SWEET BREAD
In the dim-lit Circle of Warriors, two long weapons smacked between a male Na'vi, Itoyo, and a female Na'vi, Piral. Piral makes a grimace of wrath and swoops her stick over Itoyo's head. It whistles over his skull from the left and then from the right. When Piral raises her arms and brings the stick down between his eyes, Itoyo's weapon meets it first with a dunk!
The weapons crucifix and then they start to splinter as the warriors both dig their bare heels into the wooden ledge under their feet and resist.
Itoyo grits, sputters, and launches Piral away in a shout.
Piral's long, blue legs, encased in rain-sodden guards over their shins, both shuffled. Her arms that were protected by similar sleeves of hard, woven reeds, lead to two long-fingered hands, one that flexes craftily on the fat cylinder of sanded wood in her left palm and another that wrings the hilt of the club that was carefully ridged to the shape of her hold and made smooth with a tree resin. Her waistguard, crafted in the same material of her limbs, stretched with her torso as she bent low before Itoyo. Her small breasts were gathered beneath gnarled roots that wound into a stem between her ribs and spooled around her neck. Between pale lips, Piral revealed her fangs and her white teeth; her nose widened when her portly cheeks pulled them up to grin. Her eyes, poised under strong brows and blinking with thin lashes, burned a topaz color before Itoyo. Her boyish, ear-length plaits swung when she thrusted towards Itoyo, and the shells at her ends clattered like marbles.
Itoyo, who had a slender face and thin eyes, a band around his neck of internetted circles, and tan adornments at the tips of his shoulder-length braids, hesitated and moved his tail like a flog. Piral wiggled her own tail, making a sound behind her lips like tiny bells.
Itoyo lunged at her. Piral's growls, sounding throaty and triumphant, cried out with every blow Itoyo swung to send her from the ledge. She jumped and sailed to the bottom of the house, heard steps pounding after her, and battered Itoyo's hits from the ground. Her wrist flicked. Her weapon now underhand, she speared its end into Itoyo's stomach.
Itoyo hissed and pedaled backward. Piral sprung to her feet. Their clubs whacked on.
With two hands around his club's hilt and a ready to bat the smile from Piral's face, Itoyo suddenly felt weightless. A large circle of glowing stones with flames licking underneath them sped towards him and his arms grapple the air uselessly as he yelped.
"Guck-!"
His body hurled forward in Piral's iron grip. "Irayo," he breathed in relief.
Piral made a girly snarl and raised her weapon again.
Itoyo looked to the steaming pillows of batter rising into fat eggs over the fire in the middle of the house. "Hametsi kalin?"
Piral's eyes glittered at the name of her favorite food. She lowered the club and rushed close. "Tsiltsan!"
"Ah, Ree'ahn'tsyip." Oh, little Ree'ahn. "Fwew, Piral; he has made too much."
Piral did look, but saw nothing wrong at all. "You are complaining?"
"It is wasteful! Food is already scarce in these hard times."
"Then, I will eat it all myself!"
"Your stomach is a pit."
They watched the hametsi singe and smelled a flowery scent waft to their noses. They pictured how the bread would sponge in their hands when it was baked and how the hot nectar inside would ooze in their mouths and crystallize on their fingers that they would suck clean.
A faint voice gave a greeting.
"Nang!" Piral gasped. Her eyes bugged out at Itoyo like a prolemuris. Itoyo's braids twirled after her.
They dogtrotted up to the armoury to hide the weapons they weren't allowed to use inside. The two snickered during their fast descent to greet their tsamsiyu'eyktan.
Suddenly, the warriors statued. They peered below to see three Na'vi bending inside in the kelku from the storm. They wore battered cloths of the Skypeople and fat shoes over their feet. Itoyo's dark hand planted over Piral's waistguard and kept her behind him on the ledge. His face dipped into the orange light of the fire below and his eyes bent when he recalled the faces of the captures that he and Ree'ahn had found tresspassing to the clan.
Tsu'tey told the vagabonds to sit. He crossed his legs on the floor of warm, dried grasses and the captures followed, making crackling noises as they shifted. Tsu'tey muttered in English to the new group and nodded at each of them to be sure they were comfortable.
Piral and Itoyo look warily at the aliens and faced each other. They slithered into Ree'ahn's coven at the highest corner of the house.
Itoyo whispered first, "Ree'ahn! There are Dreamwalkers here!"
"Ree'ahn'tsyip!" Piral tried. She blinked slow.
Tsu'tey called nicely from far below. "Piral, Toyo? Where are you? Come and eat."
Piral eventually moved to the call of her stomach.
Itoyo clenched her bicep and kept her close. "Who are these people you have brought here to us?" he questioned in a loud, slow and guarded cadence of syllables in Na'vi. "This is a private place."
The fire simmered and the three Avatars watched Tsu'tey think to himself. Tsu'tey lifted his head and said to the dark, "I work with them in the village of the aliens. Come and eat, and I will explain."
Even on other planets, food had the power to turn complete strangers into acquantinces. The Avatars found that the plump and oval baguettes, marshmellow-white and about the size of two human hands in their laps, spider-webbed like cotton candy when they pinched it apart. The three pulled pieces to their mouths in the same way as the Omatikayan warriors. Tsu'tey reached the middle of his loaf, scooped out a wobbly, gellacious morsel that was clear-colored, and sunk his fingers between his lips.
Victoria followed Tsu'tey's action. It would keep her clothes clean and keep away more black insects that jumped between the blades of grasses in the floor of the house. She investigated the clump of nectar on her blue fingers and then ate it. It was sweeter than maple syrup with caramel, yet another memory of cumcumber came to her mind. The taste was different, but it didn't stop her from spooning out more of the jelly.
While the others chattered, Piral stood and took a portion of sweet bread. She shouted to the silent Dreamwalker, "you! Come!"
Victoria pointed at herself and followed the bright-toothed warrior.
Piral pulled her legs over a ledge and manuevered through the tunnel of the giant treetop until the mealfire in the center of her friends was a candle flame. She had miraculously kept the loaf in her hands for the whole climb. When Victoria spotted Piral again, her blue foot bounced into a space. Victoria hesitated, but then she lowered her head under a bough and did the same.
The large berth, floored and walled with a hardened material like debris, was colored auburn from a personal fire. Piral plopped the loaf by a mysterious clutter on a ridge.
Piral murmured to Victoria, "you are quiet, and he is quiet. Here it is more good for you!" Victoria didn't have time to comment that no one was there. The female warrior beamed and left her giggles behind she.
Steadily, Victoria blinked in the dark. She saw an article, evidently a huge one, with bulbous loops and twists of a material she didn't recognize, hang in folds before her eyes. With time, hues entered in view: blues, reds, yellows, and greens. Victoria reversed, slow, and a symmetry unveiled itself in a colossal graphic. If she brought a flashlight, she could see what the shapes morphed into as a whole. Her eyes traced along the embroidery; its other end was unfinished.
Victoria dipped her head to a sizeable collection of miniature, barrel-shaped wooden blocks. Her head leaned. The dimness of the room made it impossible to see the figures that were brought forth by the etchings in the totems. She reached to hold one and bring it close.
A glint made Victoria flinch as if she were burned.
A knifehandle pinned on the ridge where her fingers would have been. The sound it made was as loud as the thump of her heart. Victoria's body wheeled around, but met darkness.
Her golden eyes, amber in the coven, inched up to the ceiling and found the third warrior. His tail laid limp on a high outgrowth that nestled him to the corner of the house. An opening in the branches, shaped as a large eye and filled with grey, dripping sky, was where he chose to curl his head.
The Na'vi's hair shuffled away in threads from his face as he slowly rose. His eyes opened in slits.
The same feelings that had rushed down Victoria's spine from the falls came again: electric chills of terror.
"Oe takip aytaftxuyu, si ayrelseotu," he said in his tenor voice, awakened and gravelly.
I am from among a family of weavers, and artists. Victoria mentally translated. That explained quite a lot.
She couldn't remember how to say something was beautiful in Na'vi, but she tried her best to give him an answer. After all, Tsu'tey had said it was safe to speak with him.
"Silt sawn," Victoria tries with a crooked smile and a hand-movement to the whole display.
The Na'vi regarded the compliment with a scowl, and then he released a long breath before he descended and closed his eyes once more.
Victoria turned back to the art. With her heart in her mouth, she said, "what are you called?"
A quiet that was longer than she expected followed. He answered, "wrey-aghn."
For a while, she believed his name would be the last thing she would hear from him. Then, he added sleepily, "if I see your hand on my things again, you will lose it."
Okay, Victoria mouthed to herself. He hadn't stopped her from looking, so she observed more of his handiworks from afar.
Tsu'tey had produced a gourd-looking object with a long spout, but had not picked it up until now. He drank from it and passed it along to the warriors. Piral, once Itoyo had his share, downed the drink in deep gulps and voiced her satisfaction in a rasp. She rounded the container to Tanner.
Tanner trusted one of the rules he lived by: if the food in the place was delicious, then so was everything else. And, Tsu'tey had made the most of his fill from whatever it was. Tanner gripped the belly of the thing, and then tilted it to his lips.
Tanner heard the liquid sizzle when it went down his throat and he hacked and barked out air.
The warriors had waited for it. Tsu'tey's laugh sounded dark and baleful against Piral's clucking that favored a witch. Itoyo's soft chortle went unnoticed, and so did the gleam in his eye when he became interested in a glinting and swishing jewel on a female Dreamwalker's ear. Itoyo leaned to Tsu'tey and moved his lips. Tsu'tey's ears perked. Itoyo rambled on in endless fragments, long or short, that always curled in a question.
Tsu'tey waved him silent. He turned to the Avatars who looked puzzled at every other word that rolled too fast from Itoyo's tongue. "He wants to know how I meet all of you."
Tanner grunted. He swallowed the last of his meal and invited himself to share first, "It's a long story..."
Words: 1949 Next chapter: A Long Story