Legal Note - Avatar, all names, locations, logos and trademarks created in James Cameron's Avatar universe, belong to James Cameron and the team who pulled off such majesty as to awaken a beleaguered soul, according to my heart - but Avatar, all names, locations, logos and trademarks are property of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Dune Entertainment LLC according to most laws.
Legal Note 2 - Though the non-human, non-Avatar character is not named truly, I have full permission from its creator to use it, should it be recognized, however I deem fit.
Dedicated this is, to my niece whose untamed heart could open; and in her held breath and tears, increased my Avatard island to two.
Part 1 - Crossing
In a large farmhouse of yellow bricks, red shingles and the misaligned proportions of the eighteenth century, Eno Bedouin lay fitfully on the hard surface of her single bed. Wind that hurled unchecked across countless acres of empty field battered against the walls and antiquated window of her room, causing it and all the old floorboards of the ancient dwelling to shift in a constant cacophony of spooky creaks. The moon was high and brought to life waves of swiftly flowing cloud that were nebulous reflections of the glimmering remnants of snow on the frozen ground. Out in the grim impenetrable shade of the woods at the other end of the property, a grim expanse that could lurk at any time in a child's imagination from having only seen it once, a lone wolf howled in sorrowful lament. It was a haunting sound emanating across a dead land lusting for Spring's life, embodying the young girl's desperate state.
With only antiquated baseboard heating her room bore a temperature to turn breath to mist. Her mattress had been slept on by two older brothers when they were her age, leaving it lumpy and bearing a wide valley down its centre. But these were not what kept her up when the red block numbers of her clock read 2:30 AM. The source of her restlessness, her wide eyes and occasional tear, a smile that would cross up into her cherubic cheeks and reveal one of her front teeth was missing, was something she had seen earlier that day, that had left her paralysed for many minutes after the finish of the last music transfused rolling credit. She'd witnessed a story of unrivalled beauty in every sense the word was designed for, of tall blue aliens with tails and large golden eyes, boundless phantasmagorical rainforest that glows with eery alluring radiance at the touch of night, floating mountains from which mist wreathed waterfalls drop, and a sapphire sky nestling a gigantic cyclopean planet. In this tale there had been so many things to experience and ponder; love and war and redemption, the inimitable beginning when a tribal voice began to sing, the impossible odds set against romance occurring between unknowing truly far flung hearts and then remaining entwined each second after embrace; yet managing, somehow, impossibly, to do so to the happy ending that hinted at red and very sad tomorrows.
With every tremble of her lips, Eno didn't know what to think. She both loved and feared this complete sense of overwhelming discovery and loss of control that permeated her through to an unsavoury hour that would see her in trouble if she were found awake. Her off white sheets with their cartoon caricatures of friendly dinosaurs were mostly tossed from her bed to drape messily against the blue fabric of her carpet. Under a thin comforter and pink bedgown she'd gotten for a birthday, her legs were sprawled wide at uncomfortable angles, bloodshot eyes continued to stare at the centuries old ceiling and sweat poured from her forehead and temples despite the blowing cold of the early Spring air seeping into her room. Her heart beat in spastic fits at thoughts of cyan faces and clandestine actions, flying with reckless abandon and finding freedom. At times it hammered so hard pain crept literally from her chest. She was beginning to become terrified, her small calloused farmgirl's fingers bunched until her knuckles whitened to bone and she dared the thought of waking her mother, or someone, to ask what was happening.
No one ever talked to her about this sort of thing occurring to them, no one other than her crazy uncle really ever talked about the story she saw either.
Kicking the clinging comforter from her body, Eno leaped down to the soft age worn carpet and walked out into the second floor hallway. Normally such nights of haunting groans and peculiar noises from all over the house frightened her so much she would not venture out, even when her finger had been cut agonizingly by a page of the Sherlock Holmes adventure she'd once been reading. Not this night. She barely noticed the voices of the straining wood, she didn't remember stories from family members about all the farm hands that had died here over the many, many years. Emblazoned across the hazel of her irises was an image of a stairway to heaven, where one warrior moves another step to free himself, and his to-be pairbond descends a step closer to falling in love. That warrior who'd climbed Iknimaya, the stairway to heaven, had faced great challenge without resorting to blunt violence and underhanded practices. And neither had the other, Eno's new idol, a warrior and a princess named Neytiri. It was unquestionably her favourite part as she'd told her uncle earlier, who now slept in the haunted basement.
At the top of the slightly uneven staircase leading downward into windowless true darkness, Eno stood with her hand on the globule nub of the gothic bannister.
"Last time I snuck down to see you.." She murmured to herself, instinctively abating her speech. Her mother was sleep talking again. But it was difficult to tell when it was this funny occurrence, or when the woman had heard something with her acutely perceptive ears. ".. your sleeping bag was on the floor and you didn't have any clothes on." She finished with a distasteful look stamped on her face.
Instead of traversing the yawning house to the even older and damaged underground sections, Eno instead made her steady way to the second floor bathroom. There she shut the door noiselessly by holding the knob fully rotated and easing the bolt into its weary latch. She clicked on the small metal lamp over the bathtub that her mother used to read by, because the main light also brought to life the clamorous ceiling fan. Normally the thrill of potentially getting caught even for something as trivial as staying up too late could peek adrenalin within her and blot out most other rational thoughts. Born on visions of another world her adrenalin was already peeked and ceaseless, she was floating violently downriver in it.
Rubbing sleep from her ducts, Eno stepped upon an elevating wide flat wooden block and looked in the mirror over the double sink. In its reflecting confines stood the same person she always saw, a woman no-one else ever seemed to see, except her crazy uncle. Staring back at her was the frizzy dark haired heroine with high cheekbones and a button nose, a shaker of continents and changer of futures, a wielder of great power and beauty, a person who'd never steal like lawyers nor lie like politicians, who would never, ever visit her niece a few times a year and complain she was 'too tired' to play outside, as her extended family always did, except her crazy uncle.
As she watched herself in the rectangular streak marked mirror, a glossy sheen began to form over the hazel of her eyes. Her lips shuddered and the tempo of her small breaths increased, spurred by another fantasy driven pounding of her heart. Her whole expression blanched and she rubbed a sliding tear from her cheek, while her other shaking hand turned a tarnished steel handle, bringing cold water into the sink. With desperate verve she splashed the liquid across her face quietly, doing so again and again and again until the pain from chilled nerves overrode the loss she experienced every time a blink ended, the emerald leaves disappeared and reality reasserted itself.
Too quickly the emotional malady returned, the vision was again imbued, and lost. She peered up to gape once more at her reflected self in exhausted surrender, this time leaving her left hand under the icy stream to find solace in agony. She almost screamed at what she saw, stifling the noise with a hard bite to her bottom lip.
Eno was not alone.
In the mirror, revealing behind her the room with its cracked tiles and numerous bath soaps, stood a very tall, acutely skinny strange being. Not physically pretty and mostly naked like Na'vi, but with leathery withered grey skin, a peculiar small nose that reminded her of Darth Vader, immense round eyes wide-set and silver in both colour and luminance, prominent cheeks and chin on a completely bald head. His ill conceived decorum was a moth eaten peasant's robe that appeared to be made of burlap, bound at the waist with a cord of thick twine. Though this being was ugly, almost scary; as his arms that were revealed from the elbow down and his chest that showed through the deep V of his clothing were skeletal in emaciation; his cracked very thin lipped smile was kind, and his expression intensely warm.
"Bastion!" Eno eked in joy, wheeling about to throw her arms around his robed hips, knocking the half full plastic cup she'd been drinking from to the floor.
The being laughed with a rumbling whispery mirth, a noise as scary, unique and wonderful as the thing that made it.
Before her arms found their mark, she recoiled as the drinking device clattered noisily against the floor.
"Oh no-" She moaned.
"It is ok." His ponderous voice was like a booming whisper, a current of speech both quiet, yet infinitely easy to discern. Each syllable was collected and slow, the gentle passing of sand over mountains through the endless march of aeons.
"But.."
Beyond the antiquated doorway and another identical to it leading into the master bedroom, her mother continued to talk with someone in her head, and from her side came a tiny, long winded snore. Both parents slept.
"You could start singing and they won't hear you, I blocked the noise." Bastion hushed.
"Oh-" Eno finished the hug, holding tight against the abrasive fabric and the unyielding muscle beneath. "I'm so glad you are here.. I-.. I.." But she didn't finished her sentence.
Bastion returned the gesture as best he could, reaching down with a long arm and pressing against her narrow back. After they enjoyed a shared breath he gently pushed her away, using the cheering distraction of reversing the flow of water back into the cup and the cup returning to the counter top.
"What troubles you brave one?" The being asked, drawing the Bedouin child over and onto a chair made of rounded wooden timbres and a straw seat. As she composed a reply he sat awkwardly on the soap stained floor so as to not stare nearly strait down at her. Eno watched, and began to subtly joy. Under the orange glow of the weak reading lamp, he appeared half human and even carefree and clumsy, instead of the usual purely lost in far off troubling thought.
"..I saw this movie today, it was amazing- it was beyond amazing!" She finally spoke.
"Avatar." Bastion intoned.
"Yeah!- Wait, how'd you know- silly me, of course you knew; you know everything."
"No, not even remotely close."
"Wha-.." Eno perplexed at the counter-intuitive idea. Everything Bastion did belied that he was no less than a god, if a strange and easily distracted one; omnipotent and all knowing.
"To know truly everything is of such impossible paradox even I cannot fathom the power to possess it." Bastion said without hint of lecture.
"You knew I watched Avatar today." Eno grabbed the being's closer hand, running her comparatively smooth calloused farmgirl's digits over the gnarled, toughened flesh of his of his relatively monstrous appendage.
"I was talking with your lousy uncle earlier." Bastion said.
"He knows you exist?"
"Yes, he helped create me. It was his idiotic idea that I be represented with such cadaverous repulsion."
Eno giggled. "I think you're cute."
The strange sensations Bastion's hairless unreal skin gave off was fascinating to Eno, ticklish as well whenever she touched the fingertips.
"So.. I can't get certain things from Avatar out of my head." Eno nearly hummed. "The beauty, the trees and the bushes, even the animals all glow at night and radiate during the day; it's so much.. just remembering it takes my breath away. These Na'vi people- have you seen Avatar?"
Bastion huffed a laugh. "I tread the dream world openly. I have seen of it, if not it directly like you."
"Good.. I guess." Eno scrunched her cheek and nose as she often did at his odd comments and practice of thinking. "You know what I'm talking about anyways. The Na'vi are so beautiful, at least the girls are, the men are a bit weird.. kinda' like you."
"Blame your uncle."
"He's funny- anyways, the Na'vi are brave, they live in relative harmony with each other and their surroundings. They spend time with their kids, they don't argue over who's going to do dishes or take their daughter to karate. They leap from high branches and hunt great wild beasts without the slightest fear; both men and women! The way they talk makes them seem like simpletons, but I don't think so." Eno languished a moment, staring at his splayed, horribly old hand.
"Why don't you think so?" Bastion asked.
Eno chewed on the inward edge of her lip. "..I just don't. Maybe if I watched it when I was older I'd think otherwise, but- old people aren't so smart, even if they pretend to be.- When Mom says 'It's just a movie' she never wants to engage in the Socratic method over why- she just changes the subject. Others at school-"
"Brave one, I do not deride. I only wanted to know what you thought."
"Right..." Eno sulked unabated. She was perturbed, bunching the small muscles in her jaw. "Don't you already know what I think?"
"No." Bastion shook his head. "I never peer into a person's mind. I would die of fright most of the time.. Especially in regards to a certain family member of yours who right now slumbers in the basement."
Eno restrained a flicker of bemusement, still sitting upset. "They all like stupid movies with rattling machine guns wielded single handed and romantic comedies that never run the risk of ever being thought about."
"Why does he choose to sleep down there when he visits? I think he's missing a few marbles, rather, with all my power I know your uncle is missing many, many marbles." Bastion continued in as playful a manner as a scratched wheeze could be.
Eno perked, rekindling her infectious flame.
"Perhaps I will ask again later, when thoughts of presumptuous individuals aren't so hot in your head."
"Ok... So.. Where was I?" She lulled.
"You were telling me of this world you saw."
"..Yeah! The Na'vi are great, but they really don't know what to do with humans. Not nice humans, but mostly narrow sighted greedy ones with no limit to their capacity for wrongdoing and don't care about the Na'vi because the Na'vi aren't just like them. And.." Again that moisture that came and went all night, welled from the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over and proclaim just how intensely moved she was. She fought with steadfast resolve against embodying the crybaby people called her. "..Well each time I see in my head Jake or Neytiri hunting, laughing, avoiding toruk trying to eat them, especially their journey together and how most Na'vi must endure similar hardships on Pandora, I remember what happens."
Eno stopped, blinking in a staccato of repetitions and turning aside. She reached her free hand up, but before it could swipe, a touch as soft a cat's nuzzle rubbed away the drop that had begun its descent.
"These things sound amazing, even for the dream world. Why cry?" Bastion asked.
"Because there is so much dying, and screaming and crying.. and of people I really didn't want it to happen to. Entire families are crushed or blown up, Neytiri thinks Jake betrayed her with his ignorance and..."
Bastion too had taken on a more sorrowful visage, folds of skin brimming up to cover the lower portion of his large eyes. "Terrible."
"It's not just.. just that" Eno quarrelled with the want to whimper, to press the escape button and wallow in the unchecked emotions she'd never before encountered. "It's that tomorrow or the next day or next week, it will be like it was never sad and it didn't really matter. Everyone doesn't care, even Mom and Dad tell me I shouldn't care so much, 'it's just a movie', and Jacob laughed when pernicious lead turned Na'vi into rain.. I wish it wasn't sad. I wish it had been happy ever after and no one died to stupid humans. Then in ignorance I could be blissful.. I wish.."
With her head slightly juddering, she cut short her plea. Large hazel met even larger silver, transfixed in the sudden potentiality they offered.
"Wish what you will." Bastion said, lifting her chin with a delicate finger.
"I wish I could go there."
In this strangest of beings there was sudden recognition, and distaste of it. "..To Alpha Centauri?.. It's just a lifeless system in this universe-"
"No. To James Cameron's universe, to Pandora. I wish I could go there and change things for the better. Happy ending- real happy ending with no possibility of more bad stuff." Conjoining with the distress a stubborn vigilance spawned from her. Eno pulled her hands away and crossed the bare skin of her arms.
"And how would you change things there? You cannot even breathe the local air-"
Eno stood. "You know what I mean! Make it so I can breathe, and anything that needs changing you can do. Ok?"
"To every action, even the most minute and innocent, there are consequences." An expeditiously, intensely wary Bastion rose to his full height, only slouching slightly to avoid smacking his bald head against the ceiling.
"So? We've been on adventures before."
"Adventures in universes of my making; expendable. This will be different, gravely different."
"I don't care! I don't care.. I want it happy. I'll be extra careful. We'll figure things out; take me there."
"Be wary with your whims, for the sake of others." The extraplanar being's seriousness of uncounted ages exuded from his whisper as he reached to her cheek and kept firm contact from eye to eye.
"I will.. I've learned lots from other times, promise.." Eno laid her hand atop his, trapping the cold otherworldly digits there. "please.."
Her Bastion grasped her forehead with an engulfing palm in a gesture of slothful, infinite purpose. The weight of entire worlds murmured as noise barely heard in the moment his papery lids closed to shut. "..As you wish." His voice from nowhere and all directions came.
From the wind battered washroom with the house's only bathtub and Theodore the wolf spider that makes a nest in the upper right hand corner of the window every year, the temperature skyrocketed to well past comfortable and bright blazing light blinded Eno.
"Ahh!.." She half eked.
All was white and featureless, every sense rejected the spatial merging and cleansing that it could only know as truly nothing. Before her vision recovered from its retinal bleaching, she knew something was definitely, entirely different. Noises she'd never heard before drove into her a distinct idea of alien magnificence; squawks of avian more exotic than even the tucan and parrot, growls of beasts stalking somewhere through nearby bush, a distant trumpeting of fauna terribly large, the sway of wood that groaned oddly before a gathering breeze. Eno's eyes flashed back open as excitement propelled her pulse well past any healthy limit. She squinted her lids, already grinning, elated, jumping up for unchecked joy.
What was thought to be a dream intangible, a universe beyond reach, now surrounded her and suffused her every cell with a certain inimitable beauty, like the first cough of a resuscitated child.
"Whoa!" She cried as she jumped. Eno had not realized she had been standing so precariously on a high moss and fern covered branch. Scores of meters below her inverted form was a swiftly churning riverbed thickly permeated with giant roots. In mid air she floated, waving her arms about resulting in her body rotating a misshapen circle. Within every direction verdant life which no human of her universe, save one, had ever seen so closely did thrive, bloom and interweave with itself. Flowers with curiously shaped yellow-pink petals and swarms of orange segmented insects buzzing about over them, grew along with trees of every describable gnarl, point and height, and gave way to chaparral with fronds that she recognized and that were so massive each leaf was larger than three of her.
Being here was her wish, and Eno did believe her Bastion was godlike, yet it seemed beyond the description of any notion of impossible power that she be where she was. She consciously blinked as she did to dissipate a nightmare, yet as the lids retreated the dreamscape remained resolutely unfurled before her. Possibility unlimited thickly permeated the humid air.
Eno both cried and laughed. "Pandora!"