Horses with six legs are horrible creatures. Jake is splattered with mud, has bruises blooming purple on his skin and is thoroughly done.
Neytiri is not.
Fucking fine. If they're going to be doing this until Jake is able to stay on that horse's back, fine. He can do this. He got that one suicidal kid not to kill himself once, he can convince a horse to do exactly what he wants. Exactly what he wants. Which just so happens to be splattering Neytiri with at least half as much mud as he's covered with.
So, he connects his tswin with the horse's and makes tsaheylu. Only instead of feeling her body, he goes for her mind. It's a series of impressions. Smells, sights, pressure. Emotion, to an undefinable degree. And there is something like curiosity, there, too. What, do the monkeys never look for intelligent thought when they swing on top of a horse's back? Of course not. Why would they, after all? Horses must be beneath them the same way non-warriors are.
Sometimes Jake thinks they are the worst hypocrites out there. They revere Eywa and are thankful for what the planet has to give, of course. But some things aren't treated with the care or attention they deserve.
If this horse in particular is curious, maybe she'll be the perfect partner in crime. Jake only has to give her an impression of what he wants to accomplish, and a feeling of joy and mirth to go along with it. He thinks. Maybe.
So he swings himself onto her back and accepts that if he falls again, his pride won't suffer all that much for it. Not that he has a lot of it in the first place.
It turns out that horses are born pranksters. Jake falls off of that broad back again, but this time it's from laughing so hard at Neytiri's face.
He's punished for it with more lessons about shooting a bow. Jake has a feeling he'll be a master by the time this is over.
Quartritch and Selfridge on the other hand, are going to be thoroughly misinformed.
Augustine is a genius at subterfuge. Which means she makes plans to move them to the flying mountains of Pandora. Which is just super cool, Jake's not going to lie. Norm, who's been a little miffed at how Jake's become the one getting the most of Augustine's attention, is coming with them and Jake takes the opportunity to involve the man's intellect in their schemes. He's a linguistical mastermind. And has read lots of books about warfare and all that. He's a very good addition to the team.
Also, Norm makes a mean bacon sandwich. There's something about the orange-mustard.
Trudie, well, she might not be a genius, but she knows everything about choppers. And how to sabotage them. Which places even an arrow can pierce and do damage like a missile would.
Jake is infinitely grateful that he doesn't have to do this on his own.
There aren't many things Jake misses about Earth, aside from Tommy, but he's gone anyway. One of those things is music. Sure, there are a few albums and tracks that they can play on the station, but it's not the same as going to a concert. Of course, he didn't do that much, what with too large crowds, too many smells and noises, but whenever he could get tickets for a concert where he could sit, he'd go. Music here on Pandora is very… primitive. That's not to say it's not good, far from it, but there is no way of recreating the depth of the bass, the volume, the sounds of another world. Something about music has always reached deep into Jake's chest and spread emotion.
So it's no surprise that when he makes his own arrows under Neytiri's supervision, he hums one of his favourite songs under his breath, wondering how he can improve the arrow or if it's possible to build a crossbow.
"What is that?", she asks, interrupting his thoughts on the lack of metal.
"Hm?", he looks up from his work.
"The song", she looks genuinely curious. Usually (ever since the incident with his braid), any personal questions are to be avoided, and anything to do with his culture is ignored. She must like the melody enough to forget about her misgivings for the moment. Well, Jake's nothing if not happy to give her a piece of music.
He teaches her. Explains about the various instruments, offers to have her listen to some music from back home some time. She does not say no. It's a very small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
It makes him wonder, how else can he reach out to them and show them so many more possibilities than the complacency they have going now. What was that saying again? The way to reach a man's heart is through his stomach or something?
Well, Jake isn't a cook like Norm is, but he's resourceful and he knows how to make lasagne.
He's seen some of the children with something suspiciously like milk. There are carrion birds that lay eggs. They don't have wheat or flour, but he's seen something like bread being passed around the hearth. Tomatoes… maybe there's some kind of vegetable here with a similar taste.
Jake takes to hanging around with the cooks.
They are all kind of wary of him. Understandable. But there isn't much he really wants to do about that. He does show one curious elderly woman, Ene'I, how to smoke a fish like he knows it and from then on, he is no longer ignored. She shows him around their variety of vegetables and once he's sufficiently explained what it is he wants to cook, she helps him.
Their first attempt is terrible. Jake will never speak of it again.
But the second and the third, they slowly get close to what he wants it to taste like. By the fourth, all of the cooks are involved and by the fifth, Jake can taste a piece of home.
Dragon Lady comes to visit by the time they've gotten it perfect. Jake's in the corner of the 'kitchen' with Ene'I, trying out various versions of the pandoran lasagne when she strides in. All activities cease and she moves over to them, very serene and dignified. Ene'I seems to want to shrink away a little, like she's not sure what they're doing is allowed. Jake's just a little curious if she's going to try some.
She does. And from the wonder on her face, she likes. Very much.
From then on, lasagne is for dinner once a week and Jake is always welcome in the kitchens.
He's pretty sure Neytiri envies that. Jake is not going to be petty about it and rub it in her face, though. No, he's gracious and takes her with him on his egg-hunts. It becomes a thing.
The children who are old enough to follow them help, too. It always turns into a race. Jake remembers those games where the kids would get a spoon and an egg to lay in it and a parkour to get through. It's a little like that, only no one will break an egg here, Eywa's gift and all that.
When he tells Augustine about it, she looks at him a little funny, then smiles. But she says nothing. Which is a little weird. She always has something to say. In the end, she only reminds him to begin telling the Omatikaya about the sky-people's plans for the hometree.
Getting Neytiri to listen about anything other than music or new foods is a chore and a half.
And still, when he finally has her sitting down, to listen to his warnings, she disregards them. Disregards them. Like what he's saying couldn't save hundreds of lives. Brat. And she calls him a child, floundering in his ignorance.
Well, it isn't like Jake can't be resourceful. He tells the children stories from Earth instead. Some are movies, some are books, some are fairy tales, and some are taken from what he remembers from history class. They all listen, fascinated. Even the adults sometimes sit with them and listen. Some even ask questions afterwards that strain Jake's memory or capacity to explain how some concepts that he grew up with work. How some societal norms are entirely alien to them, he can understand. After all, he calls them monkeys. But there are some downright worrying implications about their questions.
They seem to view the sky-people as both beneath them and at the same time, of equal standing, but somehow never as more intelligent as themselves, even though they can travel through space. But then again, the monkeys have no desire to leave Pandora behind. Jake thinks that interacting with him, seeing the changes he can bring, is making them realise just how different they are. To him, they are to be taught. To them, he is the one to learn.
It is, as he tells Augustine one night over a drink and too many cigarettes, very hard not to ask them why they don't have artists or farm or make things more convenient for themselves, even without changing the face of the planet and felling trees, as humans are wont to do. Maybe they're missing the innate desire to laze around collectively. No one is ever not busy. It's the complete opposite of a society where Jake remembers seeing some people spend hours staring at a screen, playing at war without ever leaving their homes.
He remembers Tommy's love of books very well. Stories, so complex that they can't be remembered and told in enough detail to make them as vivid as they appear on paper. Tommy said once, when the mind can escape into another world, create its own images according to the words on paper, it is the most fulfilling thing. Or something like that.
Jake never did like reading thick books much, but he can understand the wish to escape, to have superpowers, to be able to do magic. Well, what he does here, telling stories holds its own kind of magic, but he hasn't seen anyone sit down and do nothing but think and get lost in their own head. There is no one inventing new things.
Maybe it's because they don't need machinery to fly, they just get on an oversized bird with too many sharp teeth.
Jake is not about to judge them for it. Although he has been doing just that. But he gets it. Sort of. They are different. They know different things. They can speak to their ancestors.
Jake kind of wishes he could talk to Tommy that way. All he has now is memories. But even those fade with time.
It kind of feels a like betrayal that Jake can't remember his brother's favourite food any more.
The guilt he feels, being glad that he can do all the things he does with this body never really goes away.