Alright, time to move onto the next chapter. Again, I own nothing but the plot and anything I create. Oh, and I kinda messed up a little on the timeline. I did some fine-tuning and figured out the year I needed this to take place in. So, the movie takes place in 2154, so that means that the year is 2148 for the story at this point. I'll go back eventually and fix all the little problems, including the timeline. And for those that didn't read it last chapter, I do not own Sylwanin. She's mentioned in the script, but she died before Jake arrived on Pandora. So technically, she's not an OC, just a character that isn't mentioned.
"Speech"
Thoughts
A slim figure glided through the trees, moving around and under obstructions with ease as she moved through the forest. Dr. Augustine had gotten worried about Harry after he hadn't returned, so she had asked for a volunteer to go find him. The only one willing to look for him was Sylwanin, which is why she was traveling through the forests instead of sitting in her usual spot in the back of the school building reading one of Grace's many books. Writing was a foreign concept to the Na'vi, their queues negating the need for a writing system, but Sylwanin found reading to be very relaxing and a great way to learn more about the mysterious humans.
As she traveled through the forest, choosing to travel on foot rather than using her ikran, Hufwe, she thought back to when she had left the school. Dr. Augustine had asked her to go find Harry, indicating that he wouldn't have traveled far as he didn't know the area. On a whim, Sylwanin circled around to the clearing that the Sky People used to come to the area where the school had been built, thinking that perhaps the mysterious man had gone to a familiar area.
However, when she arrived she didn't find any trace of Harry. She cautiously walked through the clearing, sniffing occasionally to try and pick up any recent scents, but the only ones she could detect were hours old. As she prepared to leave and continue her search elsewhere, she heard a loud crack, like a branch snapping, which caused her to turn around. There, in the center of the clearing was the man she had been looking for, in an area that she knew had been empty only seconds before. She quickly hid in the trees surrounding the clearing before Harry could gain his bearings and notice her.
How did he just appear like that? Sylwanin thought to herself as she watched him look around in confusion, his muscles tense as if he was ready for a fight. But then he relaxed as he saw he was in a safe location, which peaked her curiosity. Did he not know how he came to be in that location? When he started walking back up the trail, Sylwanin followed him from the trees, trying to figure out how he could have appeared out of thin air, something that she had never heard of before. When he stopped suddenly after only traveling a little ways and looked around, she thought that Harry had detected her, but relaxed when he turned his focus to a fallen branch along the side of the path.
What is that Dreamwalker doing? At this point, Sylwanin was about ready to reveal herself to him and lead him back to the school, but as she moved closer, she was able to hear him speak in a clear strong voice, but the words he said made no sense to her at all.
Sylwanin had to suppress a giggle at the frustrated look on Harry's face when nothing happened and she started walking forward to reveal herself, but she fell back in shock when the branch that Harry had been pointing at suddenly rose into the air, landing on her backside as she looked at something that wasn't possible. While the Thundering Rocks floated through the air, that was due to the will of Eywa, but this was something else completely, and truth be told, it scared her.
Vrrtep! Terkup po zene! Sylwanin thought to herself as she grabbed her bow and knocked an arrow, kneeling on one knee for better stability. But as she aimed her bow at Harry, she saw a sight that caused her to freeze. Two atokirina, seeds of the great tree, drifted between her and Harry, making it hard to take the shot without hitting them. One of them landed on Harry, while another landed on his outstretched right arm.
"Eywa," Sylwanin breathed out, barely audible even to her. It was a sign from Eywa that he should be allowed to live, so despite her instincts telling her to kill Harry, she lowered her bow and took the arrow off the bowstring. As she did, Harry lost control of his magic and the branch he had been levitating flew high into the air, and when he moved to dodge it as it came down, he dislodged the atokirina and they drifted off on a light breeze. Sylwanin sighed as secured her bow across her back with the bowstring across her chest, resting between her breasts, in a secure fashion that wouldn't negatively affect her should she need to move swiftly.
As Harry continued down the path, Sylwanin glided through the forest to get ahead of him so that she could finish the task Dr. Augustine had asked of her so that she would be able to think about what she had seen in peace. She had a feeling that she had made a mistake by letting the mysterious Dreamwalker live, and yet she knew that Ewya wanted him to live and that superseded all of her misgivings. So it was a conflicted woman that moved into a position further down the path to await Harry.
Harry walked down the path, taking in the sights and smells of the forest, amazed by his Avatar's senses. After finding out that he had regained his magic, something that he had never dreamed possible, Harry was ecstatic and literally had a bounce to his step as he walked along the path. He had already nearly forgotten all about his close encounter with a hungry Thanator, but his body hadn't. When he suddenly spotted a figure by a tree, his body tensed up and stopped in mid-step, his body ready to fight or run.
"Oh, it's just Sylwanin," he muttered to himself in relief as he jogged the rest of the way to the waiting girl. However, he slowed when he saw a look of cautious fear on her face, only for it to be hidden behind a mask of indifference a moment later. "Is something wrong?"
Sylwanin gave him a cautious glance before looking away. "No. Nothing is wrong. You come now," she told him before starting off down the path, not bothering to wait for him.
"Whoa, wait for me," Harry said as he hurried to catch up to her. As they walked, Harry noticed that Sylwanin kept looking at him with a calculating expression, but every time he'd turn to look at her, she would turn her head away.
"So, why'd you come looking for me?" Harry asked as he grew uncomfortable with the silence.
"Dr. Augustine asked it of me, so I did," Sylwanin replied absently, as if she wasn't really paying attention.
"Well, uh, thanks," Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck in a restless move. "I sort of got turned around in the forest, but I made my way back to the clearing alright."
Sylwanin just looked at him before picking up her pace, her long strides easily eating up the distance to the school. The rest of the trip was spent in silence, as every time Harry tried to start a conversation, Sylwanin simply ignored him and increased her pace until they were almost jogging at one point. With the pace the Sylwanin set, they arrived at the school after only twenty minutes and made their way inside.
"Harry, where were you?" Grace asked as she walked up to him. As she approached, Sylwanin headed back outside and gave a short trill. Harry watched her as a large shape came out of the trees, revealing her banshee, which she quickly mounted and flew away. A soft cough drew his attention back to Grace.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Harry asked sheepishly, though he had a slight smile on his face, which only caused Grace to roll her eyes and smack him on the back of the head.
"Ok, troublemaker, go hand out those books to the kids," she told him, motioning to a pile of thin books on the edge of a table. And so began his time at the school helping teach while learning from both Grace and the Na'vi children.
After that very interesting first day, Harry created a new routine for himself. In the mornings he would train with the SecOps guys to keep himself fighting fit, a habit that he had kept from his training to kill Voldemort, then he would go link up with his Avatar and he and Grace would go to the school to teach. Most of the time the same children would be there, but some of the older students would come and go as they pleased, one of which was Sylwanin. Harry always felt nervous around her, as if she was constantly watching him, analyzing his movements and decisions, which she was. During the days at the school, Harry would sneak away and practice his magic, relearning everything as he found that his magic had changed.
"Stupify!" Harry growled as he thrust his hand out at a tree trunk he was using as a target, trying to will his magic to respond. However, nothing happened and his frustration only grew. "Gah! Why won't it work?"
He waved his hand over the ground and levitated several stones with ease, which actually made his frustration grow. "I can levitate things, transfigure, and do several charms, but why won't some of these spells work? Bugger!" As he ranted to himself, Harry ended the spell and the stones dropped to the ground. He slumped to the ground with his back leaning against a tree.
Harry heard a skittering sound near him and saw a large scorpion like creature crawling up the tree trunk near his head. With a flick of his fingers, Harry lifted the scorpion with his magic and placed it on another tree nearby. He really wasn't in the mood to get stung.
"Figures. Spells like that are easy for me, and yet I can't seem to cast a simple stunning spell."
Harry sighed and leaned his head back against the tree trunk, his eyes closing as he tried to relax. As he sat there, he slowly relaxed to the point where he was almost meditating, working to keep his mind clear so that his frustration would fade away. As he sat there in light meditation, he felt a soft throb in his mind and heard a low hum in his ears that faded when he tried to focus on it.
"Bugger, I can't even rest properly anymore," Harry mumbled as he slowly opened his eyes. His eyes snapped open in shock as he realized that there was a wall of dirt surrounding him, with lines of thin roots surrounding him in a cocoon that supported his body in a very relaxing position.
A moment before he started struggling, his panic welling up inside him, the roots began to quickly retreat back into the ground and the dirt rolled away to reveal the forest canopy above him, along with a very cautious looking Sylwanin who stepped back several paces when she saw Harry.
"Uh, Sylwanin…I can explain this," Harry stuttered as he got to his feet, brushing some dirt off his pants. He glanced back to where he was sitting and saw that it was exactly as it had been before he sat down. Did I imagine that? He thought to himself, but one look back at Sylwanin's distrustful look on her beautiful face was enough to squash that thought.
"How you do that? Are you demon?" Sylwanin asked with a slight glare. She didn't like that Harry could do things that she couldn't even begin to explain, especially when she had been training for years to follow in her mother's footsteps to be the next Tsahìk.
"No, I'm not a demon, Sylwanin. I'm…well, I'm…uh, bugger it all!" Harry said as he rubbed his forehead in irritation. I can't tell her I'm a wizard; she wouldn't know what that means. How do I get myself into these messes?
"Then what are you?" Sylwanin asked cautiously.
"I don't know what you would call me or if you even have a word for what I am, but I use magic, so back on Earth I'm called a Wizard," Harry replied after some thought on how to phrase his response.
"What is magic?" At this point, Sylwanin was more curious than cautious, which Harry took as a good sign.
"It's, uh, type of energy that is everywhere and in everything and some people can learn to use it to do things," Harry told her as he sat back down and motioned for her to do the same. "A while back, I lost the ability to use magic, but now I can."
"Does that explain the dirt?" Sylwanin asked, her curiosity growing.
"Actually, I can't really explain how that happened. I could never do that before. I suppose that my magic has changed…which might explain why I can do some things and not others!" Harry exclaimed, finally realizing why he could cast the stunning spell. "But because I've lost some spells, my magic has compensated by giving me new abilities." Just then Harry looked down at his wrist watch, taking a moment to figure out the display as it was a lot different to his old watch. "Ah crap, I gotta go. I guess I'll see you later, Sylwanin. Please don't tell anyone that I can do magic, it would be very bad for me. Trust me, please?"
Sylwanin looked at his worried face, seeing the truth in his eyes, and nodded to him. "I promise."
"Thank you," Harry said, flashing a bright smile before getting up and running back to the school, leaving a very confused and conflicted Sylwanin behind. She stood and looked in the direction that Harry had ran off in, making far too much noise for her liking, and then back to where he had been sitting earlier.
How does he do these things? The very earth rose around him, forming a barrier that he didn't even know he had created, if what he said is true. Sylwanin thought as she walked over and kneeled to brush her fingers across the ground. From what she could see, the ground hadn't been disturbed and yet she had seen the dirt rise up around Harry and then flow back into the ground like water, leaving him unharmed.
Sylwanin growled softly in frustration at all the unknowns that surrounded the mysterious teacher. Knowing that she wouldn't find anything new from staying, she stood and headed back to where she had left Hufwe, gliding through the forest in near silence.
Translations:
"Vrrtep! Terkup po zene," - "Demon! He must die,"
Alright, another chapter finished. Things are going to be interesting in the next few chapters. *grins evilly* Oh, and I have a poll up on my profile, so please go there and give me your input.
Update (3/14/2010): Ok, I'd like to apologize to everyone, but I may not be able to write for a while for a couple reasons. One reason is that my Grandma just died and that has thrown off my writing inspiration. I was very close to my Grandma when I was younger, so this is extremely tough for me right now. Until I get over losing her, I doubt I'll be able to write anything. This last part of the chapter was written right after her death, and I found it almost impossible to write what I did. So, please, hang in there and I'll eventually get back to my writing.
