Chapter nine
The vast wings –leathery expanses of ferocious red and yellow—lie crumpled and faded.
Staring at the fallen predator, it seems impossible that something so invincible could be rendered into something so pitiful. Toruk feared nothing—no creature dared challenge it—but in the end, it has been brought low by the mere passage of time, by something completely mundane and ubiquitous. Neytiri cannot help but be reminded of Jake, Toruk Makto, only the 6th in all of history... poisoned to death by the very air around them, drowning in the blood of his own inadequate lungs.
For Neytiri, the death takes on a special significance because Toruk had been one of the last living things that had known Jake in any truly meaningful way. Her parents, Tsu'tey... surely the ikran is dead by now as well. Grace, Trudy, most of the humans who had remained behind. All gone to the passage of time. Neytiri wonders if she is the only one left that still remembers him and mourns him. The sensation is profound in its loneliness.
The Omaticaya gather in ceremony, paying respects to the rarest and noblest beast known to Pandora, blessing its warrior spirit and conveying it back to Eywa. Its skull will become a totem in their home, just like in the old Hometree. Neytiri joins in the song, honoring Toruk, but in her heart she is singing the song for Jake, and the tears flow freely.
When she goes to tend the avatar that night, it is like the decades have not passed at all. The wound is as raw and fresh and desperate as it was the day they buried him, the day she convinced her mother to save his avatar from the same grave. Now, she is not so sure that it had been a good idea. Her mother had been right all along. She has been keeping alive a false hope. It's what has prevented her from healing. He looks too real; his skin is too warm. She finds herself actually staring into the aged, sleeping face, trying to will the eyes open. She feels insane.
Hours pass, and still her agitation does not subside. She forms tsaheylu, fingers fumbling, hoping to at least submerge the emotion beneath the tranquility of the trance, like putting herself under a drug. But the peace does not feel right. It is not truly the peace of sleep, like she has allowed herself to pretend. She still wants the eyes to open, to have Jake be here to share in the peace and have the peace be real.
Irrationally, she eases the eyes open, gently, with her fingertips. She sees the bright yellow there for the first time since the great battle. But they are flat, dead. She lets them slide shut again and slowly doubles over onto the ground, gasping, the wound wide open and gushing. She feels she will bleed to death. She can't see straight. She can't even tell if her queue is still linked—stupidly linked to the hopeless, useless, empty body that she has foolishly preserved for all these years. Probably she is not, or the pain wouldn't be this intense. The dead do not feel pain.