REUNION OF THE AGES PART 2

Sky sighed as she peeked from behind a leafy area of sunlit ferns at the main hunting areas of the Omatikaya territory. Ree'ahn had assigned Sky, Tanner, and Victoria to arrive early to their next lesson and attempt to hunt and capture small game in the forest. To their oblivion, Ree'ahn watched them all practice from high above in a tree.

Sky swatted a fly from her head as she waited for an opportunity to leap at a passing creature, accidentally loosening her crude pigtail braid. Sky looked to Victoria's head, which crouched beneath her, feeling jealous about the luster of Victoria's miniature plaits under the morning sun. Victoria had somehow mustered the courage to ask an unknown Na'vi to fashion her hair like a native Omatikayan ever since she had began her lessons with Ree'ahn.

Tanner had left strands of his hair loose in the front while the rest of his hair was braided along his tswin. The Omatikayan men had prided their braiding styles even more strongly than the women, so for the whole time Tanner had walked among the villagers since he was reborn as a Na'vi, he felt scrutinized for his attempt at self-grooming. He wished one day to ask Tsu'tey how he weaved his own hair so intracately. However, Tanner figured his time spent outdoors under Pandora's hot suns would have disheveled his appearance anyway, and Ree'ahn had never commented on his looks. Ree'ahn himself had never cared to style his hair in any form at all for everyday life.

In Sky's sights was a Rungfwam, a brown, thoraxed, herbivorial, and cat-sized beast that had a stubborn, slow waddle over the foliage on the ground. Sky had heard the Rungfwam

wasn't the favorite snack of the Omatikayans because of its mealy and bitter meat, but they were clumsy like sheep and much too easy for a child to kill with a Shortbow. It was an ideal target to test her skills.

Once the Rungfwam came close to her leafy hideout, Sky clenched her toes in the dirt, held her breath, and then gritted a loud roar as she charged at the animal and pounced for it.

Sky looked up dejectedly from the hot, damp soil as the Rungfwam beat its wings high in the air to find a quieter place in the forest to roam.

Ree'ahn glanced down far below at Sky, and then he listened to the Rungfwam sail past him with a warbling buzz. He shook his head. All three of them needed plenty of coaching, even Tanner, who had claimed himself to be a soldier of the Skypeople.

Some nearby Omatikayans noticed Sky's fault and giggled as they strung their Widebows for an afternoon hunting party. Sky watched the close group of Na'vi wonen as they worked on their hunting tools like experts and giggled and chatted about which game was in season. Sky, groaning, hid her face in the dirt and felt again like an outsider.

"Uh, third time's a charm?" Tanner commented from afar, slouching near Sky's launching spot with Victoria who had found a convenient pocket of shade. He smirked as if he had enjoyed Sky's show of bravery, if anyone could call it that.

Sky righted to her feet, streaked with dirt on her face and middle. "It's no use! If we can't catch a freaking...overgrown ant with our bare hands, how are we going to shoot an arrow at a hexapede?!"

"That was a...pretty accurate description," Tanner agreed. Rungfwams did look a lot like the ants he had seen on Earth. "Chill out. You're just overthinking it. There's another one behind you, give it another shot."

"Forget it!" Sky yelled, sitting and tucking her knees to her chest to pout. Learning to be a Na'vi was much harder than Jake had made it out to be in his logs.

Jake had conveniently left out the crushing feelings of displacement in her own new body that she still wasn't accustomed to, her gripes with being abandoned by humankind, and the longing she still sometimes felt for Parker. She missed waking up in hia sleeping pod to the scent of his cologne, and she missed the way he made her feel safe when she returned in his arms at night.

Although Sky thought her Hammock at the new Hometree was lovely for its centerpiece of softly violet-glowing octoshrooms that acted as an erethreal night-light, there was no warmth when she slept alone, with her friends sleeping as far away from her as strangers. Sky fondled her gold, dangly hoop on her ear that Parker entrusted to her as an engagement gift, the prized gold running through her long, blue fingers like cheap plastic.

"Vicky? Wanna try again?" Tanner asked after a silence passed in the forest.

"It's really hot," Victoria muttered with her eyes closed as she rested against a tree trunk, refusing to embarass herself with another attempt at sneaking up on a forest critter.

Tanner stood abruptly and licked his tail in thought. "So, you guys are just giving up?" He said finally. "We have to get through this, or else we can't even be a part of the clan! And then all this would be for nothing!"

"You didn't have to stay here; Mo'at gave you a choice!" Sky said.

"Neither did you! You could've been married to freaking Parker Selfridge! You would've been better off than any of us if you went back to Earth, anyway, so who are you to talk?!"

Sky narrowed her eyes away from him, and then she blinked sadly.

The group of female hunters looked to Tanner and his distraught friends while insects chirped and cooed overhead in the canopy. They quietly finished their work and continued to listen to the friends argue in the language of the Skypeople.

Tanner continued gently to his friends, "on Earth, I was just another Marine up for slaughter so the RDA could get rich for their stupid Unobtanium. The only thing I cared about was saving the Na'vi's and my comrades' lives in the hospital after all of the hell the RDA put us through in the war. I'm glad I'm never going back to Earth if it means I have to be part of the race that did all of this damage. Look. This is my only chance to prove that I have what it takes to be one of the people. Whatever you're pissed off about, Sky, you're not going to mess this up for me. Now, it's my turn."

Victoria and Sky watched Tanner corner a Rungfwam that disappeared behind a fern, and then he pounced on it with a gutty shout. Just as before, the Rungfwam took ample time to escape into the air and join the rest of its flock.

Ree'ahn sighed from above and descended the tree, deciding he had seen enough.

Tanner huffed hotly, but then he stilled when he felt something hard pressure his abdomen. He lifted himself to his knees and softly sifted through the dirt that was peculiarly raised.

Sky and Victoria inched steadily to Tanner to see what had made his expression change from determination to bewilderment.

Sky and Victoria found him holding an object. They glanced to each other and kneeled beside him before Sky asked, "everything okay?"

"I think so," Tanner scrutinuzed a weathered, tassle-like ornament in his palms of strong, dark-brown, spindly fibers. "What is this?"

"It looks like some kind of beat-up, leather windchime," Sky said.

"You have a weird, awesome talent for describing things," Tanner chuckled.

Sky smiled at knowing that Tanner had cooled off from their small argument earlier.

Victoria reached for the item and fingered through the dirty spindles at the objects bottom. She had rembered an artifact like it in her Na'vi guudebook, just like she had remembered seeing replicas of Ree'ahn's totem from the kelku of the Circle of Warriors.

"What is it now that you are doing?"

Tanner, Sky, and Victoria looked up swiftly to see Ree'ahn had appeared from thin air, looking down at them crossly.

"Hi," Sky said.

Ree'ahn walked off.

"Were you here this whole time?" Tanner asked, standing with his friends and following Ree'ahn.

Ree'ahn arched a brow. "A little time only." Ree'ahn spared them the details about his need to assess how much the three understood about stealth without being taught. "By what I see," he sighed, "there is much to learn this day."

Ree'ahn snatched the distraction from Tanner's hands and inspected it to quell his students' morbid curiousities. "It is only special piece for hunting arrow. This kind you tie to arrow only on last hunt before Iknimaya." Ree'ahn gripped the tassle and tossed it back to Tanner's hands.

Victoria, Sky, and Tanner peered at the leatherpiece in Tanner's hands and saw a glimpse of their future trophy when they would one day become Omatikayan.

"Let it be sign of what can happen, if you work hard. Follow." Ree'ahn said, somewhat cheerfully. He allowed a tiny smirk to appear over his shoulder, filling his students with encouragement, and Victoria with faint tingles in her stomach.