Neytiri had to prick up her ears. She'd never heard the word before, and so she questioned, her voice a tad frustrated with the raspy accent.

"Atonement?"

"It means to make up for your sin." That word she knew precisely, she could still remember their decades-old conversation about sins and misdeeds. But her husband hadn't said a word about remedying them then. "And to amend a sin is to take on a burden, to take on something that kills you." Jake reached for her wrist, gently grasping her forearm, "physically," then he placed his palm over her heart, "and spiritually."

Her yellow eyes dilated as if she wanted to pull away. Neytiri saw him, saw his inner soul, and she had been doing this for a long time without tsaheylu. After all, only a blind person wouldn't notice his breakdown, his wandering between family, combat, and the one who was supposed to be buried sixteen years ago.

"But you have nothing to repay. You were Toruk Makto, you led the people," she spoke guardedly, watching Jake's face grow grimmer with each word. The cuts on his skin were creating wrinkles, a tired warrior's face. Neytiri had forgiven him all those years ago, or pretended to, for that shattering of the tree. Those murdered remembrances, her childhood, burning so vividly in her eyes. Her father's last words before he gave his soul to Eywa. Something she'd never forget, something she could only bury. The same way they washed and buried their first born son. For they needed to keep on living, and it would be impossible to do so while being tied to the bottom of the sea, where his body rested as an anchor.

"You're very wrong." Jake countered, walking deep into the thick foliage between heavy branches. Back then, the trail to Spider led West, but it was a dangerous one. One step between the clefts of damp soil and thick thorny bushes would be a step into the jaws of the beast, as the number of mines the RDA planted, the number of drones that flew like wild wasps, would knock him down, hitting him right in the chest. Fate was playing tricks on him when, as those drones died down, groups of hunters attacked the locomotives, and Toruk Makto couldn't stay aside. He was like an amulet, a totem for the Omatikaya, the one that destroyed the Home Tree to the ground. Never again did they put the blame on him, and many young warriors were unaware of his participation, considering him the one who vanquished evil, not the man who in fact guided that same evil by the hand into the heart of the people. "I'm at fault. Your father, his blood.. on my hands. Those soldiers who followed us, their blood is on my hands and I pray for them every day, but that's not enough."

His wife knew this, she saw him as an opened book which she turned freely from time to time. Her ears pressed against her skull as she heard those harsh, yet genuine, words. "You've paid the price." Enough. That's enough. I don't want to see that child, I don't want to, Neytiri wished she could beg him, scream at him with all her might. My father's death has been avenged, you've made it right, you've given and paid the price, what else do you need?

"Wait."

Her voice grew calmer, even though her heart was pounding and strain rumbled under her ribs. Neytiri wasn't good at lying, nor had she ever known how to do it. She could speak her heart out, could unintentionally offend, but never deceive.

She touched Jake's elbow as if to hold him, even though he had halted himself. Their tails no longer wagged in tension, the two of them froze in expectation. It seemed as if they were once again together, on a date somewhere away from home and children, just for each other. They let the war glow in her crimson coral necklace under the winter sun, while they hid in her shadow, at least for a few minutes.

Jake's body eased up, and closing his eyes, he rested his forehead against Neytiri's, breathing in her scent, so gentle and pungent at the same time. His hands loosely wrapped around her arms, his warm body embracing hers. She could feel the full relief of his necklace, his knife on his chest, which had become her knife. And his heart was her heart. She could cry in his arms, she could laugh and squirm in their games as they played with each other. He was her sanctuary, and at the same time, some days, his mind was a dark place for her to wander.

Her husband believed that he had to repent, that the sins he had committed were chanting in the depths of his soul. And he, clouded by grief, knew that in order to repent, to make amends, he had to make his enemy's son his own.

However, she refused to accept this.

His yellow eyes fell on the scar on her thigh as he pulled away. Jake hated to blame Neytiri, but that fight wouldn't have happened if she'd kept her temper. If she hadn't lunged at the boy with the knife, he wouldn't have run away, he wouldn't have disappeared with a blurry trail going somewhere out there, into the middle of hell. Or, if he had been home, if he had told the leaders to leave him alone for at least a night.

Sully might have been delirious, counting the stars in the sky and hoping. It made him feel sick, disgusted, and made him want to take a risk, to throw himself into the beast's mouth and let it rip his throat out. Maybe then he could finally rest with his insides torn open.

***

Moss burnt in a white shine under his feet. The boy walked freely, getting used to the weight of his song cord and the knife on his belt, and still tried to make himself not too revealing, vulnerable to the new fauna that greeted him with embraces of thorns and dense roots. After all, there was a large palulukan walking beside him, whose voice, or rather roar, he occasionally heard in his head. The beast was leading the way, off the paths where the drunken young warriors roamed.

Fratsyì moved nimbly and fluently, glancing back from time to time to make sure the boy wasn't stumbling. Spider remained weak, having just woken up in a new body that felt foreign. And in foreign body, there was always an unknown spirit raging, unaccustomed, as if it had forgotten what it was like to walk softly and imperceptibly. Fortunately, palulukan knew how to sneak into his head once in a while, directing his steps. Halt, there's mud here. So Spider sidestepped, avoiding getting caught by the viscous dirt hidden under the fallen leaves. His sense of smell was getting sharper and sharper, as without the mask he was able to feel more, to memorize the plant before even looking at it. The boy's instincts blossomed in the night fog, like a river spreading along smooth black skin. He didn't ask Fratsyì where they were heading, for his mind was filled with scents of palulukans, their outlines drawn by pheromones. It had to be a pack. And you're not wrong.

He seemed like a little boy, and he acted like a child, although his vocabulary of insults and jokes betrayed his true age, as well as his robust body, covered in scars, experience he'd carried for years. Fratsyì could read him, even though he wasn't a Na'vi, to utter those three words oel ngati kameie. All he had to do was stare at him, and he could see right through him, count his bones, despite their number being as incalculable as time for him. As far as he understood, the boy had lots of bones, a single heart, and a great, great soul. This was enough for the palulukan to perceive him as something that mattered to him. Something he had to lead to his pack.

It was dangerous, only Syrekali was aware of his mysterious disappearances and the wounded demon under Tsahik's care. She accepted that, regardless of her temper, but could the others? As Fratsyì turned to the side, where the mane of golden locks spun and peered around in wonder, an idea came to him, driven by an urge to shelter a lost child of cursed blood. He had seen him, and it had sent his beast heart thumping in a frantic rhythm.

Spider listened to the muffled footsteps of him and the palulukan for a brief moment, before he heard the crash of snapping branches. His body, hidden in the shadows, stiffened.

Fratsyì let out a small growl without opening his maw, as if in a manner of approval. "Stay like that," echoed in the boy's head as a dark figure with six limbs leapt from a high rock somewhere in the treetops. A palulukan. And by its physique, its massive jaw, Spider realized that it was a female. The look in her hazel eyes was terrifying, and the claws on her paws promised to tear into someone's flesh. So he stepped back, slightly behind the mid-leg of the beast, who was looking at the female with caution.

"Where do you think you're taking him?" She bared her fangs in Fratsyì's direction.

But to the boy's surprise, he could hear her. He didn't know if he was supposed to or not, if it was natural, but he did, and he mentally spoke to Fratsyì, wondering if it was odd. However, the beast had no answer for him.

Syrekali stretched her long neck, held up like a mountain range by massive spinal vertebrae. The Great Mother had given them to her so that she could easily carry her cubs in jaws later on. Here, though, it was more their fearsome appearance that played a role, as she wanted to look at the human, who had changed quite a bit since the first time she met him. Before She palulukan could even assess the fissure-like marks on the boy's dull skin, Fratsyì spoke. He shielded the young demon with his frame from her reach.

"He has nowhere to go."

"He has his people, you took him from the forests of Omatikaya. That's where he belongs."

"They don't need him."

Blinking his brown eyes in the gloom of the forest, Spider felt a shiver down his spine as he took in the scent of Syrekali. She smelled like an early syekalin no longer blossoming. He knew this because in the midst of the soggy tree bark, he couldn't detect the sweet, bitter odor of pollen and nectar. Winter had arrived so fast. And he lay there as if he were dead, existing elsewhere, switching consciousnesses with Fratsyì over and over until he lost the track of his own being. He did miss so many things, but didn't feel any sort of regret or remorse.

Hearing how the two were communicating with each other, aggressively snarling at each other, the young lad went silent, unable to draw a breath. His mind was like being caught between two fires, but every word they shared passed through him. He frantically processed every bit of information he could get his hands on. Omatikaya. It was familiar, rolling around on his tongue like a spark that was about to go off. The boy imagined a home, the fragrance of those orchids on the branches of the trees, Hallelujah Mountains, and two blue figures clinging to him like vines. But there was no warmth in his heart. He didn't know why, but not a single drop of nostalgia, which he doubted existed, fell into the half-empty grail of memories.

Now all Spider could count on was Fratsyì, and his palulukan senses.

The figure of a tawtute emerged from behind the shadow of the beast's powerful frame, looking warily at the female's claws, not her sharp eyes. Something told the boy that he ought not to meet strangers face to face. He thought carefully, putting the letters together in a stream that only the three of them could hear.

"I seek uturu."

So they stopped, their antennas lowered, peering down at the boy. Syrekali's nostrils, hidden beneath the two wings on her snout, flared in confusion.

"Uturu?" She was no longer surprised that the demon spoke to her as her kind did. God only knew what this boy was, who had survived Fratsyì's bite, a breath without a shell on his face, and such scars on his body. He may have spoken to her like a kid whose weitel was long, yet she couldn't understand the word uturu at all.

Spider himself didn't know how he'd gotten that term out of his mind. All he could remember was the odor of salt and water, a sensation of sand and humiliation. That's what he associated with that word, and Fratsyì, who stood guard over him, recalled the same. He relived that moment in his dreams, painted in ink blurred by the sea. He didn't remember faces, only the turquoise and Tsahik's knife.

"He's a pänuyu, just like I told you then." He murmured, one of his antennae on his head twitched in the direction of the boy. "He endured what Na'vi wouldn't have. He's following the path of promise. You see for yourself, Syrekali, the Great Mother is on his side. And whichever side She is on, we must be on that side. He needs uturu, a refuge..."

"It's your side, not ours, Fratsyì!" the palulukan roared with an unnatural tone in his head, like an avalanche of rocks falling from the sky. "The Sky People have never been nice to Na'vi, never will be to us." Syrekali swished her smooth tail, craning her neck in irritation. "You were always gone, coming back when the winters came. But now you've brought him, the one I saved and hoped would return to his homeland! And why did you steal him from Tsahik? What use is he to us?"

"Because he is my vit'mun." Strangely, the palulukan replied calmly, stemming the violent tide of her anger. Fratsyì always had a way of understanding her, even though he always wanted to claw at her throat.

"Vit'mun sounds like a legend, even more fabled than a pänuyu..."

"Is it? Toruk Makto, there were few of them from the Ancient Times, was considered a legend as well, a story from Anurai that had been forgotten." Palulukan shifted his paws slowly on the mossy soil bedding, clicking his jaws. "And don't pretend you don't know that Toruk Makto is living now, and that he shares the same blood as this boy."

She seemed to go quiet for a second, her face smoothed out in thoughts. Spider stood motionless, counting each heartbeat in his chest. He wasn't wanted by anyone, he knew it in his gut, it was clear as the day. Everyone had a purpose, everyone had a place. The Na'vi were always connected with people from their tribe, and bulls, wolves, even horses gathered in herds. And all of them had a place they would call home, a spot where you could return to and be welcomed. It was natural, it was all as planned by the Great Mother, who gave sanctuary even to those who had come from another world. And he was born in her world, but wherever he went, no matter where he disappeared, everybody would snap their teeth. The boy knew that he was ugly, foolish, and looked like a wild thing that could not fit into any group of those who moved on two limbs. And he knew that sins ran through his veins, for he was born with the sin, albeit he didn't remember why. After all, it's probably what demon blood does.

"You didn't see what I saw." Fratsyì sucked in a breath, and admiration rose from his lungs, a kind of naive faith that was common to People, and not them. Spider had no idea what he was talking about, what he had seen. But such confidence hadn't passed entirely through Syrekali, it was as if she'd been pushed, "The path of the promiser was chosen for him by the Great Mother. It is the path of pänuyu. And who better to guide those of him than our own kind."

The way of the Promiser was a rarity among the Na'vi, practiced by Anurai and those who inhabited the deserted mountains. It was something unfamiliar to the boy, and something he wanted no part of. Ice-cold sweat trickled down his neck to his chest, where a sleek blade scar cut like a spark in the sky. And on his shoulder, rough jaw-shaped marks stretched when he straightened his back. Perhaps it was a lie, he thought. But the word lie couldn't match the picture of the world he was in. There was no such word. There were secrets, there were concealments, but never blatant slander. If it was a truth that the boy refused to understand, it was only its holy cause to save his lost self. Coexisting with the palulukans may have sounded like madness, but was he a human being now, or part of the people he never belonged to? Spider thought it was better to live surrounded by those who had never known him. To become a creature that would conquer the forest and barren meadows, pile up bones and forget the human voice, the smell of filtrated air. Solid shoulders. Sky blue eyes. Beads in the hair. Pendant with a tooth of ilu. Gray hair. Blood on the teeth. Fever. Blue skin. Male dreadlocks. Knife at the throat. Black leather. Fuel oil in the water. Humiliation and disgrace. Tears of happiness on the sand. Salt in the curls. Turquoise on the horizon. Tall grass fern. Home Tree.

"Then he must go with us."

Her voice rang clear in his ears, snapping him out of his trance. He saw Fratsyì curiously glancing at him. Surely he must have missed something while his thoughts were racing through his brain like hawks.

The two palulukans walked in the same direction, stretching their six limbs over the cold stones. They were silent, only the usual labored breathing coming from their jaws, as if they had become fully animals again, not those who transmitted words through scents, on the level of the subconscious. Spider humbly followed them, noticing that it was easier to keep up with them with his now longer legs. Each hard surface he stepped on made his feet stiffer and his balance more precise than the old leaders' predictions.

The odor of the bark and antiquity swirled in the air, mixed with the mostly male pheromones. Only when Fratsyì and Syrekali started moving closely around him did the young man realize that they had entered Palulukans' territory. The place was blowing with an uncanny calmness and delayed alarm. He felt as if the dark green tewng between his legs became a trap, and the warmth of the two massive bodies was an inferno.

***

Rage of one of the clan leaders was never something that subsided quickly like the bonfires of young warriors following dancing and singing. However, this time, along with her wrath, Tsahik's face revealed confusion. Her lips moved briskly, in a hissing flow. Just as scorpions straightened their venomous tails before stabbing their enemies flesh. Morning at that moment seemed peaceful as well as unimaginably intimidating to those who knew the secrets of the Great Mother, hidden in a cave behind a high rock.

Ukawla was never afraid of those righteous words mixed with the fear of prophecy and responsibility. The old woman shook her head, not to justify her weakness to sleepiness, but to deny Tiali's worthless hesitation before the People, before Eywa. She had no choice but to say that everything was going according to plan. Her yellow profound, not blind, eyes stared at the figure of Tsahik, saying firmly that their duty was done, and the boy was on his own way, luckily not crossing the path of the Anurai during the night. So he was in the hands of the Mother, so whether he died or lived, it was no longer their mission anymore. But Tiali didn't stop, she kept cursing until the very last air was knocked out of her lungs. Everything went in the same circle, the beginning returned to the end, and she hesitated to make a new push.

Spiritual leaders of Anurai chanted morning prayers, wreathed in a veil of smoke and burning bull flesh. They sang praises to the majestic animal that would feed their clan before the winter, then ended the campfire gathering at the sight of old Olo'eyktan rising from his seat. All around them, warriors and harvesters slumbered, while children basked in their parents' beds in hollowed-out caves, hidden behind wicker covers. So tsahik walked quietly past the houses, careful not to disrupt such sweet and naïve dreams. For a moment she thought she saw Tsongtsyip's face through the gap in one of the curtains, but she quickly recovered, turning her head. Demon looked like one of the people's children, for he was a young boy who lived among the Great Mother and probably never knew his own mother.

The way of the orphan and the outcast was an eternal anguish that flowed from one day to many years. The paths were tortuous, which Eywa rarely enlightened. And when she did, she sent them into the hands of clan leaders, into the hands of those who cared. Tiali accepted a young man from the Trr'ong clan, but she couldn't embrace someone whose name and past she didn't know. And when she finally wanted to, as she sat there, racking her brain over the night of merriment and dancing, it was too late. The Mother of All had made the verdict, and only after tsahik's mind cooled down did she finally see the sign. The small demon was taken away by those who brought him. His trail was far away from her People, and she felt glad about that. She could only pray for one thing, in solitude, that his journey would be long full of favor.

Yet, if the Great Mother chose the path of blood for him, Tiali would pray for his quick death. When a higher force wasn't on your side, regardless of how hard you opposed it, you would be eaten alive by its famished entity. Above all else, no matter what, he didn't deserve to be slowly tormented in her uncommonly pitying eyes.

***

The stomping of paws and feet on the ground amidst the forest's silence formed a steady rhythm in which they walked as if in a trance. The deeper they moved, the darker the forest turned, dimming its colors. However, even through the pitch black, the boy saw everything as if it were daytime, as if his brown eyes had turned amber and he could see as the People saw everything all around them. Only one feeling in his chest eventually cleared a thick fog in his head. All those trees he'd walked past, he'd seen them through Fratsyì's eyes, back in those dreams. Barefoot, he could feel the same texture, the same dirt, and the same gravel that was digging into his skin. He could see with the eyes of great beasts, and even if he were to become blind, he wouldn't get lost. The boy learned to navigate not only through the picture, which seemed to be divided by the silhouettes of twisted trees, but also through the smells. An odor of serenity entered his nostrils with a gentle breath, almost like he was afraid to disturb the sleeping plants, whose blooms were sparse and yet delicate. A whiff of death crept through his fibrous flesh as he held his breath.

"You hear ancestors."

Fratsyì appeared to respond to the child's bewildered face, but his phrase only left him even more mystified. The boy looked at Syrekali in the naïve hope that at least she would tell him something. The female continued on her way, hearing in her head what the little demon was saying. Still, she wasn't rushing to explain the words he had heard. Palulukan, in her majestic form, gently urged Spider to turn his golden head to the left, which he did.

What he saw in the distance suddenly made him run out of air in his lungs. All he needed to do was take a deep breath, but he failed. The boy twitched and stopped, and so did his companions. Black figures, like shadows, surrounded him from both sides, looking in the same direction as he stared, but more reservedly. The tall, massive remains, which shone gray and pale white in the moonlight of the celestial bodies, reeked of death and peace. Like a long arch, ribs stood along the trodden path and were propped up by backbones, oblong bones, while skulls served as a bastion, like a protection against vermin. These were the ancestors of Fratsyì and Syrekali, hundreds of them, and even after their deaths they rested together in a line along the path they had paved for their children. On the bones were small chunks of meat, slightly rotted in a bright green color.

"We leave leftovers for them to have a treat." Fratsyì lowered his head, reading Spider's expression.

But the boy just glanced at him, and though he could see his soul like an open, shattered seashell, he asked, "You don't follow the ways of the Mother?" He said it out loud, but the two beasts understood him in instant and snorted from under their shut nostrils. As the boy who grew up next to Na'vi understood it, anything the hunters captured, every single prey they killed, had to be split among the living, to the last drop of blood and scrap of skin. However, now he was on the territory of those who followed quite different way, as they shared things according to their own laws, sharing everything even with those who had passed away long time ago. And it seemed that the Great Mother didn't really mind. All the same, they were inferior, those who rarely united with the blue People.

"We're following, but we have other paths, not those of Anurai or Omatikaya." Syrekali responded with a gentle growl and turned left from where they'd stopped, keeping on going. It was odd for beings like her to connect with the Tree of Souls, to talk to those who came before her. For them, everything was completely different with the dead. Leaving treats for their ancestors, palulukans honored them as if to remind themselves that those mountains of bones were once members of the clan. For her, it was pretty obvious, and for the boy, it was a revelation.

The scent grew stronger, thicker than those tree trunks hanging over the ravine. Spider avoided the traps through the beast's keen eyes. Fratsyì was guiding him, pulling the right strings in his head until they clicked, so that the boy's body would freeze in an instant, warning him against a disastrous fall. He had to walk carefully, but at the same time with confidence, sensing the tension pushing at his back like a violent wind.

The woods, surrounded by mountains of barren bones and stones, fell silent as the ground beneath his bare feet began to resemble firm, big-pawed grass, slightly withered and lacking its luminous color. Yet in the darkness, as he looked up from the ground to the trees, he caught a glimpse of shadows out of the corner of his eye, born from peace and the stench of blood and musk. He stopped, waiting for a hint, a cue from the palulukans trailing behind him. Syrekali caught up with him, and whispered in his mind, "Keep up with me, stay low." So the demon brushed part of his dreadlocks aside with a flick of his head, hiding his growing physique behind the female's middle limb, like a humbled cub. He knew he had to be very quiet, and preferably not breathe, letting his scent drift through the air at a slow pace, gradually introducing the clan to his foreign origin. Every misstep and unnecessary noise could seem hostile, too harsh, and not that the presence of Syrekali, or Fratsyì following her lead behind, could save his grayish-pink skin. Great Mother stood with him, but how could she possibly stop a predator in a fit of rage? Spider couldn't remember anything like it, seeing only the burgundy splattered on the forest floor after an ugly struggle, somewhere down in the foot of tall trees. He recalled how he loved to sit somewhere above, watching, observing the victim's death, but now he wouldn't change places with it, and so he walked as if he were shorter than grass underfoot, slower than a cold stream.

However, his half-dead yerik motions couldn't prevent a fierce, deep growl that came too suddenly. Fratsyì shifted, jerking his head in the direction of the sound as Syrekali nudged Spider with her paw to make him halt.

The big black mountain gleamed in the dim light of the moons, and its shadows emerged from the trees, their nostrils flaring, their green eyes burning, and their canines bared in a messy order. Like a blizzard they circled them, their tails thumping against the air as their antennas shot up, making the boy feel a wave of worry in his throat, spreading with acid. The back of his head stung, so that he would have dipped his head into the lake where his blood flowed and the threads of his unfinished tewng were scattered, into the tepid ocean where salt cut his skin, but he couldn't do that then. Cold droplets of sweat trickled down his back, mixing with the warmth of the female's stomach, who carefully watched the largest figure move its mass on six legs, expressing clear dominance, evident power over them all. Suddenly, though, the young lad felt certainty, a kind of serenity and respect in Syrekali's gaze as she looked at the male, who stopped on a high rock. And Spider knew, he could see through Fratsy's gaze, that it was a leader. All around them were the members of the pack, the family, whom he had awakened with his unwanted presence.

The Great Mother played a game that no other creature on this giant moon knew how to perform.

"What is that?" And he heard their voices, as if they were able to speak, to put the sounds together into a single whole, clear words. It was nothing more than an illusion, and yet the boy knew it and knew how to distinguish it, despite the aching in his head, which was growing even worse with anxiety as well as savage fear. His throat would have let out a whimper and a frightened hiss if Syrekali hadn't mentally gagged him, pushing his body closer and closer to hers. His dark blonde dreadlocks clung to her skin.

"Fratsyì, explain yourself." The pack leader spoke. His massive snout was scarred worse than those cliffs where their forefathers had once been fighting with each other, crushing one another's skulls against the heights where only birds and ikrans soared. The boy had seen it there, in his dreams, and knew the feeling of pressure when a large paw pressed down on his temple, forcing the insides out with a distinctive crunch that didn't sound as resounding as a defeat at that moment. Spider hadn't questioned Fratsyì about it, but he could guess that those memories were generational, that his resigned look portended only blind faith. "I never dreamed that a hideous demon would come to our ancestral land. I never thought..."

When Fratsyì unconsciously responded with a roar, the leader disregarded it and turned his gaze to the figures of him and female. "..that Syrekali could do something like that."

The pack howled in a teasing yet discouraging manner. They were magnificent beasts, yet their minds, bounded by primal instincts, seemed to turn into pitiful moths, fluttering their wings at every disgruntled grunt of their leader. And not that he demanded it, Spider didn't really sense any order or visible arrogance, it was simply the way it was. It was as natural as the warmth of the female's body next to him, the body he wanted to meld into and shelter in, hissing at everyone outside, showing the essence of himself that was hiding under his vile skin. He looked like an unripe yovo fruit, beneath the skin of which was a sour, foul liquid that palulukans could smell with their noses.

Fratsyì was about to answer, but he was interrupted by a figure standing some distance away from the action. It turned out to be a female, with a dry hide hanging off her body in several places. Palulukan herself looked like a dark gray river pebble that had dried up under the sun in a hot day. Her canines revealed themselves in the moonlight, however, the boy failed to count every one of them. Some of the upper fangs were gone, the sharp ones that could have been used to sink into his throat. Knowing that she was likely no longer a hunter made him feel easier, though her great frame didn't relax the lump of strain in his gut, so he inhaled slowly, his hand resting on Syrekali's waist. He could feel her shuddering, her gaze locked on the weathered female.

"Tawtute.. but why so big? And where's the shell on his face?"

Displeased grunts from the jaws of early winter starved ceased as her terribly conscious voice echoed between their minds and the demon's. Her faint eyes peered at his torso, which Syrekali diligently tried to hide behind her paw, though it was no use. For she could see through them and through what they attempted to hide behind. A mystery they held.

"This is Layfnu, the eldest of the pack," she quietly informed the boy as she observed Fratsyì getting into a guarded stance.

Tension at that moment was about to build to the point where everyone had to break out, forming a rampart, true black walls of hides and bones, great mountains that would crash down on the boy. He knew their ancestors had fought like this. A familiar feeling of skull crunching, pressure in his nasal cavity, and shoved awake from a dream into another dream, which was his own. But when the chills ran through his body and he pricked up his ears, and his back muscles spontaneously lined up in a tight line, no one stirred. It was when Spider saw the leader's glance at him, and the measured way Layfnu padded, her parched claws brushing over the rocks in smooth motion.

The boy recognized their knowledge, which was beyond the reach of the beasts, not their kind at least. Or so it seemed to him.

When Fratsyì turned his massive head toward him and spoke a simple word that everyone in the pack heard, despair and fear gained a scent, a shape, a physicality, a presence in the air that hadn't been there before. Promiser.It echoed in his head as if thousands of boulders from the mountains were falling on his chest. His weight was held up only by Syrekali, who made his feet stick to the ground with her thoughts, not her body. "Keep your fear to yourself, they hear everything." And they indeed did hear it all, either by baring their teeth or quietly absorbing his odor. The bark of an old tree, that is, the smell of poison, and a slight whiff of death, which is their origin, oozed from his skin, cracked with white stripes. His heart was beating furiously inside him, and he mentally wanted to dissolve, yet he couldn't. He was too big for his own kind, too easily preyed upon by them, and too lost to find the path that fate had erased like rain on damp earth. So Spider stood there, silently, scared to form even a word they were familiar with, praying to something he didn't fully understand, something he'd forgotten and longed to find once again. Despite the terror that clutched at his throat.

"I'm asking for guidance," the boy muttered in his head as the pack leader came too close to them and Syrekali, leaving Fratsyì unseen somewhere in the periphery. The female wasn't even bothering to look the stronger male in the eye, warning him. It was arrogant, but she did it with ease, as if she knew those vivid yellow irises like tracks in this forest.

"Why not ask Anurai? You know the ways of the Na'vi, you are dressed like them, you walk on two limbs like them, and you carry weapon," the leader gritted his teeth, but the tone in the boy's subconscious was restrained, reasonable, "The way of the pänuyu is a deliberate one, the way of the people who carve flutes, who tame our kind... Looking at you, it seems to me that Fratsyì wants to sow darkness in my view." Before the palulukans could snort in amusement as they watched the tawtute raising his head, the boy spoke.

"It was Eywa who chose my path, not me. She led me, through Fratsyì..." the demon's brown eyes peered into his soul. And for the first time in a cycle, there were many of them, the leader averted his gaze.

The old female looked over at Fratsyì, whose tail dangled over the ground, touching the barely sensitive tips of the grass, while the black petals framing his head were pinned down. He had to endure to the end, he knew what he was doing, knew what Spider was doing, for he could sense him through the scent of his pack, read his thoughts through the fear. He was his vit'mun, he entrusted his heart to him, so that he could enlighten his core, or plunge his amber knife into it.

The leader kept quiet, staring out at his own pack rather than at Syrekali, shielding that boy's figure. Palulukans had their own perceptions, their own vision of how the laws of the Great Mother worked, who had established these for them and silently demanded her ways to be followed. Rejecting her would be like snapping at their own mother while she was nursing them.

"I've seen your ways, a-ancestors' death and their fury," spoke Spider suddenly, in pure Na'vi that winded through their skulls and weaved webs. Webs which would catch his audacity like fish in the nets, and at the same time begin to entangle palulukans themselves. The boy trusted his instincts and attempted to ignore the female's low growl next to him. She told him to be as quiet as the whisper of the leaves, but here he was, arising from the night, looking into death's eyes and speaking. For words were like arrows in that moment, able to defend, to kill the pack's doubts, "You can kill me, but you will never know what the Great Mother bequeathed. I bear her promise," at which point his limbs tightened as if in spasms, his lungs shrank to the size of yovo fruit, and his bones turned cool in a grave under the tall tree where those same burgundy drops of the victim's blood blazed. He didn't want to take its place. He had to keep talking, so that the cobwebs could be woven into a dense fabric covering his fear, "I bear you a word." And that word meant song. The demon's voice broke between the great beasts' statures, and for a moment it seemed to the boy that they all became statues, black mountains on the horizon when the sun sank behind the Big Eye.

Spider was pänuyu, and for the first time he realized what Fratsyì had referred to.

***

The lab smelled of new sanitizers, as the acidic orchid pollen on the scientists' clothes did nothing but stink in conjunction with the sterility. Norm was sensitive to the lye solution, however, and after dumping a whole block of water on his flushed skin, he leaned over the sink, trying to stand on his feet. His brown tank top was stuck to his body from sweat, and his gray pants were hanging down around his waist. The man's limbs resembled the sticks of the sprawling trees on the outskirts of their current base.

The Avatar's sessions grew longer, up to fifteen hours a day. Spellman had lost weight, his beard and mustache covered the once well-shaven face of a young PhD. Sometimes he laughed, but told nobody about how he had come to remind himself of Jake, when he used to stay in a pod right from sunrise until nightfall, until Grace forced him out. He odored, he appeared pathetic, his stomach was clutching at his spine, and the only thing missing was a yellow wheelchair with the words "Marines" and his surname on the wheel bar. Then he'd get into character and indulge into the useless delusional ideas of someone who was either dead or, Lord help us, had been captured by RDA. It was painful for Norm to think about it, sickening and scary, but he was a realist and knew, very well, that the kid didn't even have a chance with no battery. Unless he dug it up somehow from a corpse within a thickness of damp soil containing remarkably clean filter. It sounded like a fantasy, but the man wanted to buy into it until the realization would hit him.

He warmed up the shaving blade with hot water he'd heated up in a kettle and foamed a bar of soap. For the first time he felt how thick and coarse his beard was when the razor stopped after going barely two inches. With a sigh, he began to rinse the metal sharp edge in the bowl, wondering how he managed not to cut his cheek.

When a man five years younger than him glanced at him in the mirror, Norm pulled away from the wet surface of the sink and wiped his chin with a towel, happily forgetting the boy's existence for a few minutes. It was easier that way. It was easier to pretend that all the troubles had gone over with the sonorous rumble of a recently blown up gun locomotive, yet when he entered the communal kitchen, the first thing he smelled was ethyl. According to the standards, the kitchen should only smell of heated food and dishwashing detergent, and no stench of alkaloids could be present. Norm came to realize what was happening when, in the pitch black, where no work lights were on, the smell of fumes seeped into his nostrils, as if an alcoholic's abdomen had been gutted. Organics had been his passion at high school, though he knew how awful it could smell at times.

A harsh, cold light revealed the figure of a woman leaning back against the kitchen cabinets. Mary stood like a Holy Mother with teary, swollen eyes staring at the dead spot after her crucified son was taken down from the cross. In McCosker's hand was a bottle of rum they had brewed from sugar beans months ago. The Omatikaya had their own equivalent of booze, which they wouldn't have minded sharing, but it wouldn't have been able to intoxicate a human being. Both biologically and spiritually, this relaxing drink was too weak to bring such rotten tawtute into the drunkenness of the Great Mother. And there stood Mary, who bore the name of a saint, with dark circles under her eyes and her lips chapped to the point of blood. Her golden hair was tangled around her neck, as if she wanted to strangle herself with those strands. Under the light of the headlamp, her pinkish-milk skin looked corpse-like, ghoulish.

"Mary," Norm began, feeling a rush of nausea and chills down his spine, only to have her head turn sharply.

"He's dead." Mary broke out in laughter, spittle dripping from the corners of her mouth as her tongue lolled. She hid her face, throwing the bottle to the floor. It rolled under the counter with a thud, to which she muttered shit and held her breath to avoid getting sick. The red whites of her eyes were irritated, and it looked as if a wave of alcohol and insanity had coursed through her body. And so it was.

"Mary, you'd better go back to your room..." Spellman sternly retorted. Among the scientists, everyone was equal, yet one of them had to be more equal. And that someone was Norm, who should have stopped that nonsense.

McCosker wasn't listening, she shifted her leg to lean on the opposite kitchen table, feeling like her head was about to crack. Despite the pain, the cloying delirium that spun like a screw in her mind, she continued, wiping her mouth. Her breathing labored as her voice rasped, "You and Jake are two idiots, no offense, 'cause the kid's gone. He's dead, Norm, so stop c-circling the wagons." Mary dug her fingernails into a glossy surface as Norm came closer. He was too kind for his own misery, and Mary knew how to take advantage of that when she should have gotten a slap on her cheek for saying that. Perhaps then the rum would be out of her guts faster, "I don't understand..."

Her shrill voice floated between them, the oxygenated ethyl molecules soaking into the man's shirt. He choked back his emotions, "You don't understand what?" and with a sigh he waved it off, feeling alarmed deep inside, "No. You know what, go sleep it off-"

Mary grabbed his forearm to shift her weight on him, her bright eyes darting wildly as if studying him. She was a blessed soul who was granted the ability to read people like biblical verses, however, behind the holiness often stood dark thorns. She murmured in plea.

"I don't know why I didn't follow Nash."

It was an old story that went back for two long, lonely years for her. Spellman restrained himself, seeing the scene in front of him as McCosker packed his things and argued with Mary. The whole thing seemed to have happened only yesterday. For Nash was more rational than ideological, after all. He sniffed out like a dog that it was better to be on the payroll of the new former administration with the possibility of returning to Earth, and so it happened. His wife originally was supposed to follow him, and with her will clenched into a small fist, she remained living from a water block to the water block, from a new energy source to a new purifying filter. In tears, she later explained that she didn't want to be under the supervision of those whose contract she'd messed up fifteen years earlier, who came back only because their true home was in ruins. Though everybody secretly knew that naïve Mary had done this for the boy she'd been looking after just until he learned to make his own way in the world. Ashamed, she feared being without Nash, and yet she had adapted to being terrified just as quickly as letting go.

"I'd be flying with him right now, all those five light-years away," her skin covered in vapor. Mary was repenting to Norm, picturing his dark sweaty tank top as a black priest's cassock, "..forgetting Pandora like a scary dream." Her teeth glinted as her lips parted in a crooked smile, "I'd fuck with Nash until we lost our senses and forgot it all. Him."

Her fingernails released the man's upper arm. Red half-moons appeared on it.

"I wouldn't want a baby. I was a shitty m-mother," the intoxicating state fogged her vision, and through the blur she wished she could read the symbols, the expression on Norm's face, but unable to do so, she made up her own reality, which was less difficult to hide in. And she still wanted to scoff at calling herself a mother, which she never was, neither in her current life nor in her previous one. "I'm bad." Tears splashed from Mary's eyes, and her flushed cheeks glowed. She resembled the statue of the Madonna, who wasn't destined for God's realm, but for the wrath of the Mother who ran the land where she stood. To the man's sight, she appeared defeated, and to the greater power's eye, she was a lowly, drunken woman who only knew how to place blame on her own like putting piles of limestone on a rock, entombing herself in them, forming a new "innocent" self out of her dual selves.

Norm made her go back to her bunk, through the dim, narrow corridors in the temporary base. Mary wept like a sinner until her brain shut down and she collapsed on his shoulder. Spellman ensured that he laid her firmly on her side, propped up against the pillows, so that she wouldn't choke on her vomit. After tying her brittle hair into a loose ponytail, he recalled that originally he'd been hungry, but lost his appetite. The smell of ethyl burning in human guts was insufferable to him, and it was not only that the kitchen needed to be ventilated entirely, as the filtering system couldn't handle it. Days since the child's runaway were just awful, gnawing at his soul more than the ikrans ggnawing at the bodies of smaller creatures after long searches.

"Norm?" spoke Max's voice, making Norm suddenly realize that he'd come to their shared laboratory. A slightly damp towel was still hanging on his shoulder, wet either from shaving or from McCosker's tears.

Norm forced her back to her bed, through the dark, narrow corridors of the temporary base. Mary cried like a sinner until her brain shut down and she fell asleep on his shoulder. Spellman made sure to make her lie flat on her side, resting against the pillows, so that she wouldn't choke on her vomit. After tying her brittle hair into a messy ponytail, he remembered that he had originally wanted to eat, but lost his appetite. The smell of ethyl burning in the human gut was unbearable to him, and it was not enough that the kitchen would now have to be filtered completely, because the ventilation system could not handle it. Days since the child's runaway were just awful, gnawing at his soul more than the ikrans gnawing at the bodies of smaller creatures after long searches.

"Norm?" spoke Max's voice, making Norm suddenly realize that he'd come to their shared laboratory. A slightly damp towel was still hanging on his shoulder, wet either from shaving or from McCosker's tears.

Spellman glanced toward his friend, who still stood in his white coat with his glasses slightly greasy. He must have been so preoccupied with something that he forgot to clean the bridge of his nose.

On a table below his hands were various types of pincers and transparent hollow boxes two inches wide and two inches high. Some of them contained either purple grains or pellets. Norm recognized what it was when he saw the cob of corn on Max's side. Its yellow body shimmered white under the blue light of the lamps above.

Norm was the first to speak, feeling like he had to say something, to explain why he roamed around the base as if he couldn't find a place for himself, "Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt," he questioned the appropriateness of the experiment on a fetus that Cooper produced, but he remained quiet.

Patel waved his hand, "It's fine, just thought you'd gone to bed by now." He cleared his throat and averted his eyes as if sweeping the metal surface of the table.

"And what are you doing?"

"Fun."

Fun was what scientists called interim experiments in between their main projects to entertain themselves and relax mentally. But Max certainly wasn't one of those people, and he hardly wanted to brush aside his nagging thoughts in this way. He always had sugar bean extract on the shelf of his bathroom cabinet to dull the occasional headaches.

"Didn't know your interested in Cooper's work," Norm muttered, throwing the towel off his shoulder.

"That's not the point." Max sharply objected, holding the tongs securely in his palm before tucking them into an envelope. The corn laid there like a dead guinea pig with its uncharacteristic purple kernels torn out, "I just... had an idea. A random notion, thought, theory." His voice was soft.

His brown eyes met Norm's, and he stepped closer toward the table to look into the small transparent cubes with the tops clipped off. There were the same lump-like structures, colored like an evening sky, "I never thought that this unfortunate hybridization could survive."

Before he could nod, however, Patel said, "That's not the point." His slightly plump fingers delicately removed one enlarged kernel from the plastic vessel and, after briefly showing it to Norm, the man squeezed it between his fingertips and it popped with a muffled "pop." Just like popcorn, Spellman might have thought.

"So they really are like tumors..."

"But those contain substance, and this one is empty." Max finished the sentence and put the dry, torn shell back. The man inhaled before continuing, "Purple.. purple. Norm, normally I'm not a fan of sci-fi theories, but listen. Do you remember that brief scan of Spider's brain?"

Of course he did.

Norm's face turned gloomy. He leaned slightly toward Max, trying to read his mind, "Those purple spots on the yellow body of the brain?" The occipital lobe was 'damaged' by what they thought for about nine percent, with increased levels of neural activity. Spellman learned all of this like a mantra, and of course he knew what they were talking about.

"Right. Still, the image is superficial and, as you and others think, illustrates brain activity, but I disagree." The man shook his head and lifted his glasses from the bridge of his nose to wipe the grease on his skin. It was clear as if on a snowy-white examination table how difficult it was for him to collect his thoughts, "I requested a 3D model of the scan from a simulation program. Results'll be 83% accurate, complete bullshit, I know, but I just couldn't attach sensors while he slept."

In the meantime, his loyal colleague stared at the wrecked purple kernel on the table, hearing the lamp above him humming longingly, as if someone was spinning a small coin on a steel surface, on his cerebral cortex. Tension was stretched between them like a filament, and now it was about to ignite. The smell of ethyl hit Norm's nostrils again, causing him to sigh and ask directly.

"And what is that 3D visualization going to show you exactly?"

Max's gaze dropped downward, puzzles, pieces of his mind, gears of his intellect, putting together in three-dimensional planes. The mechanism was such that no matter what theories he put on the two overlapping plates, from either angle he could see the projection of his ideas, the answer to his spine-chilling question. Perhaps it would be better for him to have never found that damned corncob sprouting on a tall stalk next to their former base, Hell's Gate. Its dark blue color of smooth, veined leaves beckoned more than any familiar orchid or thick-leafed fern. Max couldn't resist, and when he compared the brain scan to the corn, just in a crazy afterthought, he regretted everything, while also feeling that the answer to his guesses was right there in front of him on a surgical plate.

All he had to do was bring the scalpel to the thin hymen harboring a secret. It was difficult to do with trembling hands.

"That fifteen percent of brain's damaged body, those spots. I believe they're all hollow."

Norm was right a couple of days ago about replacing the lamps with newer ones. The heat inside the glowing bulbs had reached its peak, along with the intensity between the scientists, plunging them into pitch blackness, with an emergency light at the end of the corridor. And the only sound in the thickened air was a ragged-

"What?"

***

His first night in the woods, which he knew only through the yellow eyes of the beast, was a sacred one for him. When he spoke the word to the pack of palulukans on whose land he had come, the boy unconsciously became the one who bore the Promise. The Great Mother placed that burden on him as if she expected his sturdy yet small body to bend in half like the branch of the tree in the hollow under which he dreamt. The moist roots became his bedding, wrapping around his muscles, his stature, even though it was him who struggled to blend into the tree's centuries-old pattern. His skin was veiled in sweat and turned milky in the light of the glowing herbs. Behind him, where his knife rested, Syrekali stretched her tired limbs across the dried leaves, her warm breath keeping him safe in the dark night. She had to change his scent, turning the notes of the bark into a delicate musk. A smell typical for cubs, naturally.

It was mortifying to him, but then, in front of the leader Tsxerok', the so-called elder Layfnu, he couldn't bare his teeth and reveal his temper. As Fratsyì himself taught, the young demon bowed his head and leaned against the female's body, absorbing her scent and her heartbeat. That was the only way the palulukans pledged to protect him in the moment of misfortune and danger. He was aware of this, but the contrast between the Na'vi customs that had set him on his path made him feel miserable and ashamed. Spider looked like he was falling on all fours, and scrambling on his knees and elbows, he followed a track that wasn't trodden for him. Patience was to make him a fighter, and bloody cuts were to make him a disciple.

In Anurai's forests, there were fewer grasshoppers chirping their pink bellies, so it was quieter. Silence had the power to immerse the mind in peace, but at that minute it forced the boy to dig back into his memories, which, like fragments, failed to form a clear picture. He knew, but he didn't know why he knew. Pressure inside his head finally drove him to close his eyes, twitch his head, and ease the taut muscles in his back, arms, legs, abdomen. However, somewhere in the background he could hear the scorpion's legs, although his sense of smell didn't catch any of the centipedes. It took Spider a while to figure out that it was a product of his imagination, which he couldn't put to rest. Visions of the two women, Fratsyì's teeth, and Syrekali's physique who was now snoring softly, floated before him.

Fever. Scorpion. Tall tree. Blue skin. Yellow eyes. Girl. Braid. Rifle. Hand. Veins. Voice with an accent. Wide shoulders. Orange handcuffs. Storm. The flight. The sea. Whales. Sand. Salt. Water. Blood. Fuel oil. Knife. Amber. Tears. Scream. Arrow. Boy. Turquoise eyes. Calls. Children's singing. Omaticaya. Forest. Mountains in the sky. Bite. Agony. Heat. Fear. Death. Death. Nawmun.

Nawmun.

"Say it again. Not aloud, in your head." The next morning, when the sun hadn't yet emerged from behind one of the Eywaeveng's moons, the male was already dragging Spider's body out of a cozy shelter under the roots of a tree, acting like a pesky little palulukan who had never seen his elders pelt a hide. And now the two of them were standing not far from the territory of the pack, somewhere in a woodland meadow dotted with periwinkles.

"Nawmun." The boy pronounced it clearly to Fratsyì, resigning himself to his fate standing in the midst of the damp grass, finding support on his feet.

This new name, more of a nickname, was invented for him by Tsxerok', who gave the half-human boy the lowest, but at the same time a privileged place in the pack. It was actually a set of sounds that those black massive beasts could make to designate him. Not that Spider was angry about it, but from now on, he was Nawmun.

"Good. That's much better. Just say it like you mean it."

The boy didn't know who to confide in, except Fratsyì. And even he trusted him only because, despite the pain and bite, endless nightmares, he really knew him. They shared each other's lives, memories blurred over time. All other people, animals, even plants that exuded wisdom, were hostile strangers with knives hidden behind their backs. Spider, Nawmun, couldn't even understand why the very concept of a knife hidden behind his back made him wary and inherently hostile. It must have been a weapon, no doubt as sharp as the fangs of mighty creatures. It hung from his waist, tied with a thread from a green loincloth.

Like every other cub, he had to learn to hunt. And the early morning, when the animals were just opening their eyes, was a perfect opportunity to attack. The boy's chest and back muscles stored the strain of the bowstring and the speed of the arrow, but the male countered. "Only blue people do that." Spider, Nawmun, felt a bit shy, as was typical of the lower palulukans, whose behavior was inherent in nature. All he had to do was allow nature to build the foundations in his mind, and maybe then he would follow their ways. Fortunately, he was able to follow, to imitate, feeling a surge of desire to live in his chest. His heart started to beat faster and his scent spread wider.

Fratsyì had already chosen their prey, marking the area where they would corner the young yerik with his keen eye. Just as a palulukan moved his clawed paws across the grass to create wind, so like a lemur, the boy made his way through fallen trees, blending in with the grass and bushes. All that could reveal him was his distinctive gray skin against the morning's light.

It might be that only by releasing a beast from himself he could run faster, not letting the six-legged victim escape his sight.

The young lad sighed in exasperation, halting his pace. Hunger was tearing his stomach to shreds, and at last the feeling that made him alive had blossomed into sharp thorns in his gut. Nevertheless, he couldn't catch the terrified yerik.

And yet palulukan didn't snarl, didn't swing his tail in frustration. "It's not a big problem. Let your hunger be your encouragement, Nawmun."

"Spider," he automatically responded, wiping wearily at the saliva on his chin. After he came to realize what he'd just said, he quickly corrected himself, "Ah I-"

"Very well," the beast shook his head, shaping the sounds into words to make himself more clear, "Let you be Spider in our small circle of three." The boy was amused at how Syrekali immediately became part of that circle. "But get it through your head that you are Nawmun in front of the others. As Tsxerok' said, so it shall be."

Receiving an affirmative nod of his head, in the light of the dim purple sky, Fratsyì spoke, "Now tell me your name again."

"Nawmun."