Author's Note: Well sorry guys that there was no update last week. Bad news is I may need to start updating every other week or so. But the next chapter will be up whenever it's done, be it next Saturday or sooner or later. Just so much work now, you know how it is. Have to finish a ten-page essay tonight, along with a lab project and also study some new material about brain waves *rolls eyes* Holla if you're in college/uni! ISN'T IT GREAT? *puts on fake wide smile and looks crazy*
All that in between trying to get 100% completion on Mass Effect 2, only two more achievements to go, and I'm playing on Insanity right now to get one of those; which means I'm dying every five minutes. blehgr.
Story Note: Got the idea for this chapter after watching the movie again *cough*forthe20thtime*cough* I think this is a pretty cool chapter though and basically just wrote itself. It's a bit like chapter 9, in that it's like a "bonding" chapter.
So yeah.
Six days go by without the mysterious illness making a painful appearance, and Jake forgets all about it around day three, occupying himself with hunting and various other meandering tasks. It becomes second nature to avoid any touching with Tsu'tey, which means Jake regularly flattens himself against walls, flinches away, and generally keeps a distance at all times.
He's kneeling in the forest, whittling down a piece of wood into a spear with a flat knife, his tongue sticking out to the side with concentration as the end of the sapling grows sharp and thin. His tail is curled at the end and moves back and forth momentarily to keep his balance on his toes, and his ears are alert and twitching to the sides to make sure predators don't get too close.
He's already made a bow yes, a year ago with Neytiri's help, her voice softly instructing him as he bends a thin piece of wood into the correct shape, carves holes into either end and threads a strong piece of organic string through them. Eventually he had even decorated it with paints, black flames at the top and bottom, like the tattoos on his human body.
That weapon is still alive after all this time, scratched and cracked in some spots and the paint has faded, but still strapped to his back. Inferior, maybe, but still a prized trinket. Its use is slighted though, as Jake had acknowledged a few hours ago as he heard it creak when he was about to take a killing shot and the string felt stiff when he had put the arrow to it. No good for a warrior.
He'll get around to making a new one later, but right now he wants to try and make a spear, as it is always a pleasure to watch it strike right through an animal's head or neck, clean and precise. He'll practice with it for the next few days and when they go hunting again, he'll try it out.
That's his plan.
Jake took the wood from one of the bioluminescent trees, an action that he's sure Tsu'tey would frown at, but he's determined to keep himself busy and improve, and that means making a spear. The glow from the severed wood has diminished, but not fully gone away. Jake thinks it looks neat as he watches the dim blue streaks race up and down the length of it.
He adjusts the dagger in his hand to scrape off the last lingering bits of splinters, careful not to cut his other hand, and flips the piece of wood over to sharpen the other side. He's just about done turning the blunt end around and doing the calculations when a stick snaps to his left. He jumps and turns his head, automatically getting into a defensive position with the dagger out in front of him.
Green eyes peer from behind a tree, followed by an exasperated snort as Tsu'tey steps out into the clearing in full hunting regalia; shin guards, bracers, bow and dagger along with the necklace of Thanator teeth that hangs in a primal way around his neck.
"I had wondered where you were," he shifts his stance, which causes the white beads on his loincloth to clink in the relative silence. "We left without you."
Jake holds up the unfinished spear, "I wanted to go today, but my bow is messed up. So I thought I'd make a spear instead, and I know I'm not supposed to take from the trees but—"
Tsu'tey waves a hand, "It is fine." His eyes look up for a second, "Eywa does not punish us for hunting her animals and creating what is needed to hunt them."
I knew that.
He walks over to squat across from Jake, taking the spear from him. For a moment their eyes meet as their hands are both on the wood, and Jake is brought back to his Iknimaya, Tsu'tey scoffing as Jake gave him his bow.
The Dreamwalker lets go and lets the other male turn the spear over, raising a brow at the finished end, "You do good job." With a fluid motion he pulls back his arm and sends the spear sailing into a near tree. Jake smiles as he watches it embed right through it with a loud shttk sound.
"Pfft, "good job". You mean the most awesome job ever, right? For a Dreamwalker, at least?" Jake gets up and takes the spear out of the tree with a strong pull, even more happy as he notices the end is still shaped correctly and as sharp as ever.
He steps back a few meters and then tries it for himself; drawing back his arm far and letting it go with all his strength.
It misses its target, instead going a few yards before it hits the side of another tree, and falls uselessly. "Damn. How'd you do it right?"
Tsu'tey tilts his head. "Practice. You did better than I did on my first try though, I nearly speared my brother into the ground. How angry he was..." He speaks in a tone that implies he had been upset at the time, but looking back it was funny.
Jake chuckles and lets the other male reminisce for a second as he retrieves the spear and tries again on the same tree; pulls back the weapon and lets it neatly leave his fingers. It embeds a few centimeters into the thick bark before gravity brings the other end back down.
He sighs and pulls it out. "I'll try later, I still have to finish it anyways." He walks back to his spot and kneels down again, grabs his dagger and begins skinning the bark off the other end.
"You know, me and my brother used to have a bow and arrow. Well really, it was mine, but you know. Parents wanted us to share and all that. One time we took it out and were playing around with it, and this was a real bow and arrow, nothing rubber to speak of, and I shot him in the arm accidentally."
He's pretty sure Tsu'tey rolls his eyes and mutters "skxawng" under his breath, but he no doubt wants to hear the rest.
Jake smiles sheepishly as he turns the spear over to start skinning the other side. "Tom started screaming, like a goddamn girl, and I remember trying to shut him up, put my hand over his mouth and told him how sorry I was and asking him not to tell. And God, there was blood everywhere; I didn't know he had that much in him! And then I got scared and started calling for mom and-" Jake shakes his head and laughs. "Seven years old and already shooting stuff, you believe that, guess it was no surprise for my parents when I told them I wanted to be in the marines, huh?"
"What happened to your brother? Did he forgive you?"
"Well yeah, of course he forgave me, he's my brother. Mom came out and started screaming as well, and eventually the shock wore off enough for her to take him to the ER. Bow and arrow got taken away, allowance was cut off for a long time, and they made me change Tom's bandages. Not fun."
He finishes carving the end and sets his knife aside after touching it up. He sets in on the ground and admires that each end is nearly identical, and sharp as a needle. "Great. Now all I have to do is paint it."
The Na'vi don't suffer for art, that's for sure. As Peyral sets out the gray clay jars of paint before him, Jake counts at least 20 different colors. He makes a sad sound as he picks up the jar with the black paint and notices there is not much, as probably everyone uses it all the time. "You have gray?" He asks the female Na'vi, having to settle for second best.
"We have...Sky People call it silv-r," she says in her thickly accented voice, and sets that jar down before him.
Jake's eyes widen as he looks down into it; silver indeed. The thick liquid is a light gray with many opalescent streaks of pure white. "Woah. How come no one uses this one?"
"Pretty, but hard to use. Is thick, you see. Most warriors not have time to deal with it," Peyral says, and puts down the last jar, which is filled with cyan colored paint. "There. You use any of these, yes? Make spear nice."
Jake smiles at her and his "I will" is quieted by Tsu'tey's farewell before the female Na'vi leaves the two of them.
"You are going to use this one?" Tsu'tey points to the jar with the silver paint and unstraps his bow from his back, moving aside the large feathers at one end to reveal the seven or so swirls of that certain paint connected in an intricate chain from the middle of the bow to where it tapers off at the start of the bow string. Each chain link is outlined precisely in black paint.
Jake takes it from him to look closer at the beautiful art, and notices at the end there are small letters; a sentence really, neatly written in dark red on the underside of the bow: lu seykxel ma Tsu'tey, tsmukan lu frakrr hu nga.
"Be strong, Tsu'tey, your brother is...always with you," Jake mutters slowly, and then wordlessly lets the feathers cover it up again and gives it back to Tsu'tey. "He painted this for you?"
"Yes," Tsu'tey says, crossing his lean arms in a human way in front of his chest. "T'hasa was always good at art. He did this...ten years ago in Earth time, and it still has not faded."
"Must've took him awhile," Jake says after dipping his animal fur paintbrush into the silver paint, wincing as the viscosity of it makes itself known. His hand shakes as he moves to hover the end over his spear and he takes a deep breath to steady himself before he paints a long, curving silver line down the wood. The thickness of the paint makes it hard to make the stroke clean, and he ends having to painfully slowly.
Tsu'tey moves to sit adjacent of him, crossing his wrists and watching as the silver line is finally and immaculately tapered off at the pointed end of the spear. Jake heaves a relieved breath at not messing up and quickly washes off the brush with the basin of water next to him, and then finds the jar with the dark blue paint and paints another, arcing line that interlaces with the silver, and adds sharp points at the edges.
"What are you doing?" Tsu'tey asks as soon as he's finished with that line, tilting his head at Jake's art. "It is...fire?"
"Yep," Jake says absently, before he uses the brush to paint a harsh maroon color to wrap around the blue and silver, continually adding points and flutters of flame. "At least you can tell what it is; I used to draw designs like this all the time and Tom would look at them for awhile and not get it, smart as he was."
"Why you want to paint fire?"
Jake raises his eyebrows. "There's no real reason. It's just...humans like neat-looking things, you know? Fire is-it just looks cool, that's all. Why'd your brother draw a chain on your bow?"
Trying to turn the question around on Tsu'tey doesn't yield much, "Chain is...together," the other male laces his fingers together. "Like Eywa and the Na'vi, the Omaticaya and other clans, ikran and pa'li. It is all connected."
"And you and me? We're connected too?" Jake raises his eyes from his work for a second, a hidden flash of yellow, before he washes off his brush and then dips it into the little bit of black paint that's left.
"Tsu'tey and Jakesully are connected as well," the olo'eyktan says calmly with a small smirk and watches as the Dreamwalker paints the dark liquid around the pointed ends until he has a black-tipped spear.
Even now tìprrte'txepvi has moved on from only a feeling when they had touched to a constant, lingering and longing pull, like a thin string that stretched when they were far away from each other, and slacked when they were near each other. Jake can't help the mental image of the string turning to rope and getting shorter and shorter, and shorter still until-
Jake dissolves that thought and sets the brush down into the water fully, sitting back on his heels to admire his work; three flames of silver, blue, and maroon wrapped around each other until they branch out at either end to fade into the black lethal points at either end. Even next to everything else on Pandora, he thinks it's the coolest thing he's ever seen.
And still, even under the paint, the streaks of light pool in clean lines around the sharp endpoints and where his fingers wrap around it, making it seem alive. Jake smiles, and gently sets it upright against a large tree so the paint can dry fully.
Jake reluctantly takes his eyes off it to stand, wiping his dyed hands on his beaded loincloth. As his shadow moves, the setting sun casts light down the side of the spear, making the paint gleam and setting the sharp black ends into lethal relief.
Stone cold hunter, all right.
Glossary:
skxawng - moron, idiot, fool
lu seykxel ma Tsu'tey, tsmukan lu frakrr hu ngenga - be strong (in spirit) Tsu'tey, your brother is always with you