Westin was nervous. After two days travel from the advance base camp, the survey party was well inside Omaticaya land. The idiots running the show were just bulldozing a narrow track through everything. Grace had told him how the clans viewed the forest – to them it was holy, like a church. He wondered how the Pope would react to some redneck driving a bulldozer right through the middle of St Peter's. The phrase 'wrath of God' came to mind.
He looked back at a creek they had just crossed – it was already running brown with runoff rather than the crystal clear waters that similar watercourse displayed. The constant rain forecast for the next couple of weeks would turn these tracks into quagmires, and the watercourses they crossed into rivers of brown sludge.
The lead surveyor – a noob who knew fuck-all about Pandora – was talking back to his supervisor at Hell's Gate. Westin waited for him to finish his call before saying, "Are you deliberately trying to piss off the indigenous?"
"The colonel told me all about you, Westin," jibed the surveyor."You're one of those blue monkey lovers . Fuck off and let me do my job – if any of the smurfs make trouble for us, your job is to blow them away, not tell me how to do mine."
Westin shrugged. "It's your funeral," he replied. The ignorant dweeb was going to get them all killed.
"What is wrong, Grace?" asked Sylwanin curiously. The dreamwalker woman seemed distracted. "You are sad." She came early to the schoolhouse, before the children arrived from Kelutrel so that she could practice her 'Ìnglìsì, and find out more about the tawtute.
"Is it that obvious ?" chuckled Grace.
"Srane," said Sylwanin. "You look out into the forest and sigh, all day. Are you in love?"
"There is a man," admitted Grace.
"Pah!" snorted Sylwanin, indicating her general opinion of the male sex. "I knew it. Only a man could make such a disturbance in your spirit."
Grace sighed. "It is not like that," she replied. "We cannot love, for we cannot be together."
Sylwanin frowned. This she could not understand, for it was the simplest thing in the world. "If a man loves a woman, and she loves him, then Eywa will provide."
"For the Na'vi it is that simple," replied Grace. "It is much more complicated for humans." The young Na'vi woman looked confused, so she tried to explain. "He is not like me, not a teacher – he is a warrior."
"A warrior," said Sylwanin, impressed. "A warrior will make an honourable mate. You will make a good choice."
Grace smiled sadly. "It is much more complicated than that. Although he is tawtute, he is not a dreamwalker. So we cannot be together." The barriers to her relationship with Westin were a lot more complicated than what she was telling Sylwanin, that explanation was probably enough for now.
Sylwanin wrinkled her brow. She had seen tawtute soldiers on the kunsips that brought Grace to this place. They were so small, and she could not conceive how Grace could mate with one. They had no queue for tsahaylu. Still, her teacher's spirit was unbalanced, and she hated to see Grace unhappy. "Come," said Sylwanin, grabbing her hand and pulling her outside. "Come with me. I will show you something to make you happy."
High above the palulukan nest, Zha'nelle slept in the arms of her mate. It had been a long night tracking the deadly predators, and they had not returned to this place until just after dawn.
Zha'nelle stirred slightly, her dreams suddenly invaded by another presence.
"It is time," said the dream-spirit.
"Grandfather?" she thought. It was like him, and yet not.
"No, my child," smiled the dream-spirit. "I am not your Grandfather."
"What do you want of me?" asked Zha'nelle, oddly not afraid of this strange yet familiar presence. Zha'nelle then realised she had felt it before, hovering on the edge of her awareness all her life.
"It is time," the dream-spirit repeated. "The task you were born for awaits you."
Zha'nelle's eye flicked open. She slid out of Mìnkxetse's embrace, taking care not to wake him, slipped her bow over her body, and without a backward glance rapidly descended to the ground.
Mìnkxetse was cold. He tried to clasp his mate closer to him, so that he could enjoy the warmth of her body. When he found his arms were empty, he snapped awake. "Zha'nelle," he called out softly. There was no answer.
He looked about him and saw that her bow was gone. Fear gripped his heart, and he looked down at the ground. What he saw horrified him. He wanted to cry out, but could not, for fear of endangering his mate.
Zha'nelle stood before one of the palulukan, gazing into its open eyes. Her clear voice rang out, unafraid, carrying her words through the forest to his ears, "Oe kin ne makto nga ma'tsmuke."
To Mìnkxetse's amazement, the palulukan dipped its head to Zha'nelle, and she leapt onto its back, mounting the evil beast and forming the bond as though it was a pa'li, and not the most feared predator in the embrace of Eywa. In a blink of the eye the palulukan exploded into movement, heading in the direction of Kelutrel. She was gone.