Chapter Text
Neteyam waited until the morning of the next day to go out. He knew better than to ask his parents for permission to leave again after what had happened, but he wasn’t willing to just sit on his ass and wait for something to happen. Besides, when he first went out to look for Lo’ak, he hadn’t exactly asked either. It’d be fine.
He took careful, quiet steps outside the marui, making sure not to disturb his parents’ rest, but nearly failed that task by jumping when he found Kiri standing right outside with arms crossed. She did not look amused, scowling deeper than she normally would, and her tail swung low.
Despite the annoyed expression, her voice thankfully remains quiet and passive. “Where are we going?”
Neteyam really doesn’t have the energy to deal with this. His patience was thinning with every new bad thing that happened—with every new bad thing he failed to prevent.
“I’m going to look for Lo’ak,” he admits honestly, because he knows there’s no going around it. It’d be obvious even if he had lied. A part of him was too exhausted to argue with her at all, but he knew he wouldn’t ever forgive himself if she’d gotten hurt again, so he forced himself to speak regardless. It was his job.
Kiri walked past him, over to the docks where their pieces of equipment were stationed. “Okay. Give me a bit.”
“You are not joining.”
She doesn’t even look at him when she answers. “Yes, I am.”
Stubborn. Neteyam knows there’s no bending a Sully’s will, especially as a Sully himself. It’s not like he could tie her up to a tree—and that was far too cruel of a thing to do anyway. If she insisted on coming along, then…
“Fine,” Neteyam relented with a sigh, barely noticing the way Kiri’s entire body perked up in surprise. “But you don’t leave my sight for even a second. And that’s final.”
Kiri knows she’s pushing her luck, so she doesn’t comment on how irked she is at his overprotective nature. She lets the silence of the agreement sink in until Ao’nung arrives by their marui on an ilu, eyes furrowing at the additional Navi standing beside Neteyam. But he recognises it’s not any of his business enough to question it. The look on the other boy’s face was enough to kill away his curiosity.
Rotxo, despite noticing the heavy and tense air that hung over them, still asks anyway. “What’s up with you guys?”
…
Neteyam sighs.
Ao’nung grimaces.
…Somehow, Rotxo is the only person who’s making the trip less insufferable.
Although Ao’nung feels that there weren’t any many more issues between him and the Sully siblings — not that everything was fully resolved, but they weren’t escalating, so he gives it a temporary pass — the tension building up between Kiri and Neteyam suffocated him. Consequently, the only person uninvolved was the only one who managed to keep him distanced from the two.
They clearly didn’t want to talk it through either. Neteyam kept his gaze focused on the waters around them, but would continuously spare passing glances at Kiri’s direction. Kiri, who was taking more time to assess the surroundings, would always seem to twitch every time Neteyam looked at her, and her eyebrows were furrowed in the way Lo’ak’s seemed permanently affixed.
“...Seriously, what’s up with them?” Rotxo asks after a while of riding against the waves, in a hushed whisper, leaning into Ao’nung’s space just in case their voices could still be heard.
“I don’t know,” he responds. Because he doesn’t. And doesn’t think he wants to. That’s too much trouble, and he’s already knee-deep in his own shit. “It’s not our business.”
Rotxo gives him a look.
He looks away.
“Let’s just focus on finding Lo’ak,” he says instead, turning his head back at the siblings in front of him, where Neteyam subtly glances over at Kiri, and where Kiri’s right eye twitches in annoyance.
…
“As soon as possible.”
Rotxo snickers, and Ao’nung thinks he’s being loud on purpose.
Neteyam gives Kiri another glance. This time, she catches him before his gaze can leave her. She clicks her tongue, eyebrows furrowing with the motion. “Can you stop looking at me?”
“I told you you’re not leaving my sight,” he responds, keeping his voice level, because he doesn’t have the energy to yell or keep a strict tone.
Kiri rolls her eyes. He’s not sure why, but it’s as if she’d decided to take on the role of a trouble-chasing child now that both Spider and Lo’ak were gone. Not that they were ever all too different, but Kiri had always been able to remain passive no matter the situation. Still, the sight of it ticks Neteyam off, even if he doesn’t verbally express it.
“I’m not gonna magically disappear if you look away for more than 10 seconds,” she says, mostly a mumble, but impossible to miss in the quiet of the early morning hours.
Ao’nung grimaces again, despite not being a part of the conversation. Rotxo, for once, stays silent. They both pretend not to hear the conversation.
“You could.”
She doesn’t have anything to say that could refute that, so she doesn’t respond, and simply grumbles instead.
…It’s back to being silent.
Ao’nung’s not sure which is the better situation: Between complete silence where the tension is louder than the lapping waves around them, or being stuck in a conversation that raises the suspense without the option of leaving lest it’d make things more awkward. He’d much rather not be there at all.
Should he really be complaining?
…
Probably not. He started this all, after all.
He bites the inside of his cheek. Best to be quiet where silence was, not only an option, but a necessity. He won’t get himself into another problem when he’s already knee-deep in the first one he created, and has yet to solve.
(That won’t do any good to his reputation.)
They ride the wives in silence. Rotxo’s eyes keep glancing back and forth from one person to another, and Ao’nung doesn’t have it in him to break the quiet by telling him to stop. Neteyam and Kiri aren’t faring any better off in that regard, as their eyes keep switching from the sea to each other. He was content with pretending he didn’t notice that, though.
But it was hard to see anything at the bottom of the ocean from the very top. This wasn’t their goal anyhow. They’d wanted to search by other island coastlines, so Ao’nung tapped the side of his ilu’s head and led them to the shore of a small island. He clears his throat first before he finally speaks, only a little bit unnerved at the amount of attention he immediately receives.
“This island isn’t too far from ours,” he begins, inching just a bit closer to where the sand first merges with the water of the sea, slowly getting off his ilu. “So I wouldn’t get my hopes up. But I think it’s a good idea to check it anyway.”
Rotxo gets off his ilu with a hop, all too eager to get away from the tension between the Sully siblings, and nods his head. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, walking further away from Ao’nung. “I’ll go see what’s up, uh… over there. I’ll see you guys in a bit.”
The three of them watch him leave in a sprint. Ao’nung would be mad if he didn’t understand where he was coming from. He lets out a curse under his breath, before he faces back to Kiri and Neteyam.
“This place is pretty small,” he notes, making sure he doesn’t switch his gaze around too much between them. “So I think we can finish clearing it in a few minutes. I’ll go to the east side, since Rotxo’s in the west.”
That was all he had to say. He wasn’t about to order them around, especially not while they were in that mood. He turns his whole body around and makes his way towards his side of the island, at a pace that he hopes neither conveys his discomfort with the situation nor his urgency to leave.
Kiri doesn’t want to discuss any further details with Neteyam because she knows he won’t allow them to separate, and while she’s, begrudgingly, willing to accept that, she refuses to vocally acknowledge it. Instead, she simply walks forward, and doesn’t bother to react when she hears her brother immediately follow after.
It’s not that she’s trying to be petty! …Or, okay, maybe she kind of is, but it was hard not to be. Things were already so difficult and aggravating as it were, and she didn’t need Neteyam breathing down her neck like her parents already do.
She just wanted some normalcy. Even if it’s fake, she wants to feel like everything is alright just for a second. Logically, Kiri is aware that’s not a good way to think about it, but logic isn’t what matters right now because everything that made her world has disappeared.
Besides. What other way to deal with that horrible coping mechanism than to truly find part of the normalcy she was missing? If they find Lo’ak, she’ll feel a little better.
(She knows she’s not being rational. She knows. She also can’t bring herself to care at the moment.)
Neteyam stays a good distance away from her. He’s not far, of course, but he’s at least not hovering over her shoulder, and that’s distance enough for her to pretend he’s not there. She could still hear his footsteps, sure, but if she just drowned it out with the sound of the waves lapping by the shore with Eywa’s heartbeat, then she didn’t have to acknowledge him.
They walked for a while in silence. It’s surprisingly not too awkward, the built-up tension aside. It just reminded her of her first day in Awa’atlu, back when everyone hated her family, and she just wanted to explore the place. The silence was numbing, but nothing that detrimentally ruined her mood. If she ignored it, at least.
She stops after a while to look around. She knows how Lo’ak is, and is pretty confident that if he’d been there, he would’ve left some sort of mess. But she found no nicks on leaves, no footsteps, no displaced rocks or flowers. Neteyam observed for the same signs, Kiri assumed.
The two of them make eye contact for the first time in a while.
They traded words without speaking them, because, fighting or not, they were family and they knew how to communicate without words.
‘Lo’ak was definitely not here’ had been the obvious consensus.
“Nothing on my side.”
Neteyam and Kiri both shake their heads, but they’d both come from the same direction, so one motion of confirmation would’ve been enough. Ao’nung’s not stupid though, and he knows why this is happening, so he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he shakes his own head and begins to walk towards the shoreline, calling out for his ilu.
“Nothing on mine either,” he says, which tugs Neteyam’s lips downwards and has Kiri’s eyebrows furrowing again. “I said there might not be much here, so let’s just check another coastline. Same deal as before though.”
“Why don’t we just immediately go to a coastline that’s close to where you left Lo’ak?” Kiri asks, and her bluntness does not soften any blows, even if she is just stating the truth of the situation. Ao’nung’s ears twitch a little, and he can hear Rotxo clearing his throat of an impending laugh.
In all honesty, Kiri’s idea wasn’t totally off. It made sense to immediately check the surrounding area. Except that’d been done at least 5 times already, by him and the rest of the clan combined. It doesn’t mean they won’t find anything, but considering the odds… He thinks it makes more sense to search through places he knows have barely been looked at.
He raises both hands up and shakes his head. “We have to be thorough, and that means we have to look at every island he could’ve possibly landed on. The chances of him being on any island won’t change if the order does.”
Neteyam and Kiri exchange a look. Which is crazy. They hadn’t made eye contact for the past hours, and, the moment they did, it was to judge whatever Ao’nung said.
This time, Rotxo is unsuccessful at stifling his laughter, letting out a little giggle.
A beat of silence passes, before Neteyam crosses his arms and nudges his chin slightly forward. “Let’s go to the next island, then,” he says, without explaining what the look was all about.
The night falls fast. They find nothing.
Neytiri looks upset when Neteyam and Kiri walk into the marui. Their first thought is, of course, that she was mad they’d disappeared the entire day—Neteyam’s ears are already pinned backwards at the sight of their mother angrily unwrapping fish from a net, an apology ready at the tip of his tongue.
But, when she turns her gaze over to her two children, she doesn’t scold them. Her ears are lowered in a sign of swallowed frustration, but not directed at them. It makes Neteyam stop walking, and, as a result, Kiri stops in place too after bumping into his back.
“Mom?” he calls, voice soft, hesitant. “What’s wrong?”
The first thing that creeps into his mind is Lo’ak. Perhaps they’d found him somewhere, dead, washed up on a beach. Perhaps they’d found his body on the ocean floor, unmoving. Or maybe they’d given up, unwilling to believe that he’d survive to today. Neteyam’s throat contracts, and his breath stutters.
“Mom?” he repeats, this time a little more frantically, as he approaches his mother, crouching down to her side. “What happened? Is it— Did— Is Lo’ak—?”
“No,” Neytiri cuts off, voice weak. “We have not found him. The people… The village warriors are pulling back on the search party.”
Neteyam’s eyes widen as fear and disbelief strike him in the gut. Behind him, Kiri quickly walks over to them, voice airy with panic. “What? Why would they do that?”
She takes a breath, grounding herself, like just thinking about the answer makes anger bubble in her gut. When she untangles the last of the net, it rips from the force. The fish falls limply onto the woven floor of the marui, dead. Neytiri stares at it for a few seconds before she forces herself to breathe.
“The other villages nearby have been attacked,” she eventually says, barely tearing through the tension. Neteyam and Kiri instinctively hold their breaths, shoulders squaring, passing a fearful glance at one another, all anger lost. “The sky people,” she pauses, then continues through bared fangs, “The demons. They have come to find your father. They have burnt down villages. Taken lives. Killed their people—” Her voice breaks, pitching in volume.
Neteyam places a hand on her back, his ears downturned. Neytiri takes another breath, giving him a small, grateful nod, before she steadies her voice. “Tonowari said it is best that the people put more care into the village. I cannot ride Sa’ata to find Lo’ak anymore. They believe it may attract the demons to us.”
“That’s not fair,” Kiri’s voice shakes as she says it. “That’s not right. Lo’ak is still out there. They can’t give up on finding him.”
Neytiri shakes her head, a return of anger flaring in her eyes as she does so. She’s frustrated. Angry. She looks like she’s been crying and wants to break again. “Your father agreed with the order. They… They’re still out looking for Lo’ak, but there are just less men.”
Neteyam’s not stupid. He knows how to connect dots. With less men, and without his mother, the chances of finding Lo’ak thin—it might take them forever. It might take them nowhere. Even with their father, Neteyam’s not sure that’s enough, not when he doesn’t know the ocean as the other village warriors do.
And he swears he loves his father, he does, but, if the village does come under attack, Neteyam knows his father would force himself to return without Lo’ak. The hope in their home is fleeting. It’s wavering. But Neteyam refuses to let it be all that remains of Lo’ak.
“They’ll find him, Mom,” he presses, holding her in a hug. Kiri joins them without hesitation, resting her head right below Neytiri’s, who holds them close like they might disappear if she lets go.
She presses a gentle kiss to Kiri’s forehead, turns her neck over so she can do the same for Neteyam. Her heart beat is loud, her breathing sounds caged. Then, she lets go, turning over to the fish on the ground. “They have sworn to keep us safe. Secret. So I beg you both,” she turns her gaze over to them, sharp, knowing, “to keep yourselves safe, out of trouble.”
“We will,” Neteyam says. “We have.”
She shakes her head again, even as she finally lifts the fish off the ground. “No. You may have fooled your father, but I know you two are up to something.”
His heart drops down to his stomach. Beside him, Kiri’s body tenses as her breath hitches.
Neytiri, without looking up, waves her hand in the air. “Whatever it is, I will not force you to say. I trust that my children,” she pauses, “all of them, know how to keep themselves safe. Alive. Just… promise to me, that no matter what happens, you make sure you stay breathing.”
Something rises up his throat, clogging his airway. Neteyam has to swallow it down. He almost cries, almost waddles over to his mother and asks for a hug, asks to be soothed. Instead, with his chin pointed high, he whispers, “We promise, Mom.”
It’s quiet, soft. But it’s real. Honest.
Neytiri turns to look at them, eyes watching.
Kiri nods beside him. “We promise.”
She stares at them for a few more breaths, before her eyes soften, and she nods, managing a small smile. “That is all that I ask.”
Lo’ak is bored.
He’s bored, and he’s tired. He’s tired and hungry and cold, and he wants to go home. He’s willing to put up with the essays that both his mom and dad will yell at him; Hell, he’ll take notes if it means he’ll be home. But he’s not, and those ideas are simply hopes, and so he remains bored, tired, hungry and cold.
He didn’t want to bother Payakan any more than he already had, and, to be frank, he didn’t want to burden the tulkun with even more things after… what had occurred. He should be able to deal with these feelings on his own anyway. What would he do if he were bored, back at home? Well, he’d get up and make up some new game with Neteyam, or maybe he’d pull Kiri and Spider into a chase, or he’d ride his ikran, or…
Well. He can’t do any of that here. He could only wish his ikran was beside him. Then he’d be able to fly home, and he could sleep and eat and play as much as he wanted to.
He’s hungry, but he doesn’t have the energy to get up and grill another fish. That was a long process that his body can’t convince itself to get through. And that’s fine. He’s missed plenty of meals before. He’ll have to save some space in his stomach for the feast he’ll devour once he’s back with his family, after all.
…
And he’s tired. He wants to sleep, even though that’s all he’s been doing. He wants to close his eyes and sleep forever. Maybe then, that fatigue will finally leave him alone, and he’ll be able to get up and do things.
…
Lo’ak wants to go back home.
He shoves himself further into the corner he’d put himself in. Payakan had found another cave for them to rest in after they’d witnessed the hunting of a tulkun. Payakan, despite being so silent about the whole encounter, clearly needed some time to process the situation, and Lo’ak… Lo’ak’s just…
He just wants to go back home.
He wants to go back in time and stop all of this from happening. He wants to stop himself from joining Ao’nung, from even fighting him in the first place. He wants to stop himself from getting everyone caught up in his stupid plan and making his family have to flee the forests. He wants to stop himself from getting grounded and making stupid decisions. He wants to stop himself, period.
His tail thumps against the ground weakly. It’s probably the only thing left of his body with any semblance of energy. But it’s proof that he’s been sleeping more than half the hours of a day recently.
Ugh.
Lo’ak shoves his face in between his knees.
Why’d he have to be so stupid? Why’d he get them all into such a huge mess?
He wants to go home. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. He wants to eat a proper meal and sleep a proper night. He wants to be with Kiri and Spider and Neteyam and Tuk and Mom and Dad.
…
He lets out a frustrated groan, and gets up so quickly that a rock tumbles away from his feet outside of the cave’s entrance. He can hear it splashing against the sea, hopping against a few ripples for a few seconds, before it eventually stops and sinks.
His tail stills, and his ears perk up. He can hear Payakan stirring from where he had been resting from, but he doesn’t react to his friend’s quiet wail. His eyes lock onto the rock that continues its descent into the deeper parts of the ocean, until he can’t even see it anymore, and he lets out an airy, scoffed-out laugh that doesn’t even sound like it came from him.
“I’m gonna die here,” he mutters, accompanied by another scoffed-out laugh. Payakan croaks beside him, confused, and concerned.
“The RDA is looking for us,” he continues, in one breath, “and I can’t fight them by myself so I’m marked for death too. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll die from hunger, and if that doesn’t happen, I’ll lose my mind.”
A few seconds pass. Lo’ak is staring at the sand beneath his feet and he can hear his own thoughts taunting him but he refuses to listen to them. Maybe he wants to make a change. Maybe he wants to fix his own mistakes. Maybe he’s okay with him being so stupid and dumb for once, because maybe he just wants to go home.
‘Lo’ak?’
“Payakan.”
He lets out a few more breaths, each exhale just a few seconds off from the other.
“Brother.”
The tulkun croaks in response.
“...Could you do me a favour?”
The next day, when the ‘secret Lo’ak search party’ group reconvenes, Neteyam doesn’t care who stands there. Kiri had joined, and he hadn’t argued. Tuk had followed after them, jolly in her steps, just happy that she was allowed to be included. Neteyam didn’t argue at that either.
That seems to surprise Ao’nung and Rotxo, who both stopped talking to stare at the Sully children with wide eyes. Neteyam doesn’t care about that either. He crouches to the ground, and the rest follow without much hesitation.
“They’re pulling back some of the men who are supposed to look for Lo’ak,” Neteyam begins, startling a gasp out of Tsireya and a confused head tilt from Ao’nung. “Because the sky people are getting closer. The villages nearby have been attacked. Our… Your village might be next, so they have focused their warriors to stay on guard here.”
“No,” Tsireya whispers, eyes wide, hands shaking against her chest. “They cannot do that! If the sky people are getting close, what if they- What if they find Lo’ak before we do?”
Fear enters his guts, sharp, heavy—he hadn’t even thought about that possibility. He nullifies it before it can cloud his mind with panic, because he has to focus. “I know. I know. But they are following your father’s orders, and my father… agrees with this change. It will keep your people safe.”
“But… But Lo’ak is our people!” Her voice is shaken with distress, high with terror. “He is one of us. They cannot leave him out there.”
“I know,” Neteyam repeats, heart slowing, breath pulling. “But that isn’t our decision to make. I’m only saying this because this means we have to find a better strategy.”
Tsireya’s head hangs low, her ears pulled back—still upset, but resigned.
Neteyam is grateful for the lack of any more arguments. He continues. “We can’t keep on searching blindly. It takes us hours to find nothing. It’ll take even more to find anything.” His gaze sweeps across the group before it lands on Ao’nung. “You told me that it was impossible for Lo’ak to have gone far on the first morning we searched for him.”
Ao’nung looks a little startled at being directly referred to, but he snaps out of it almost as soon as. His voice is steady when he speaks. “Yes. Without an ilu, even us reef Na’vi cannot make it far.”
“And… and you said,” Neteyam swallows the sudden rising nausea. Focus. You promised to find him days ago. You promised to keep them safe. Breathing. Focus.
He shakes it out of his head and turns to look at Tsireya. “You said Lo’ak hadn’t returned to Eywa, right? You couldn’t find him in the Spirit Tree?”
“No,” she confirms, eyes a little wide, still glassy. “But he could’ve…”
Neteyam interrupts her because he doesn’t think saying those theories outloud will do any good to his psyche. “I know.” He turns back over to Ao’nung. “But you told me, on the first night of his disappearance, that nobody had found his body around. Not at the bottom of the ocean, not on nearby shores, not floating above the water.”
The Metkayinan thinks briefly. “Yes. They could not find his body anywhere.”
“If he’d been…” Focus. Focus. Focus. “...washed up, by the currents, surely he would not have been taken far.”
“True,” Ao’nung says, pursing his lips. Rotxo glances between them curiously before he decides to add in his own two cents, “A few months back, one of our soldiers had drowned and been washed up on the shore of an island. He hadn’t been far from where he was last seen. It was a shorter distance than all of the islands we’ve been checking.”
“That means Lo’ak can’t be there,” Kiri concludes, leaning in closer. “If we check all of the outermost islands, and the search party had already checked the ones nearby, then he could not have been washed up.”
“And he could not have sunk to the bottom of the ocean if he had not ended up in the spirit world,” Tsireya adds on, now looking a little less distressed, with a brighter glow of hope glinting in her eyes. “So you think…” she gasps. “He must be alive.”
Neteyam holds her gaze as he nods firmly. “Yes.”
“But where would he have gone?” Rotxo asks, face scrunching up in confusion. “He wasn’t… the best swimmer. Even if he’d swum from one island to another, we would have surely found him by now.”
Ugh. Neteyam scratches his head, tight against his kuru that stems under his hair. It makes his entire body tense, like it was waiting for a bond that he hadn’t prepared. Instinctively, his head snaps up, and his eyes fall onto the ilu playing in the nearby waters.
“Ao’nung,” he calls, gaze still glued onto the playful creatures. One of them chirps. Another jumps through the sealine. “You told me that it was unlikely that Lo’ak would’ve found another ilu to bond with in the ocean.”
“Most ilu choose to live near villages,” Ao’nung says after a beat, following his line of sight. “But we do not keep them confined. So it is not impossible for one to have swum near the Three Great Brothers rock.” Even then, his voice is hesitant, uncertain.
Kiri asks it for him. “How possible would it have been?”
Ao’nung goes silent. Rotxo is the one to answer. “Not very likely. Some ilu drift further away from the villages, but not far past the reef.”
“What about the tsuraks?” Tuk asks, bright-eyed. “Dad says he always has to bond with a new one.”
Tsireya perks up at the mention of the animals, turns to look at her fellow Metkayinans, and speaks. “Tsuraks leave the village very often. They hunt for food by themselves.”
Then, just to alleviate any concerns, “They do not hunt Na’vi.”
Not that Neteyam had been thinking of that possibility. If that were the case, he was sure a tsurak would’ve come by smeared in blood and remains at this point. Besides, they were relatively domesticated enough to, at the very least, deter them from eating Na’vi, even if Lo’ak may not look too similar to the teal, reef people.
“I doubt he’d be able to mount one,” Ao’nung hesitantly says, trying to keep his tone neutral. “Most warriors cannot just jump from ilu to tsuraks.”
“He’s tamed an ikran,” Kiri mutters, frowning. “Surely he’d be able to ride a tsurak.”
Ao’nung scoffs, lips splitting into a small, smug smile. “Your father has tamed the great Toruk. But do you think he was able to ride a tsurak on his first try without fail?”
No. Although they hadn’t been there when their father first began his own training in the clan, they’d been told during the dinner following it about how he’d fallen and gotten back up. It was meant to be inspiring at the time. His way of saying ‘if you fail once, you try again’.
None of the Sully kids had exactly found it super enlightening. Lo’ak had stared down at his lap with his entire body shaking with impending laughter, Kiri had her eyes squeezed shut, Tuk had giggled outright at the mental image of their father flopping around in the water, and even Neteyam had to clench his palm against his leg to keep his face flat.
So… “Point taken,” Kiri mumbles, ears lowering.
“But, even untamed, some tsuraks have been domesticated enough that they may help,” Tsireya adds hopefully.
Beside her, Rotxo nervously rubs at his neck. “I don’t know, Tsireya. Even if one helped to keep him alive, he still wouldn’t be able to ride it. Not far away, at least.”
The younger girl’s entire body practically sags as her lips stretch into a worried pout. Then she huffs. “It doesn’t make sense, though. How else would he have gotten far enough that nobody has found him? He must have ridden something.”
“What about his ikran?” Rotxo asks, fidgeting with the sand. “I… don’t know how they work. Maybe he called for it and got lost trying to get back here?”
Kiri shakes her head. “No. Skxom is with the rest of our ikran. She’s been… antsy, but ikran cannot find their riders if they are too far.”
Tuk looks between the two of them before she asks her own question. “What other animals live near the Three Great Brother rocks? Maybe he rode one of them?”
“None can be ridden or tamed,” Tsireya answers, tone slipping, voice lowering. “The Three Great Brothers rock is home to normal fish and sea predators. It is why inexperienced hunters do not hunt there.” She sends a pointed look towards Ao’nung as she ends her sentence, sharp.
Her brother raises both his arms defensively. His tail thwacks against the sand. “I’m sorry! I thought we’ve been over this?”
At that, everybody except Rotxo snaps their heads over to glare at him.
“That’s– That’s not what I meant!” he rushes out, glancing wildly between them all. “I mean that I’m trying to make up for that mistake! Can we focus on this first before one of you punches me again?”
Neteyam clicks his tongue, but he tears his glare away at the same time Tsireya does. Kiri huffs a few times before she nods and softens her eyes. Tuk takes a few seconds longer, staring at Ao’nung until the older boy is shifting awkwardly on the sand, and blows him a raspberry before leaning back. “I haven’t punched you yet.”
“What do you mean ‘yet’—”
“Focus,” Neteyam butts in. As much as he’d love to watch this childish back and forth between his younger sister and Ao’nung, they had much more pressing matters to deal with. “The… predators… Do any of them…”
“Eat Na’vi?” Rotxo continues. He hums in contemplation, but Ao’nung beats him to it.
“They can,” he admits, grimacing. “Tsyongs and akulas have a history of attacking hunters when they’re caught off guard. But as I have said days ago, it is not the akula’s hunting season, so it shouldn’t be a concern.”
“Akulas can hunt outside of their season,” Tsireya corrects, pressing her palm against Ao’nung’s shoulder. “We do not see this often, but it can happen. They don’t actively hunt for Na’vi, but if they’re the only thing visible, then…”
“Most of the fish had been scared away when he shot one,” Ao’nung mutters uneasily. “The only animal perfectly visible left would have been his ilu.”
Kiri’s eyebrows furrow as she racks through her mind for a memory. Then she scowls. “His ilu… The one that returned with its fin bitten off?”
“Yes,” Ao’nung confirms, head hanging forward with a rising guilt. He forces himself to speak past it, trying to remain as neutral as he can. “The ilu survived and swam off. If it had been attacked by an akula, then it most likely changed its target to Lo’ak.”
It’s almost funny how quickly everyone’s ears flatten.
Eventually, with a lot of hesitation in his voice, Ao’nung adds, “Akula do not eat their prey whole. It takes bites. So, even if Lo’ak had been… hunted by one, we would have been able to find his…”
Remains. Parts. Neteyam doesn’t want him to finish that sentence, especially around Tuk, so he talks before he can — although he figured he wouldn’t have. “And nobody had found anything, right?”
“Well, we found his bow, remember?” he reminds. “His knife as well.”
Neteyam frowns. “Was that supposed to tell us something? All that tells me is that he doesn’t have weapons with him right now.”
Ao’nung’s lips purse. “It means he tried to fend something off. If it was an akula, it would have swallowed his weapons had he been eaten. So he most likely did not.”
Relief floods the group. Everybody practically sinks lower into the sand. Neteyam almost falls to his knees.
They let that second of relief pass. After collecting her breath, Kiri’s tail flicks in the air and she turns to look at her brother. “Is he… able to get food without one?”
“Yes,” he answers. The answer hangs in the air for a few good beats before he adds, “I think. Dad had us do survival training once.”
Or, rather, it had been more like camping, just without many tools or items. At some point, their dad had made him and Lo’ak catch fish with just their bare hands, and it’d been one of the most difficult things he’s ever been told to do in his life. He remembers being jealous of Lo’ak for his extra fingers at the time. He had more to grip with. It took him hours still, but less than it had taken Neteyam.
…
It hasn’t been the subject of envy for years. Not when it draws bullies to him. Not when it leaves him stranded in the ocean.
Neteyam takes in a long breath, pressing his palms against his thighs. Focus.
“You guys train for everything,” Kiri huffs. She’s looking at him like he had personally begged his father for those lessons. Even though she’d literally been there when their father offered it to the three of them.
Neteyam rolls his eyes. For the first time in the past few days, he allows himself this small childish sibling banter. “I wasn’t the one who came up with it. But I’ll let Dad know you think it’s stupid.”
“I didn’t say that,” she responds, deadpan.
“That sounds fun,” Tuk butts in, eyes wide with curiosity and wonder. “At least that means Lo’ak knows what to do out there. Right?”
They pause their banter momentarily to look at their youngest sister. Neteyam’s eyes soften, and Kiri gives her a gentle smile. “Right.”
Refocused on the topic at hand, Neteyam asks another question, “What about these… tsyongs? Do they hunt Na’vi?”
All three Metkayinans wince at the question. Ao’nung grimaces as he looks away, Tsireya fiddles anxiously with her fingers, and Rotxo’s tail taps against the ground. Their reactions alone answer the question, but Tsireya jumps in to elaborate. “Yes. But they dwell in the deep, so it’s unlikely for them to have swum up high enough to spot him. Unless there was a storm.”
“And, if they did come, we’d have probably found his body at the bottom of the ocean,” Ao’nung adds on, a little tactlessly. Tsireya swats him on the shoulder, glaring as he stumbles back slightly from the hit. “What? What? You mean to tell me you think he’d be able to survive a squad of tsyongs without an ilu? Our hunters have been harmed in groups facing just one tsyong.”
“You don’t have to say it like that,” Tsireya huffs, a little petulantly. Ao’nung lets out an offended noise, a wordless ‘like what??’.
“Okay, then none of this makes sense,” Kiri says, trite in her tone, crossing her arms as she crouches lower to the ground. “You’re saying it’s impossible for him to get anywhere fast enough without an ilu or a tsurak, but that is impossible as well.”
“I mean… It’s possible, just not very likely,” Rotxo weakly corrects.
‘Possible, not very likely’ wasn’t substantial, not enough for Kiri to find any real plausibility in the theory. If even saying the word ‘possible’ comes with hesitancy from the people who live with the ocean, then she, who doubts it as a forest Na’vi, will not take it as anything more than a hope. She shook her head.
“Then you said you found his weapons,” Kiri continued, waving her hand in the air, “which means he must have fended off something, but it can’t be a tsyong because he’d be dead, and, if it was an akula, he couldn’t have swam off with his ilu because it’d gone before he could.”
“What if he just dropped the weapons?” Tsireya offered meekly, looking over at Neteyam.
He shook his head almost as soon as they made eye contact. “No. He might’ve lost the bow by accident, but not his knife. Dad made sure our holsters were tight fits, so it could not have fallen out unintentionally.”
The Metkayinans all blink. Ao’nung cocks his head. “What is a… ‘holsters’?”
“A tstalsena,” Kiri answers for her brother, briefly, before turning back over to him. “But that still doesn’t make sense. He’s a shit swimmer—”
“Kiri,” Neteyam warns exasperatedly, frowning.
She ignores him. “So there’s no way he could have outswam an akula. Not without something to ride. He must’ve found something.”
“What about the tulkuns?” Tuk suggests. Everybody perks up curiously, but it doesn’t take long before Tsireya sighs as she sets a hand down on the younger girl’s shoulder.
“No, Tuk. The tulkun travel in pods. If he’d been saved by one, I’m sure they would have brought him back to us by now.”
“Maybe it was one from a different pod,” Tuk says, shrugging. “They would help him, right?”
Tsireya doesn’t hesitate in her answer, responding at the same time as her brother and Rotxo do. “Yes.”
“Then maybe they did help,” she continued, tail playing with the sand behind her, almost wagging, happy with her theory. “Maybe they just didn’t know where his home is. Or he got them lost. Lo’ak is kinda stupid.”
Kiri lets out an involuntary, muffled laugh, while Neteyam sighs and shakes his head in amusement. “Tuk.”
“What? He is!” she argues defensively, crossing her arms. “He used to get us lost all the time back at home. Remember when he got us lost and he got grounded because he got me tangled in a tree?”
The entire group laughs. Kiri is especially loud, because she had been there the exact day it had happened. She’d been the one poking fun at Lo’ak while he panicked, going around in circles around the forest before returning to their lost place and calling their father with his comms.
And Neteyam… lets it be unfocused for a moment. Because it’s the first time in weeks they’ve been without tension. First time in weeks that anger isn’t constantly burning at the bottom of his gut. First time in weeks he’s seen Kiri laugh like that.
He huffs out his own chuckle. “Yes, Tuk. I was the one who had to cut you out of the vines, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, blinking a few times, before turning to Tsireya. “He has a pretty bad sense of direction. I think that’s part of the reason he always finds an excuse to hang out with you, Tsireya. It’s so he won’t get lost.”
The Metkayinan girl’s entire face turns dark as she splutters. From her left, Ao’nung lets out a laugh that he was clearly unable to fight off, and Rotxo falls from his crouch to an actual sitting position from his giggles. Kiri has a hand pressed against her lips, although that hardly did anything to stifle her laughter.
“Tuk,” Tsireya eventually manages to say, embarrassed. When Tuk gives her an innocent smile, sticking her tongue out, she shakes her head and huffs. “I… Maybe he did get lost with another tulkun pod, but… I’m certain they would bring him to a nearby village, and they would know the direction of ours based on the name alone.”
“And there’s no way he doesn’t,” Kiri mutters. “Dad said it too many times for him to forget. Even if he did, I’m sure he’d at least know the olo’eyktan’s name.”
“So that leaves us with…” Ao’nung pauses briefly, grimacing. “...nothing?”
“Why did we even convene if this is what we get out of it,” Kiri complains under her breath, rubbing her hand against her face. “Nothing about this makes sense. He’s not dead, so he has to be alive. But he’s nowhere that an alive person should be. Are we sure that skxawng didn’t get eaten by a nalutsa or something?”
Neteyam gives her a disapproving look, swatting her arm gently. She scowls, her ears pulling back with a guilty groan. “I’m not saying that’s what I want.”
“Nalutsa don’t eat like other aquatic animals do.” Tsireya shook her head. “They wouldn’t target Lo’ak unless he was flying above the water.”
Which, again, left them with nothing.
But… this nothing eliminated some things. Maybe not a lot, not enough for him to be happy with the lack of conclusion, but he’d say it was considerably the farthest they’d ‘gone’ investigation-wise.
Neteyam huffs, standing up. “We still have a few of the outermost islands left to search. I think we should check them and slowly make our way back to the middle.”
Ao’nung and Kiri both give him a curious glance, so he elaborates. “You said the last hunter who drowned wasn’t washed up far. In fact, he had been found closer to the perimeter than what we’re checking. So the outermost islands are our… current maximum perimeter.”
“Why go back to the middle?” the oldest Metkayinan asks, tilting his head with squinted eyes. “The search party has looked there a hundred times. We’ve been there before ourselves.”
“It’s…” Neteyam huffed. “Lo’ak would always go back to the place he first realised he was lost before he started looking for help. That was part of our survival training. He could’ve gotten lost before he made it back.”
Kiri perks up with realisation, nodding along to his statement, while the rest of the group sits back with their own silent acknowledgement. “When do we go then? Now?”
Neteyam hesitates. “Yes. But we tell Mom first.”
“I thought this was supposed to be a secret,” Tuk wondered, clumsily getting on her feet. “Isn’t that why you guys didn’t include me first?”
“We didn’t exclude— Well,” Kiri paused, looking away. “That was mainly because we didn’t want you to get hurt.”
The youngest huffed petulantly, crossing her arms in mild offence. “I thought Sullies stick together. You could’ve gotten hurt instead.”
Neteyam swears he’s going to start losing hair before the age of 20. “Nobody is getting hurt,” he presses, waving his hands slowly in the air as he looks at everyone in the group. Even Ao’nung, who seems a little surprised to be included in this statement. “Nobody. We’ll back each other up.” Then he turns to Kiri. “And everybody watches their own back.”
“You sound like Dad,” Kiri scoffed, smiling in amusement when Neteyam’s ears flattened in embarrassment. When she gets up, dusting the sand off her legs, the rest of the group follows. “You’re telling Mom.”
He rolls his eyes before looking back at the rest of the group. “We'll meet back at our usual spot in 10 minutes. Try to find the fastest ilu you have.”
“Got it,” Ao’nung accepts, at the same time Tsireya says “We will see you there.”
Now further away from the group, Kiri hops over in front of him and nudges her chin forward in a wordless question. Neteyam stops walking, just so he won’t bump into her, and cocks his own head to the side.
Whatever question Kiri has, it’s not obvious in her eyes or posture. She seems to realise this after a moment and huffs.
“What is it?” he asks. Tuk bumped into his back at that moment with an ‘oomph’, backing away with a confused, irritated “What?”.
Kiri crosses her arms and raises a brow. “I appreciate you not fighting me on it anymore, but… I…” she lets out a breath, body sagging slightly. “I just wanted to apologise for how mad I was yesterday.”
“It’s fine,” Neteyam hurriedly says, before adding, “I’m sorry too.”
“No, I was being a skxawng,” Kiri huffs again, crossing her arms. It was clear she was a little uncomfortable with being this open, but Neteyam doesn’t interrupt. “You were just trying to keep me safe after I had that… stupid seizure. Last night, when Mom said… When Mom made us promise to keep ourselves alive, I realised I was being stupid. So I’m sorry.”
Always one to soothe his younger siblings, Neteyam attempts to be passive. “It’s fine,” he repeats. “I could’ve been less—”
“Stop doing that,” Kiri cutts off, frowning. “Stop trying to take responsibility for everything. Breathe a little, brother. Mom made you promise, too.”
Breathe. Live.
Neteyam’s chest tightens, and his throat goes dry. He nods because he doesn’t trust his voice to speak. Kiri seems to accept the weak action anyway, before she nudges her head over to their marui. “What are you gonna tell Mom anyway? I don’t think she’s gonna let us go if we just outright say we’re looking for Lo’ak.”
“Just telling her we’re going out,” he responds after a few more seconds of recollecting himself.
“Why are we telling Mom again?” Tuk asks, pouting a little. “I thought we were keeping this a secret still.”
She sounds upset at the prospect that a secret that she’s now involved in is no longer a secret. Like she’s offended she wasn’t invited to the defiance, and even more offended that they’re no longer breaking any rules around her.
It reminds Neteyam so much of Lo’ak that his heart squeezes. His younger brother used to do the same when they were kids, getting all huffy and annoyed when he stopped doing something stupid around him.
Eventually, though, they’d end up continuing the stupidity, even with a stubbornly curious little sibling trailing behind. Until Dad or Mom catches them, that is.
So he gets it. Telling either one of them sounded like they were giving up on the stupidity. It would make it much easier for their mother to find out about what they were doing, and she would likely put a stop to it.
Except… Neytiri was clearly already onto them. She’d said it outright last night. And he supposed, despite intending all of this to have been kept a secret, he hadn’t been too diligent on keeping his record clean. His mom was sharp, perceptive, even more so when one of them was involved. Neteyam might not be throwing clues in her face, but he was leaving more than enough trails for her to follow them on.
But she hasn’t. She knows something is up, but she’s letting them stay stupid. Because she trusts them.
And Neteyam just… wants her to know her trust isn’t misplaced.
Because he gets it. Trust is tricky. It’s fickle.
(He gets it the most. He looks at Ao’nung and thinks of him trusting his promise. He looks at Kiri and thinks of him trusting her to keep herself safe. He looks at Tuk and thinks of him trusting himself.)
He wants her to know she’s trusting right.
All of this is hard to explain to Tuk, however, especially since she hadn’t been in the marui last night when they’d spoken to their mother. To be honest, he doesn’t feel like explaining it either. So he huffs, pats her on the head, and resumes their walk.
“Because Mom will get worried,” he says, messing up the younger girl’s hair. Tuk swats his hand off with a giggle. “We don’t have to tell her everything, so it’s still a secret, Tuk.”
“That’s right,” Kiri jumps in to agree, perhaps just to ease it off his back a little. Tuk seems to believe her the most, out of her older siblings, because Lo’ak was obviously the worst choice and Neteyam ‘likes to snitch to Dad sometimes’, so Kiri had always been the best at convincing (deceiving, sometimes) the youngest. At this moment, he chooses to take it as a blessing. “Mom won’t know. It’ll still be our little secret, Tuk, so don’t tell Mom or Dad, okay?”
“I won’t, I won’t!” she insists, puffing out her chest.
It’s so Lo’ak. Neteyam’s throat tightens, but the will to find his brother only strengthens. He huffs out a laugh and pushes Tuk forward. “Okay. Let’s go.”
As soon as they enter the marui, they see their mother quietly folding some cloth, almost aimlessly, like she doesn’t know what else to do. He supposed that was fair. She’d been busy looking for Lo’ak these past few days, and now that she was no longer allowed to do that, she had to keep her hands busy in some other way. And he doubted anyone would force her to do chores in the current state she’s in—not even the tsahik.
Her ears fold slightly when they enter. Her hands slow, but she keeps folding, keeps moving.
Neteyam speaks first, because Kiri had decided that minutes ago, and Tuk definitely wasn’t a better spokesperson. “Mom.”
Neytiri hums, continuing with her activity without looking back at them. “Yes?”
He clears his throat. Just to make sure his voice doesn’t waver. “We’re gonna head out.”
She pauses for a second, her hands stilling against a fold. Then she resumes with another hum, though the slight flick of her tail betrays her nonchalance. “Where to?”
“Just… around,” he mutters, completely aware of how poor the lie is. “With Tsireya, Rotxo. And Ao’nung.”
Neytiri’s ears pin to her scalp at the last name, and she finally turns around. Her eyes are sharp as she scans her children, but they lock in on Neteyam, like she’s trying to read him past his words.
Instinctively, he straightens his back. But his posture is the least of her concerns because she seems to look only into his eyes. Searching for something, an answer to her question, maybe.
Seconds pass. Then her eyes soften, and she beckons them over with an arm out, waving them in. “Come here.”
Neteyam doesn’t hesitate, bumping Kiri and Tuk on their backs so they’d move with him.
She gently presses a palm against his cheek when he crouches down in front of her. Her thumb brushes on his skin, following the shape of his stripe.
Then— “I know you’re looking for Lo’ak.”
The entire room shifts. Neteyam’s eyes widen, and his tail flicks upward in alarm, but he doesn’t pull away. She huffs at his panicked expression and shakes her head. “You do not hide it very well.”
No. He didn’t.
“You are just as stubborn as your father,” she grins softly, patting him by the cheek. Then, with slightly more emotion in her eyes. “Just as stubborn as your brother. I expected no less from my oldest.”
She presses a kiss to her forehead and laughs at the cautiousness in his expression. “I would not have allowed you to continue your search if I did not trust you. But I trust in all of my children. If even you trust in that…” She takes a deep breath. “...in Ao’nung. Then I will have trust in him. But, most of all, I trust in you.”
Her other arm circles around to pull Tuk and Kiri closer. The youngest lets out a quiet giggle while Kiri huffs as their mother’s hand messes with the back of her hair. “All of you.”
“You’re not gonna… stop us?” Neteyam asks apprehensively, grimacing.
She laughs again. “I would if I could. I know that if I tried, you would still find a way.”
…
Not wrong. Neteyam had already been told once by his father to stay at the village, to not join the search party in looking for Lo’ak—and he’d disobeyed that order the morning after it’d been given. If his parents hadn’t allowed them to go to the Spirit Tree when he’d asked, he knows he would’ve found a way to go around it anyway.
Because he’s stubborn. Because he’s made promises. Because that’s how he lives, breathes.
Neytiri’s expression turns serious for a moment, then, although she still harbours a smile. “I… am glad you’re speaking to me. I’m glad you trust me.”
“Always,” Neteyam rushes to say. “We always trust you, Mom.”
She presses another kiss to his face, before going around the whole group, chuckling. “You may go.”
Neteyam’s entire face brightens. She shook her head in amusement, before once again sharpening. “But stay safe. Keep your comms on you,” as she says that, her hand wraps around her neck, “and you return the moment you see any possible danger. Okay?”
He lets out a breath, lets the question marinate. “Okay.”
She stares into her eyes and, in that second, he can read the words written in hers.
‘Promise me you will keep them safe—you will keep them all safe.’
And it’s the easiest answer he’s ever given, with a nod and a blink. ‘I promise.’
Tulkun hunting is a tragic thing.
Spider knows this well, despite having only witnessed it happen once.
There should always be a practical reason for hunting. He knows he’s not exactly free of any guilt on that end. Back at home, he’d join the Sully family when they went out to hunt for their dinner of the day, and he’d caught some animals with his own hands. And yet, even after that kill, everyone would pray for its soul a happy return to Eywa. Spider knows no na’vi that would ever kill just to kill; They do it because they need to.
He’d seen the way Neytiri’s ears slightly bent downwards at the wounded sounds of the prey, and he’d been there when she’d muttered a prayer under her breath as she retrieved the body of the animal.
He’d seen the way Kiri hesitated to lay even a single harmful finger against them. More often than not, either he, Lo’ak or Neteyam have to step up to help her hunt, and, even then, Lo’ak and Neteyam are never too thrilled upon retrieving the body. Neteyam is always gentle with the prey, and Lo’ak treats the animals with a surprising amount of care and patience, while Kiri sends her prayers to Eywa that the animal has died with no suffering.
Hell, he’d seen Jake grimace and shake his head when the shrill cries of a wounded prey go on for too long, muttering curses and apologies under his breath for not being swift with the job.
They hunt only because they have to. And, when they do, they don’t do it to harm the prey. Better yet, every part of that prey is used; Its meat for consumption, its skin for crafts, its claws and bones for weapons and trinkets. They don’t waste the lives of even small creatures because, to them, every life is preciously given by Eywa.
Spider believes the same, even if he is not na’vi.
The only times he’d seen na’vi hunt for any reason but practicality was as a form of defence. When humans attacked them, they had to fight back, and Spider didn’t see any wrong in that because, realistically, that was a pretty practical reason too.
But the tulkun… Those gentle giants have no reason to be hunted.
They don’t fight back, despite being smarter than anything else combined. They’re docile and tender, and, somehow, despite their intimidating size, they’re considered siblings by the na’vi of the sea. They’re loving and caring, moving in packs much like most people do.
Hearing Ian mention those facts as he witnessed the death of such a harmless creature felt ironic, in a way. To see how humans, small little creatures, manage to be so cruel against such a kind giant animal would probably be funny, in any other context.
Not only were they killing such defenceless creatures, but they were doing it for such a dumb reason. Spider had to keep himself from punching those guys when they told him all they were after was some stupid anti-ageing liquid. He only managed to keep his palms to himself because Quaritch had been there.
Worse than that? That was all they took. Just that single vial of yellow, amber liquid.
They’d dispose of the body then, leaving it in the ocean, for all other tulkuns to see. For its children and friends to see. For its spirit sibling to see.
Spider wishes he could’ve experienced the reefs in a different circumstance. He wishes he could’ve gone here with the Sully family to explore, or something, instead of being there to witness the unjustified deaths of animals, the destruction of homes.
The thought of it has him seething in place. It was wrong. It was so wrong. Life returns to Eywa within reason. Nobody should die for such a stupid reason, and through such a painful way.
And to think… To think they’d do it again as bait. As a way to draw his… sort-of family out, because they knew their kindness and empathy went beyond them. He doesn’t know where they are—the RDA had narrowed them down to the few islands of the reefs, but even then, they lacked precision, and Spider still doesn’t know where they are—but he knows them.
Knows how much they honour the way of Eywa. Knows how much they honour every living creature. Knows how they wouldn’t just stand there and watch innocent tulkun be killed for nothing more than just a vial, without a resting prayer.
Spider knows the prayers by mind. Kiri taught him a lot of Na’vi when they were kids, and she made sure to drill it in his skull.
“This way, they can rest in peace,” she’d told him, holding his hands against his chest. Back then, they weren’t so different in height, so she was fully capable of looking him in the eyes. “Their lives will carry on to the spirit world, where Eywa will greet them.”
Although he couldn’t connect with Eywa the way Na’vi do—even though he cannot see, feel, or experience the spirit world—he still believes in this practice.
Because every living being deserves to rest in peace. They deserve the quiet of the afterlife. The calm embrace of the Great Mother.
He doesn’t get to do the prayer the way Kiri does them. He doesn’t get to gently hold the creature as he says his apology. But he thinks of it in his head, looks at the dying tulkun with the words in mind.
Eywa cannot read them, cannot even hear them. But he does it anyway, because it is the will of Eywa, and the way of the Na’vi. It’s what his family would’ve done. It’s what this tulkun’s spirit sibling would’ve wanted.