As far back as Jake could remember, he had only dreamed of one thing.
Every night, Jake dreamt of a face he had never seen, of a person he had never met, from a world he had never been to. As a child, he tried to tell his parents and brother, but they wrote it off as a product of his active imagination and grew tired of hearing about it.
Jake, on the other hand, never grew tired of his dreams, always eager to fall asleep and dream of the boy with gold eyes who looked so different than himself. As Jake grew, he watched the boy grow as well, watched as the small, lanky child grew stronger every day. He couldn't help the jealously that coursed through him at times when he thought about the boy roaming freely among the lush planet, while Jake found himself struggling for breath at times within his own dying atmosphere.
In school, Jake was labelled a daydreamer by his teachers for his tendency to get caught up in his own thoughts while absentmindedly drawing pictures of golden eyes and braided hair.
When Jake grew up and joined the marines in a last ditch effort to achieve some semblance of the excitement he found in his dreams, he found himself excelling, using the skills he had watched the other boy, now man, learn every night. He was grateful for the escape the dreams offered on particularly hard days, when bullets had whizzed passed his ear and fear ran through him like blood.
One night, though, things began to change in his dream world, when a stranger wandered into the perimeters of the other man's territory. The woman, whose body was similar, but not exactly the same, spoke English, which surprised Jake enough that he had to fight to stay asleep. He felt the confusion and fear that the other man tried to hide as the woman explained that she was from a planet called Earth, and that she had discovered their planet and wished to learn about them. Jake felt the anger of the young man, which he expressed freely when his clan leader decided to let her stay.
When Jake awoke the next morning, instead of the usual sense of euphoria he usually felt after a night of dreams, he felt a sense of dread. He had seen what humans did to their own home, he feared for what they might do to the lush, alien world he had come to love.
At first, the human in a Na'vi body, which was a concept Jake only had a very shaky understanding of from her attempt at an explanation to the people, named Grace, had seemed to be the only human there. But, as the Omaticaya people grew to trust Grace, she revealed that there were more like her that wished to learn. The people reluctantly agreed.
Everything seemed fine for a while, the humans, which the people called Dreamwalkers, taught them English, which Jake was extremely grateful for since, while over the years he had acquired a basic understanding of the Na'vi language, he was by no means an expert and still struggled to understand at times.
But then, one day, the Omaticaya got word from another clan of small, pale creatures being spotted moving in large machines, drilling and plundering the ground. It didn't take long for the Omaticaya to learn that these small, pale creatures were humans. They confronted Grace and the other dreamwalkers, demanding an explanation. Jake listened, sorrow gripping at his heart when he heard how the humans were really here to mine for a rock beneath the surface.
Grace tried to apologize, explaining that she was here to learn and that she did care. But the damage was done. The Omaticaya cast out the dreamwalkers, promising to kill any humans or dreamwalkers alike that dare enter their land.
A few months went by and everything seemed to go back to normal. Jake felt the betrayal and anger that seethed in the other man's heart, and he hoped, though he knew it was in vain, that they had seen the last of the humans. But, when he received a letter from his brother, excitedly telling him how he had been chosen to be rocketed off to a planet lightyears away to learn about the indigenous Na'vi people, he knew that the human's involvement was far from over.
It was strange for Jake, to see that word Na'vi, a word he had known since childhood, spelled out on paper, to have his dreams confirmed as reality. While that world had always been real to Jake, he had never quite let himself believe in it. But there it was, written out on crisp synthetic paper, since there were no more trees to make actual paper from, in his brother's neat handwriting.
He wanted to write back, warning his brother of the horrors the humans had planned for the beautiful planet scientists had taken upon themselves to name Pandora, but he knew that if he did, he would sound crazy, and that that would be the last thought his brother had of him before being shot off into space. So, instead, he wrote a nice letter, congratulating his brother, meanwhile, dread set like a stone in the pit of his stomach. A deeper part of Jake, a part he tried to ignore, was jealous, jealous that his brother was going to the world he almost considered a home and that he might meet the man Jake had known all his life.
Jake was ashamed to admit that the dread and the worry he felt was put on hold when a well place bullet, or perhaps ill placed depending on the intent of the man behind the gun, lodged itself deeply and snuggly into Jake's spine. As he lay in that infirmary bed, he tried, but ultimately failed, to keep his jealously subdued as he thought about the other man leaping from tree to tree and running barefoot along the dirt floor of the forest.
Jake was confused, however, by a sudden drop in the emotions of the Na'vi man, who, admittedly, was not known for his good temper, but in the days Jake spent in the hospital, he noticed the man growing especially moody, bordering on sullen. Jake watched as he wandered away from his clan to sit in a tree for hours, sorrow etched into his usually stern features.
Weeks went by and the other man's mood did little to improve, which did not go unnoticed by the other members of the clan, but after being snapped at several times, learned to leave him alone. The drop in emotion was affecting Jake greatly. He had always relied on his dreams of the other man to distract him from his worries, but it seemed that the more forlorn Jake became, the worse the other got. For the first time, Jake was miserable in both his conscious and unconscious life, and it only seemed to get worse.
A few weeks before Tom shipped out, Jake got the call, telling him that the future his brother had worked so hard for, had been so excited about, had ended with a bullet for the paper in his wallet. The man on the other side of the call told Jake the time and place the cremation would take place, then hung up.
As Jake sat in the wheelchair that he wasn't quite used to, he watched as his brother's lifeless body was consumed in flames, and only vaguely listened as the official looking men around him explained how much money had been invested in his brother and how lucky they were that they had someone who match his DNA genome to genome, because, of course, that's all they cared about. Having nothing else to lose, Jake agreed to take over his brother's contract.
While Jake grieved that night in his private quarters for the brother he had lost, he felt a comforting presence in the back of his mind, an alien warmth that encompassed his entire body, which he was sure he was imagining.
That night, in his dreams he noticed that the other man's mood had improved to exponential levels, which was confusing seeing as it did not seem like anything had changed in the Na'vi's life to prompt such a sudden change, but it was comforting all the same.
In the next few days, as Jake prepared to leave, he found himself growing excited. He felt guilty, but a small part of him was glad that this had happened. Thanking his brother for his sacrifice seemed wrong, but it is exactly what Jake did. He found some comfort that the world's loss of his brother had not gone to waste, Jake was there to fill his place and he couldn't help but feel like there was no other man on this earth more fit for the job. Despite his lack of scientific knowledge, he knew all there was to know about the Omaticaya people, or, at least, one specific Omaticaya person.
On his last night on earth, Jake fell asleep quickly, eager to dream of the world and the man he would soon meet.
His pleasant mood ended the moment unconsciousness reached him, however. All around him there was fire, the screams of the Omaticaya pierced his soul, he looked around, desperate to find the other man. Jake had never had to search for the man before, he had always arrived in his dreams right by his side, but the fire and the smoke was so thick around him that he struggled to make out anything at all. Dread filled his gut as he saw the silhouettes of figures too small to be Na'vi and he knew exactly who had started the fire. He set aside his anger, however, in favor of focusing on the task at hand. He looked up to see unfamiliar surroundings and felt a brief rush of gratitude that they were not near Hometree. But the feeling was fleeting as he continued to search for the other man, more panic flooding into him with each passing second that felt like hours. Jake struggled to see passed the heavy wall of smoke.
And there he was, fear and anger clouding those sharp golden eyes, fire surrounding him on all sides. There was a sharp crack as a branch from a burning tree splintered and fell atop the other man.
He lay motionless, struggling to stay conscious. A fresh wave of panic struck Jake as the edges of his vision began to darken. He knew from past experiences, like when they were both children and the other had misjudged the distance of a tree branch and had fallen, that if he was knocked unconscious, Jake would lose his connection to the other and float around in nothingness until the other awoke once more. Jake knew that if the other fell unconscious now, that would be the end, he would be engulfed in flames and his life, with all the potential that Jake knew it had, would end.
So, Jake, now desperate, tried to do what he had never succeeded in before and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Get up!" but the other showed no signs that he had heard him, "Get up! Move, you moron! I swear to God, if you die before I get there, I will kill you! Get up!"
Jake saw the other's ear twitch and that was all the encouragement he needed to keep going.
"Is this how you're going to end? Crushed beneath a tree branch like an idiot!? Move!"
Another twitch.
"Aren't you supposed to be next in line to be eyktan? What kind of clan leader lets themselves burn to death under a branch while they're still conscious? Get up?"
Jake watched as the other's eyes opened just a sliver, his ears now ramrod straight.
"Come on," Jake screamed, his voice growing hoarse, "don't you want to meet me? I know you, I know you're strong enough to get up! So, get up, dammit! I'm coming over there and you better be waiting for me!"
At that, the other's eyes flew open. Jake cheered him on as he strained, but soon dislodged himself from beneath the branch. Heaving the fallen limb up, he was able to push it through the wall of flames, creating a sliver of an opening for him to squeeze through.
The other man was quick to recover, moving quickly to assist his fellow Na'vi in remedying the situation.
Jake felt both his own and the other's triumph as the remaining humans were driven away.
"I'm coming," Jake whispered in the other's ear as he felt himself waking up, "just hold on."
As his eyes fluttered open, a new wave of determination settled in his heart. He wasn't sure what his plan was in helping the Na'vi people, but he knew he had to do something, he just hoped they could hang on until he got there. It was a six year journey after all.