A LONG STORY: TANNER
You were out cold," said Tanner in the quiet circle around the fire. "That was one of the worst comas I've ever seen. What did you see?" He peeked at Tsu'tey and saw that the Na'vi's eyes were glazed.
Tsu'tey focused to the Avatar. He looked and saw his warriors and guests staring at him and waiting.
"I saw too many things. It made me not the same." Tsu'tey said. "Everywhere now I find happiness, and peace. The forest has more colors than in the past, and I stop on walks to watch the animals playing from time to time." He bows with a smirk when Piral mumbled in disbelief. He goes on, "I can hear the Creator speak clear. And, I am not so angry about things that do not matter."
Sky saw Itoyo give Tsu'tey a look.
"I am not always so angry on things that do not matter."
"Anyway," Tanner said. Tanner carried on to explain that his voice had been Tsu'tey's thread to the outside world. Eventually, Tsu'tey had woken up.
The white tunnel dissolved again, but never stretched to its moon-shape. The smell of grass and embers evaporated. The void faded. Tsu'tey felt lucid. He moved to see his legs in the forest. They looked normal, but long insects with too many legs were stuck to them. Tsu'tey's made a face and he moved to pluck them away.
"Woah, woah-hey!" A hand that was too small to be real stung his hand like a tiny bug. "Leave those in, okay?"
The grasses were gone. Eerie objects of silver, blue and white were all around Tsu'tey. The all-white dwarf-being Tsu'tey looked down to had a mirror for a face. He frowned. It was an alien.
The alien flinched from a big tail that whizzed over his head. He kept his hands over his face like a shield, and then peeked.
Tsu'tey felt his neck and chest-they were bare. He saw he wore nothing but a white sheet. He saw something black and feathery tumble over his shoulders as he leaned over. He gripped his head-unraveled and unproper like Ree'ahn. Tsu'tey's eyes became glass balls. He felt completely naked.
"Alright, take it easy." A grainy voice, or an astronaut underwater, buzzed. "Everything is in a safe place."
It thought now was a good time to introduce himself properly. "Good morning, Tsu'tey. I am Mr. Tanner Martinez-Brown, and I will be happy to be your surgeon. You can call me Tanner or, "Mister T". Alrighty.
" So, last month. You fell. One mile to the ground. You were shot, your legs were shattered, your skull was fractured, you had a concussion, and, uh..." Tanner paused to remember, and air pressurizes and depressurizes in his mask. He couldn't think at the same time that the ten-foot-tall, blue monument glared down at him like a lion. "...all I can say is, there is a God. So, ha-ha-here's what you can eat for breakfast today. Do you want jellow or ahpuhlsahce?"
Tsu'tey had pounced at the alien with a roar.
Tanner went on to say: as more time had passed, he and Tsu'tey had soon started talking like two army buddies at a barbecue.
One day, the time had finally come when Tsu'tey was strong enough to have his first invasive surgery. Minutes before it was to take place, Tanner had chatted with Tsu'tey about women while Tanner had cleaned his tools.
"So, that means you're divorced, then?" said Tsu'tey's surgeon.
If that was the term for it, Tsu'tey agreed and he gave the little alien a nod of his chin.
"Do you miss being married?"
"At times, yes."
Now Tanner was curious. "Why?"
Tsu'tey made an embarrased sound.
"Oh-hoh-hoh, I see!"
"That is not whye." Tsu'tey said with irritation. He explained why he really missed being married. "Then, I did not sleep alone."
Tanner then wondered aloud about why Tsu'tey didn't just remarry; he was almost overqualified for women.
"Our ways are not so simple." Tsu'tey said. Once an Omatikayan passed an age without a tsaheylu, he or she no longer have their own choice of a mate and would have to consult the matchmaker for a suitable pairing that would contribute to the clan. Tsu'tey was too heartbroken from Neytiri to follow the tradition so soon.
Tanner liked to keep his patients in a good mood before they went under. But now, Tsu'tey had to countdown. He asked the Na'vi what his titles were again and motioned to the anesthesiologist.
Tsu'tey felt scorched from his shoulders to his fingers. "Karyu'eyktan," Tsu'tey paused and remembered to translate so the alien would not forget the next time. "that is lead teacher." His lips started to buzz. "Tsampongu'eyktan. That is leader of war party." His heart began to race. "Tsamsiyu...eyktan...that one is..." Tsu'tey's tongue lapped against his fangs in a jumbled mess of nonsense and Na'vi. Everything blobbed and blackened. His pupils lolled backwards and drool stretched from his mouth.
Tanner glanced at Tsu'tey. His lips bowed and he called in the others.
The room was black and a single light shined overhead the patient. A loud, curt sound clicked steadily. Like petals on a daisy, six masked heads in full-seamed scrubs surrounded the Na'vi.
Mr. Martinez-Brown grrred. He whimsydoodled a tool behind him and his snow-white fingers flapped for a bigger one. A coworker fished it over to him.
Tanner, frustrated, gave up. He bounced the tool on the floor and dove in a glove.
The surgeons watched while Tanner sutchered between pink and yellow flesh. Then, one coworker wiggled his hands over the Na'vi's body. A flurry of white hands flapped over the body like geese.
Tanner swacked all of the hands from his patient. He squared up at every last one of them with shaking fists. The surgeons shrank and teetered their mirror-heads. Tanner's arms sliced the air for everyone to calm-the fuck-down!
Tanner reoriented himself before he had a hearttack of his own from the stressful procedure.
Now, he could see. Tanner prodded carefully under the very obvious main artery.
Tanner's heart leapt in his mouth. Pale fluid pooled and spilled over the table. Tanner yanked his hands away and watched the pus cloud all of his progress. One rushed for a hemostatic and the medics regained control of the infection.
Tanner made more squishes through smegma with his first tool. Finally, the instrument clinked. Tanner's arms sunrised. He held a final bullet in the air, and then he and the others shook their fists like they all won the lottery.
Tsu'tey blinked. He finished his sentence, "tsamsiyu'eyktan-that is leader of warriors!"
"You're all done, big guy," laughed a faraway voice.
Tsu'tey saw his healer and another alien squeaking the floor with blinking sticks.
Tsu'tey had been flabbergasted. He had grazed his chest and he had felt hard ridges under his fingers in the pattern that once had lined his leg. It had been sorcery. "Vrrtep," Demon, Tsu'tey had lipsed.
Tanner and Tsu'tey smiled at each other in the kelku.
In the highest corner of the Circle of Warriors, Ree'ahn grumbled at the rain that still fell and trapped him in his peaceful coven with a stalk-woman.
Victoria, with her hands behind her back, was lost in one of his hanging pieces. It had carefully-knotted twists in a shape that she was sure that served a purpose. Maybe a net of some kind. That one was finished; it didn't have any colors on it.
Victoria heard a big frog plop behind her. She peeked, over a shoulder, at soft noises.
Like a dream, the Na'vi warrior stripped sleeves from his legs and unraveled ties to his waistguard from his tail. He pulled guards from both arms. He was left in a loincloth and ropes around his neck. He sifted his hair and sighed.
Victoria turned to the wall. Victoria saw his tsaheylu swish from the room.
When Wrey-aghn was out of sight, Victoria plucked a totem and scampered to the fire-the totem was a blocky and detailed face with a heavenly smile and an all-seeing stare-her hands burned; Victoria wheeled the totem between her fingers and thought of her guidebook-she just couldn't think of what it coud be fast enough!
She heard tree limbs moaning and she dashed to put it back. Victoria had her hands behind her and her chin to her chest when Ree'ahn walked back in.
Ree'ahn inhaled. One big, fat, smelly rat had just died. Ree'ahn's gold eyes were snowglobes. Victoria's glimmering facemarks betrayed her without her even knowing.
Victoria felt arms shove her aside; she almost tripped.
Ree'ahn scanned his treasurers like chess pieces. He slammed two totems in the correct order that they always have been for his five terms on the warriors' counsel.
Victoria didn't know how much she appreciated both of her hands until then.
As Ree'ahn rotated her way, the firelight made his eyes blaze and casted shadows on his green face with glittering speckles. "You are tall, Dreamwalker; that is good for you so you look me in eye. You be happy I let you go... this one time again. You know that you all can be said to go away from kelku, if one of you chooses to buh-rake thee rue-welles." Ree'ahn's voice curdled.
Victoria gulped.
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