IRAYO, REE'AHN
Summary: After a small lesson in practicing stealth around yeriks, Ree'ahn hears an unexpected word from Victoria.
"Lesson number twenty... to be taronyu." Ree'ahn announced airly, thinking of how he would plainly convey teachings of the bow that had been ingrained in him at an age he could hardly remember. Teaching would've been difficult enough if he were responsible to instruct young children, but to teach three imposter Na'vi from an entirely alien planet was a challenge that was becoming harder by the day.
"You mean hunter lesson nineteen," Tanner mentioned aloud to the Widebow-toting Na'vi leading them between slumps of interlocking, dripping vines of the Omatikayan forest. Tanner's heel slipped on a slick, fat leaf before he quickly righted himself.
Victoria corrected under her breath, avoiding Tanner's pitfall, "twenty-two."
"Someone needs to keep count! It's lesson nineteen!" Tanner called back.
"No, twenty-one!" Sky yelled from afar as she caught up to Victoria. "'cause remember nineteen was-!"
"It does not matter!" Ree'ahn shouted, swiveling sharply to the group lagging behind him.
His three students paused in place with cheeky expressions on their damp faces as Ree'ahn's outburst echoed in the canopy above their heads.
"Keep numbers if you want. For me, I am finished." Ree'ahn said lowly. He stood in place and inhaled the moist air of the forest that was near the central falls, where the faint sound of laughing and splashing nantang centered him in the present.
Ree'ahn continued before them, "to be taronyu, to know the way to catch an animal is very good, but the good lessons are when many taronyu hunt as one. Tsu'tey, si Piral, si Itoyo-we are all one when we choose to hunt in group."
"How often do you guys hunt? Once a week? Biweekly?" Sky asked.
Ree'ahn looked surprised about Sky's question about something as routine as a hunt, and then he seemed perplexed about what she meant by the inquiry. "We hunt together many times...if we are hungry?" He paused to ensure if he had answered her as she had expected him to. From her silence, he wasn't sure.
"Real smart, Sky." Tanner chuckled faintly. He cringed when Sky's elbow spiked his ribs.
Ree'ahn continued to the habitat of gazelle-legged yerik in the thickest foliage of the forest andresumed the class's instructions. "Today, we will work as one, and we will take this small yerik." Ree'ahn gestured to the hexapede in his sights with a soft forward turn of his head. Victoria, Tanner, and Sky all watched the unsuspecting hexapede gently change its footing as it grazed on a new patch of foliage.
"You are not ready for a mother yerik," Ree'ahn explained. 'it is too big for you, but to take one of her will be last test."
"Ree'ahn, um, we don't really have any weapons," Sky spoke up. "You're kind of the only person here with a bow?"
"This I know," Ree'ahn said, looking to Sky's perturbed eyes. "I will make the killing shot. Hard part...is to get yerik in one place to not move. For this you all help me."
Ree'ahn went on, "yerik are fast and have good ears, I think to even hear your own heart. This will not be easy if you do not remember to be with no sound."
His students nodded, looking at the unassuming yerik as it roamed in their vision.
"Today we think like one mind, and move like one body. This kill you will take to this night's meal. If today you fail," Ree'ahn said with squared eyes on each of them. "we all do not eat. I like to eat. Do not put me in sleep with no food in my stomach."
Victoria gave an uneasy look to Sky as her stomach grumbled faintly. The two women both noticed they hadn't eaten breakfast.
The next words came much easier to Ree'ahn, for he repeated them many times during his lessons with Sky, Victoria, and Tanner. "Do you understand?"
"How hard can it be?" Tanner said.
Tanner leaned the weight of his toe onto a branch, and immediately groaned when the young yerik he and his friends and teacher were tracking dashed forward a distance.
"I have told you-be quiet," Ree'ahn hissed. He also added, "do not be angry."
Tanner nodded, seeming to be in reproach of himself for becoming frustrated on his first try.
Ree'ahn crouched low into his body and slowly extended his barefoot to a distance across from him. Underneath the sound of chirping animals from an unknown tree nest, Ree'ahn silently accordioned the rest of his body into a new space closer to the yerik. "Keep this strong," Ree'ahn whispered to each of his students he planted his hand on his abdomen. "and the body is easy to move with no sound."
Sky tried it, and it worked. "What do you know," she said in awe.
Victoria successfully manuevered to an optimal position to alert the yerik towards Ree'ahn's line of fire for him to release his arrow. The yerik spotted her and galloped closer towards Ree'ahn, who was hidden in the shadows of the surrounding foliage.
Sky watched curiously as Ree'ahn fluidly flexed his arms in position to stretch his Widebow at the sight of his target. One arm bent at a high angle from his shoulder and the other arm kept a rod-straight position against his bow with a poison-tipped arrow pressed on his forefinger. Looking closely, she saw there was a similar ornament on Ree'ahn's bow as the tassle Tanner had found a while earlier. There were also carved markings on Ree'ahn's riser that looked personally made. Sky was hopeful for the lesson when she would finally have her own bow to design however she wanted.
Tanner followed Ree'ahn's instructions to find the rear of the yerik in case it made an escape. The yerik saw Victoria and then turned to run backwards from where it came, quickly encountering Tanner's defense.
Ree'ahn's arrow flew, and it pierced the calf. The calf shouted a hoarse bleat, and then it crumpled onto the damp grass of the forest.
Tanner and Victoria ran over to the calf beside Sky and Ree'ahn.
"Now is very important part," Ree'ahn said as he removed his long bone-knife from his small hip satchel of roped vines.
"The prayer," Victoria finished.
"Srane," Ree'ahn said to her. Everyone was at least following along, he reasoned. He liked Victoria's enthusiasm. "You cannot make kill without thanking for one. It means you are stealing. For yerik, you make sure its soul is safe for all time." Ree'ahn appeared to notice that Sky was watching him, and he gave her a glance while his body remained still.
"Just wondering," Sky said at his attention. "We didn't actually have to kill an animal this time, did we?"
Ree'ahn couldn't stop a smirk and a chuckle. "A long time you wait before you are ready. Ma oeyä Eywa."
Sky looked down. "It's just that...my whole life I studied to protect animals and extra terrestrials from harm...and now I'm the one doing the harm. It doesn't feel right."
Ree'ahn deshelved his bow from his shoulder. He thought of some words to say that could help her understand that killing creatures was a necessary part of surviving with the clan, although he was unsure how much of a help he could be to her.
"No hurt is to be done by you, or by me. It is the way of things. Even yerik knows this. Think of this...as good thing. Yerik is given to us to eat and live. And we must keep number of yerik in balance so all animals will eat and live, and be happy here."
Ree'ahn plunged his bone knife into a central vein of the yerik to stop it from squirming in pain. He then asked his students to all repeat a solemn prayer after him to send the animal's soul in grace.
While Ree'ahn spoke, Sky echoed his Na'vi and stared into the eyes of the yerik, which were as lifeless as two, large, ebony marbles. She thought about her elementary teaching of how energy was never destroyed but transferred, and promised herself to trust that
Victoria touched the warm scales on the yerik's snout that had just caught the afternoon rays of the Sun while it had grazed freely, dutifully following Ree'ahn's instructions to repeat what he uttered even though there were many words she hadn't yet learned. There was an accomplishment she felt from her first official hunt, and she wanted to have many more. She wished to from now on reinvent herself as a new being on a new planet without any ties to the painful past she had been subjected to on Earth.
Tanner preferred to keep watch over the scene as remembered the look in Tsu'tey's cold eyes when Tsu'tey had laid practically dead on the abandoned battlefield that he had returned to with Norm to search for survivors. He appreciated the transformation of himself as a new member of the Omatikaya, which he had been lead to by the chance of Tsu'tey friendship. He wondered where the rest of his life in the clan would lead him, and he knew that his first goal was to finish his training with his new teacher.
Ree'ahn scoffed at his students' mispronunciation of the sacred Na'vi words in his prayer, but reminded himself to improve their speech in a separate lesson. His three students had remained very silent for a moment after he had finished praying over the yerik. Thinking better of asking why, Ree'ahn swiped the yerik's blood from his bone-knife onto the grass and returned it to his side, and then he hoisted the carcass across his shoulders to take it to the mainlands with other groups' kills of the afternoon.
Upon arrival, some older Omatikayan men were busy lighting a huge firepit. Ree'ahn found a limp Sturmbeest that his haughty comrade, Atan, was standing near with other hunters Ree'ahn recognized, and then Ree'ahn then laid the yerik calf against the Sturmbeest's flank.
"Fpi Eywa!" Atan said in sarcasm. "It takes three Dreamwalkers to kill a scrap? They are weaker than I thought."
"We heard that!" Tanner said, walking up to Atan's scowl. Ree'ahn gripped Tanner's arm.
"They have not had many lessons," Ree'ahn said. "You should worry more about the zizé on your tail, Atan. One sting and you may not be able to sit to eat your own kill tonight."
Atan squealed and swatted his backside for an invisible Hellfire Wasp. The hunters around him cackled uproariously, leaning on their spears for support.
Tanner, Victoria, and Sky huddled together and hid their snickers. They all decided to wait at the main grounds until the meal started so that they could hear the first notes of music being performed.
Ree'ahn left his students to themselves, but was then interrupted by a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey," Victoria mustered. Her throat went dry when Ree'ahn looked back at her with big, bewildered eyes.
Ree'ahn faced his direction for the new Hometree, where he would rest until nightfall came and the meal started. "Only I speak to Atan because I am your karyuan. What he says of who I teach speaks for me also."
"Irayo, Ree'ahn."
Ree'ahn felt her hand leave him. Just as he was about to leave their interaction at that, he turned around. "Will you come to the meal this night?"
"I think so," Victoria said, feeling more apt to come since Tanner and Sky had decided to be there.
"Sit with me," Ree'ahn stated.
Hope you enjoyed.
Words: 2021