Chapter 2

Whispered voices cut across the forest floor like knives, intertwining with each other like roots of a tree. S'rrona slid across the ground, keeping her head low, feeling the mud mush between her toes.

"She touched…" The voices said. "It spoke." "What did it say?" "Who was it?" "She saved him." "Why did she save him?"

She tried to ignore the words, tried to block out the judgement. Yellow and green and blue eyes studied her as she moved. Mud gave way to rocky ground, and she straightened. Something warm and rough grabbed her tail, pulling her back, and S'rrona yelped in protest, swinging around to see Vrrtep standing there, tail in hand. She snatched herself from him.

"What?" She asked.

"What was that?" He asked back. She hated it when he did that.

"What was what?" She asked, proceeding further into the forest.

Shifting bodies followed them, but their presence was still limited to the shadows between plants. S'rrona pulled the pack she'd been carrying from around her back, opening it to show the giant blue berries she found before she found the giant blue man. She'd never seen a Na'vi as big as he, as light as he. He looked almost unreal, fake. And when he spoke—it was a language she had never heard before. She wanted him to say more to her, but it was Vrrtep's call that brought her back to reality.

"I don't care about the berries," Vrrtep snapped.

"Well, I care about the berries…" she said softly.

Vrrtep stopped in front of S'rrona, his teeth bared. Others continued on their way, but she knew they were aware of them stopping. Everyone was aware of what their leader did.

"I brought you out here to be helpful for our hunt and you went and found an Outsider."

"He was dying," she tried to defend herself. "I couldn't just stand there and do nothing, Vrrtep."

He sighed, wiping the sweat off his brow. "What if he had thanked you by killing you?"

S'rrona opened her mouth but no words came out; she hadn't throught about that. All she saw was a man struggling though the forest, falling through the mud and she jumped to action, no thoughts. It was as if she was pushed by an invisible hand: Eywa, which made her decision to save that strange man all the more valuable to her. It was clearly meant to be done. She lifted her head and grinned at her friend.

"Scared, were you?" she teased. "Thought I'd never come back?"

She knew just how to get under his skin; she'd done it many times before. Vrrtep acted like he was tough, but there was always a soft part of his heart that only resided for two people in his life, and S'rrona took up most of it.

Vrrtep placed a hand on her cheek, cupping it like a pool of water. "We are living in changing times," he reminded her, his voice gentle. "Remember what I told the people a few weeks ago..." That there was a fire on one of the Metkayina clans, people survived, but tells of blue people dressed in strange ways had emerged, and of a young child the color of glassy sand and mark with blue paint with them. They had fires blazing, burning down homes of the people and the people on the ground, screaming for their lives…even the children... But the man she saw only wore tattered underthings. S'rrona even saw her fist print on his chest when he sat up. And there was surely no small child with him.

"I hear you," she said to him.

Vrrtep's perched ears relaxed and he smiled at her. "Thank you."

They followed the last of the hunting party. S'rrona felt the light tap on the small of her back from Vrrtep's tail, but when she went to look at him, his eyes were scanning the forest around them, his ears on high alert. She slowed, but Vrrtepp placed a hand on her back, pushing her forward.

"Keep moving."

Vrrtep's hand on his club tightened and so did her hand around her slingshot.

By the time they came to the entrance of the cave, S'rrona was scanning the shadows as well. Wild animals weren't too aggressive on this island, mostly because of the volcano that they lived under. Some of S'rrona's people said it was because of the ash that made them less violent, often choking the air, but some hunters have claimed they had run into other Na'vi, those who skin was ashy, as dark as soot. But S'rrona had never seen these people whenever she allowed herself to hunt and when she asked the Great Mother about them, she was met with eerie silence. Either The Great Mother had nothing to say, or she didn't want S'rrona to did too deep into it. Either way, the claims did not disturb everyday life.

Every morning, she would go to the spirit treeroots and pray for safe passage for those they will lose today and those that were sent out for the hunting party, fore while animals and mysterious Na'vi were not high on the list of things she was worried about, the environment was treacherous. On days like today, when she came home from hunting, she'd meet with the clan to talk about their success. She'd then pray with them and would watch them enjoy the food from the comfort of her own home, sat directly in the middle of the common area, for equal access to the people. It was her family home, and being her parents' only child, when they moved on, she took it over.

This evening was no different and after the prayer and the food was served, S'rrona found herself in her nest. A house made of rock and try wood. There was enough room for her and three more beds. A small kitchen in the corner of the house and a small sitting area where guests would gather. Everything was how her mother designed it when they moved in. All her art and her prayer works still on the wall, hanging there for so long that S'rrona was sure there would be a permanent space in the shape of the object once it was moved.

But she never dared to move them…

She was standing by the small handprint on the hall when a light tap on the wall came.

"She's coming," Vrrtep stood outside her door, without his weapons, but he still held his arms out like he was holding them. His tail whipped back and forth behind him.

S'rrona could not ask "who" when a smaller, slenderer woman came around the corner. Storms crossed her face as she stepped into S'rrona's house. Peyral was small for one of their kind, only coming up to S'rrona's chin and Vrrtep's collar, but what she lacked in height she made up in power and strength and duty and a lot of anger.

"Vipertongue," was what Vrrtep called her whenever she was out of ear shot. From the look on his face, S'rrona could have guest he was thrilled that poisonous tongue wasn't, for once, directed at him. Although, she was sure it would be later.

Peyral pushed S'rrona in the middle of her chest, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to startle. To grab her attention.

"Are you out of your mind?" She snapped. S'rrona did not dare to speak. "You separated from the hunting party, then followed this stranger, then interacted with this stranger. Are you—" she smacked her on the side of her head. "Are you trying to end yourself?"

An irritated and soft hiss escaped S'rrona, but she chose her words wisely. "I wasn't going to get hurt and he was going to drown," she then shot daggers at Vrrtep who did not look away or back down, though his ears were flatted against his head. "You told her!"

Those ears shot up in defense. "I had to," he said. "She was going to rip my throat out!"

Payrel hissed at Vrrept and he shrank a little. She turned her attention back to S'rrona. "You are Tsahik," she said. "The spiritual mother of our people—if you die, we die. You have no children, no heir."

S'rrona groaned, moving past her friend. "You worry too much," she said, knowing that would irate the warrior princess even more. Peyral came from a long line of skilled fighters who fought alongside the Ole'keytan. Her father was Payral's father's best friend, which was how they met. She wouldn't call Peyral her best friend, just as she wouldn't have called Vrrtep her best friend—they were more than that: her Head and Tail, the other two-thirds of her. As it was when her father was Ole'keytan and when his father was Ole'keytan.

"I worry not enough," Peyral growled. "I seem to have forgotten that you're a fool—"

Now her hiss was audible. S'rrona stood, looking down at her friend. "Don't speak that way to me," she said. She looked between her friends. "I saved the man; I cannot undo this decision. It is done." She lit the fire and filled the pot over it with leftover water from the many gorged on the counter. "If any of you don't like the choice I made, go out there and find him, then kill him."