KAEYLA TE KATHAN SAEYLA'ITE.
PART 5.
BLOOD IN THE KNIFE.
PART 2.
Author's note: This chapter was originally supposed to be part of the previous chapter, Blood in the Knife, until it went a pretty long, so I made this completely a separated chapter with the same plot.
Athera, now somewhat convinced with everything she has heard after seeing Spider presenting her son's knife with blood stain in its tip, turned back to Punkun, wanting an honest answer from the boy himself.
"Punkun? Answer me, now! Is everything they've said true? Did you cut Ka'ani's daughter's shoulder with your knife? Is that where that blood came from?" Athera questioned with strict and demanding voice, though Punkun was too afraid to answer... or too proud to admit his own misdeeds.
"That knife proves yet nothing!" Tha'non said, stubborn as ever to believe the obvious truth even in the face of this clear evidence. "And the true question here is that how that demon boy came into possession with my son's knife? How do we even know he didn't use it to do this to my son?!" he added as he reffered Punkun's injuries.
"That doesn't make any sense, sir." Lo'ak spoke up.
"Well, I found this knife at the crime scene shortly after the brawl, from under the bush of leaves where Punkun had kicked it to cover his tracks." Spider explained. "... though I still have no idea where Punkun even got his wounds in the first place."
"FILTHY LIAR!" Tha'non spat, hissing aggressively at Spider. "I know it was you who did this to my son! You're just too cowardly to admit your crimes and instead keep spitting more the venomous lies out of your filthy mouth!"
"I ain't coward and I ain't liar!" Spider countered. "The true cowardly liar here is the one youre hypocritically defending from his victims!"
"Your words are poison, human!" Tha'non hissed.
"Are you sure it's the boy's words that are poisonous here just because he is a human, Tha'non?" said a new voice, that was calm yet strict and full of wisdom.
Everyone turned to where the branch led in and out of the Sullys' Marui and saw Mo'at, the Tsahik of Omatikaya in her distinguished red and yellow bead shawl, calmly entering to her family's Maru while carrying with her the basket of medical needs. Beside her was walking nine year old girl, whose short black hair was unkept hair, with few braids hanging in the sides, and she was wearing the top in which was hanging the collection of leaves, small rocks and various-colored feathers.
"Or is it your own pride in your son that you yourself have allowed to poison your own judgment, even in the face of clear evidence against your son?" Mo'at added, her stern eyes fixed on Tha'non.
Neteyam, Lo'ak and Spider immediately grinned widely upon their arrival, so did Neytiri and Jake.
"Kiri!" Spider let out with the happy smile as he looked at the Na'vi girl named Kiri who stood by Mo'at's side. Kiri immediately left Mo'at's side and ran to Spider, before she crouched down in front of the boy and gently put her right hand over his left shoulder, while Spider lifted his own right hand over Kiri's left shoulder. They both smiled happily to each other.
"Grandma!" both Lo'ak and Neteyam let out, happy to see their grandmother having arrived.
"Mother. I see you." Neytiri said, making Na'vi's greeting gesture to her mother.
"I see you, Mo'at/Tsahik." Jake, Ka'ani and the boys' parents and Athera said as they all made the greeting gesture... well all except Tha'non, even though he held no ill will towards the Tsahik of Omatikaya.
Mo'at returned happily to her family's and everybody else's greeting with one of her own, before she fixed her serious gaze with Jake as she was about to walk past him and into Sullys' Marui to have a look of Kaeyla's injuries.
"I heard from Kiri what had happened and how your sons and Spider came to involved to it, Jakesully." Mo'at told Jake. "Punkun should be ashamed of himself for his deeds, as should his father... for shamelessly accusing Spider for his son's injuries that were never caused by the boy's hand... but rather by his own son's hand."
Mo'at's words caught Tha'non's attention and he swiftly turned to Mo'at, looking both perplexed and insulted by these words. "What are you talking about, Mo'at?"
Kiri, with her arms wrapped protectively around Spider, opened her mouth to speak. "That it wasn't Spider who inflicted those wounds on Punkun! It was Punkun who inflicted them on himself on purpose!"
A series of gasps could be heard from the boys' shocked mothers upon this revelation, while the fathers exchanged the perplexed glances with one another.
"My son did what...?" Athera gasped in shock.
Neteyam, Lo'ak, Kai'ani, Saeyla and Neytiri too looked surprised by this while Ka'ani and Mo'at remained indifferent about it.
Jake neither seemed to be too surprised by this, as it sounded to him too much like how some people would act if they have suicidal thoughts about things that are way too stressful and depressing for them to bear. But unlike humans, Na'vi have never expressed suicidal thoughts or committed suicidal acts on themselves before, no matter how depressing their own affairs, such as the tragic loss of the Hometree were.
Well, one time is the first time when he had heard Na'vi actually cutting himself with the knife, though not out of suicidal thoughts.
"When I went to bring grandmother here, I saw Punkun and his friends heading to the corner of the village and I decided to spy on them to see what they were up to. There I saw Punkun cuting himself from all around of his body, with the knife that wasn't his own, no doubt wanting to frame my brothers, and especially Spider, for faked attack on him with the knife as a revenge for humiliating him, just because they stood up for Kai'ani and Kaeyla against him and his friends after they attacked them outside of the village." Kiri explained.
Just like Jake, though with the different thoughts, Spider didn't look surprised by this at all.
"Then no wonder where his injuries came from." he muttered under his breath.
The third version of the incident somewhat supported Neteyam, Lo'ak, Spider and Kai'ani's version against Punkun, his friends and their parents' own. But even with this new information Tha'non still refused to believe this.
"That's ridiculous! Outrageous nonsense!" he hissed. "Why would my son do something like this to himself?"
"Did you not listen to my daughter, Tha'non?" Jake said, starting to get annoyed with Tha'non's stubborness. "Kiri just told us that she had seen what your son was doing to himself: inflicting those wounds on himself and not by Spider's hand. Another reason for us to believe that the boy is innocent while your son isn't."
Tha'non narrowed his from anger gleaming eyes as his faces hardened into a stony frown, which told Jake that he still remained defiant against the accusations towards his son.
"I heard your daughter, Jakesully. Loud and clear." Tha'non spat. "But where are her own evidence to prove her claimed charges against my son true, hmm? I don't see them anywhere, so her claims might be anything but truth."
Tha'non's crude words about her daughter stirred Neytiri off that she shot an ice-cold and piercing glare at the stubborn Na'vi while walking behind her oldest daughter and Spider, before she took her shoulders protectively into her hands, letting out a soft but fierce hiss though of her dared teeth in Thanon's direction. No matter if he was a fellow Omatikaya Clan's member, Neytiri refused to watch through her fingers when there's a disrespectful and cruel words spoken about his children.
Such of disrespectful words about Kiri provoked Spider to bare his own human teeth and let out the feral snarl at Tha'non a way louder than Neytiri had. Spider also raised his own left hand protectively in front of Kiri and held Punkun's knife protectively in front his friend, while not taking his eyes off from Thanon.
"Don't you dare to talk about Kiri in that way, dickhead!" Spider hissed warningly. "Kiri is my friend, sister-figure and many things more, but she's not a liar unlike Punkun here!"
"And if I were you, I'd think twice my words before calling my daughter a liar, which she certainly isn't." Jake added with sharp voice.
"Well, in the absence of evidence for your daughter's claim that my son's injuries were self-inflicted, which I still think is an outrageous and ridiculous claim, I will not believe it for a second. Besides, where do you think my son even got the knife to supposedly do this to himself if his own was stolen by that demon boy?" Tha'non questioned.
"Perhaps you should ask that question from your son himself, Tha'non." Mo'at advised.
"Or... if our Olo'eyktan can somehow make the evidence of this to pop out of nowhere like the demon boy just did with my son's knife, he's free to try. Althought I doubt it he can." Tha'non suggested, though his tone sounded like his words were the mock-filled challenge to Jake Sully.
Jake frowned, deeply irritated by the Na'vi's stubbornness, his smug attitude, his pride, and his refusal to see the truth.
However, he eventually nodded his head as if to accept Tha'non's challenge.
"You know what, Tha'non? I intend to. After all, I have been paying deeper attention to the variating versions than what you have. So I have a good reason to use the next methods to bring up the evidence to prove my daughter's claims. And I think I know where to look first." Jake said.
Jake then turned to Neytiri and handed little Tuktirey back into her mother's arms. After Neytiri took Tuktirey from Jake, he ran his hand lovingly over his little daughter's head, before he focused back to the matter at hand. Jake then turned around and walked in middle of his Marui and stood up in the middle of everyone in the presence.
"Boys? Come over here!" Jake said authoritatively, gesturing his sons to come over to him, before he turned to Punkun's friends. "Get over here, your four!" he said with a bit more harsher tone.
Though Lo'ak and Neteyam went obediently to Jake's side on his right, Punkun's friends felt too hesitating to take a step towards the Olo'eyktan. Whatever Jake had in mind with them, it turned their stomachs upside down from anxiousness and fear of getting caught... even if they literally were already caught.
"OVER HERE, NOW!" Jake repeated with raised voice like some impatient commanding officer.
The four boys jumped at Jake's voice, before they timidly yet hastily moved into the line on Jake's left side. First Palree, then Baldang, then Li'mane and lastly Koward.
As all the boys stood in the ring before the Olo'eyktan, Jake nodded to them in satisfaction.
"Very good, boys. That's more like it." he told to the boys as small compliment. "Now, show me your knives."
The boys exchanged the glances with one another in confusion from Neteyam's and Lo'ak's side and hesitation from Punkun's friends side, before the Sully boys drew obediently out their knives, though Punkun's friends held themselves back from reaching for their own knives for a moment, until they were forced to comply out of fear of another outburst from Jake, and held them towards the Olo'eyktan.
Jake then began to take the knives from the boys around him one by one before examining their blades for signs of the recent usage. He started with his own sons' small knives first, turning their blades from side to side multiple times while scrutinizing the edges of the blades, looking for dents, dull spots, or blood stains, even ones that hadn't been properly cleaned off the blades.
"As you may already know, boys, the knives are very important to the hunters both as a weapons and as a tools, which we can use for such of purposes like hunting, skilling, combat, etc. And it is absolutely important that the knife is quickly available when it is needed the most depending of the situation. Also, it is important to keep the knife's blade in good condition, so that its usability and utility remain for the longest time until it comes to the necessary replacement of the knife's worn and useless parts. And the maintenance of the knife requires periodic sharpening and cleaning of the blade from the blood of either the hunted animal or enemy." Jake explained to the boys as he kept checking Lo'ak's and Neteyam's knifes.
And after a while, Jake finally handed Lo'ak and Neteyam their knives back.
"Lo'ak? Neteyam? Your knives are clear. There were no signs of any recent usage in them. Meaning that what you said is true, that you have not lent your knives to Spider for him to use them against Punkun as you claimed." Jake told his sons as they took their knives back and put them back into their sheats on their left hip.
"Thank you, dad." Neteyam said humbly, nodding to his father.
"Told you, dad. Spider is innocent." Lo'ak said.
"We shall see, son, once I find something to prove Kiri's claims of his innocence." Jake assured his youngest son with the nod, before he then turned to face Palree, Baldang, Li'mane and Koward on his left, who were still holding out their own knifes.
Jake started first from Palree and took the boy's knife.
"Palree? If I remember correctly, you made your own knife from your previous Ikran's wing claw after a wild Ikran attacked him during your flight and took his right wing. Since you lost your old knife in the crash and the wild Ikran had torn his left wing claw off, you used it to end his suffering, didn't you?" Jake said as he scrutinized Palree's knife's blade.
"Yes, Olo'eyktan." Palree confirmed with the nod.
"Well, lucky for you, the blade that granded your old Ikran a peaceful death didn't disgrace his memory by shedding blood today." Jake said with the forced smile as he handed Palree back his knife. "Your knife is clear."
Palree took his knife back, allowing Jake to move next to Baldang and requested his knife by holding his hand out towards him. Baldang nodded and quickly handed his over to him.
"Baldang? I've heard that you have a habit to use your own knife to shave most of your own hair, save for the spot around your tswin(Queue)." Jake said as he went through the half-bald Na'vi teen's knife. "And you also have a habit to make from the pieces of your hair the necklace of the beaded hair braids. Like the one you're wearing right now."
Baldang glanced down at the necklace he was wearing. On the string hanging around his neck, he had tied a bunch of braided pieces of his own shaved hair, which varied in length and were decorated with the number of colorful beads and a few other things he'd found/gathered in the forest or made himself.
"Yes, Olo'eyktan, and I am good at it." Baldang said proudly, before he winced with the hiss, gritted his teeth in pain and lifted his right hand over his sore head. "But it won't happen for the while when my hair grows back, thanks to these bumps."
"Well, you can be proud of your self-barbering skills and your ability to keep your knife sharp... because I found it clear." Jake said and held the knife towards Baldang, who promptly took it back.
Jake then moved to Li'mane and took his knife next.
"Li'mane? Your knife holds a quite bold and unbelievable story... perhaps too unbelievable to be actually truth. According to what I heard, your knife has quite a bold and incredible story... that sounds a bit too good to be true. That story said that you crossed paths with the lone Palulukan when you were hunting in the forest and, instead of fleeing like even the bravest Na'vi would do in the face of such of ferocious animal, you bravely charged at the beast and fought fiercely against it... and won. The story ends to your claim of having taken one of Palulukan's teeth as a trophy of your victory and finally you made the knife of it." Jake said as he went through Li'Mane's knife's blade. "Mind to tell me, from one guy to another, who has met Palulukan face to face once in the lifetime and lived to tell the tale... is anything in that story actually true, or did you just found dead Palulukan, took one of its fangs and made up the story just to look "cool" amongst the other teens?"
"Oh!" Li'mane gasped after Jake has asked him such of question. "Well... I... umm... eh... actually... um..." he stuttered awkwardly when all his friends turned to look at him, awaiting for answers.
Unlike Jake did, his friends had apparently taken him more seriously when they were told this story by Li'mane for the first time. Back then, Li'mane had been much more confident in his story of facing Palulukan in battle and taking one of its teeth as a token of victory before turning it into a knife.
However, this confidence seemed to disappear immediately when Jake, skeptical of the story and its teller's credibility, bombarded him with a one certain question about its authenticity.
Li'mane's reaction to Jake's question and his sheepish behavior indicated that he may have not been completely truthful about his story, which appeared to have an apparent impact to his friends as well... in negative light though. Thanks to Jake, they too started to express skeptical thoughts over whether Li'mane's story is true or just made up.
"Well...before I leave you to explain certain details of your story to your friends, I'll let you know that your knife is clear as well." Jake said and handed Li'mane his knife back before leaving him in the awkward position under his friends for the honest answers preying eyes.
And finally... Jake moved to the last boy, Koward.
Of all the other boys, apart from Punkun, Koward seemed to be the most uneasy here. His own anxiety about his situation became every second even more apparent when Jake walked towards him, as he began to breath in and out at a rapid pace, and even more drops of sweat began to run down his forehead and back. The teen boy looked nervously left and right, trying to either find or figure his way out of here, though there was none. And with Jake standing right in front of him, Koward thought it best to avoid his gaze by keeping his own head down and his eyes fixed on the ground.
"Koward... your knife?" Jake requested, holding his hand out towards him.
Koward glanced down at his knife, around of which he had wrapped his fingers into a tight hold, though not as tight to accidentally cut himself. He tried out of morality to make a move to hand his knife over to Jake but eventually hesitated and held his hand back.
"Koward?" Jake repeated himself.
Koward grimaced with the pursed lips at the mention of his name.
"I'm not going to ask for the third time, Koward. The knife. Now." Jake said strictly and impatiently, while taking a note of Koward's behavior.
Begrudgingly, and still avoiding Jake's eye contact, Koward gave in and handed his knife to the Jake.
"I have to admit it that I'm rather surprised to see you here, Koward." Jake questioned as he began to scrutinize Koward's knife. "When you were younger, I remember you holding a high regard for other children of the clan, and that you would stood up for the others without the hesitation. Heck, you even used to hold a high regard for your very first hunted kill that you sought to end its suffering as quick as possible. So what changed, that ended up leading you to be right here?"
Koward, however, chose not to answer to Jake's question while still averting his gaze, which Jake took into note too.
Jake didn't spot anything from flat one side of Koward's knife, so he turned it around to look from the other side. However, his eyes went narrow when he caught the sight of something on the blade, which made him frown hard as the pieces went to place.
"You know what, Koward. You're an interesting one here." Jake said as he turned towards the boy, bearing an unbredictable look on his face. "Your behavior here and your possible feelings... Your restlessness, anxiousness and reluctance to say anything. They're most likely because of something you have done... of what you're not proud of... and maybe you might even regret it because you know it was wrong... but you're afraid to tell about it out of fear of the consequences. I get it. I understand how you must feel, because it reminds me a lot about me when I was in your place back in the last days of Kelutral(Hometree), when I was still employed by the Sky People. The very knowledge of the wrongs I had done in the name of the Sky People against the Omatikaya people, and which could no longer be undone, tore at my heart and tormented my soul. When I realized this, I felt the need to tell the people right away why I was with them in the first place, but the fear of what would happen to me if I tell the truth held me back... not to mention that if I had stopped working for them, I would have been kicked out from the whole planet... never to be seen again here as if I had never even existed My choices and actions cost me almost everything I'd got in here."
After saying that, all those tragic memories of the last moments of Omatikaya's Hometree, it's destruction and death, the massacre that was laid upon the people and the events before that flashed before Jake's eyes, including the memories of the heavy burden of guilt in his heart when he made himself to confess to the people his original mission, and all those looks on their faces, especially Neytiri's, that kept haunting him to this day.
With that, Jake then glanced over the edge of his Marui's floor and down to the village, where the majority of the people of Omatikaya clan were minding their own businesses.
"My people's trust in me." Jake muttered aloud as he looked down at Omatikaya people, his people, before he turned his gaze to Neytiri.
"The love of my life." Jake said, locking his eyes with Neytiri's, who gave her mate a sympathetic look, knowing how much those memories still tormented Jake, because her own memories of seeing her home to be felled down and large number of her people getting killed, including her father, still tormented her as well.
Jake then turned his gaze to Lo'ak, Neteyam, Kiri and Tuktirey, with all former three locking their eyes with their father's.
"And the future I've created." Jake finished, giving his children an affectional smile.
Then he turned back to Koward and knelt down before him to look at him from the same level.
"But unlike with me, I'm sure whatever you're hiding cannot be as costly to you, right?" he asked from the boy. "So would you mind to tell me about it?"
Koward moved his head slightly to the left and glanced sideways at Punkun, possibly for expecting some advice. Punkun, however, gave Koward a warning glare and shook his head slightly, telling him not to say a word. Koward pondered it for a moment before he gave Punkun a slight nod and turned his head away from Punkun, though did not turned to look at Jake.
"No, Olo'eyktan." Koward said with the low voice. "I have nothing to hide. Honestly."
Jake kept his eyes fixed on Koward for a moment while pondering his short words, until he wordlessly nodded his head as if accepting his words, though he still wore his unpredictable look on his face. Then, after a moment, he opened his mouth to speak again.
"Okay... So, uh... Tell me, Koward. Do you still maintain a routine of maintaining the condition and cleanliness of your knife?" he asked.
Koward was taken aback by Jake's question and, finally, lifted his head up and looked at Jake in the eyes with confused look on his face.
"Uh... Yes, I do." Koward said uncertainly.
Jake nodded in satisfaction to the boy's answer, before asking again. "And how often do you clean up your knife?"
Once again, Koward was taken aback by Jake's question, but he answered to it nonetheless. "Everytime after I have ended up the suffering of the animal that I've hunted."
"And yet you and your friends didn't make it to the forest to hunt until this incident happened, right?" Jake questioned with intense voice this time.
"No, we didn't." Koward said, taken aback once again by Jake's raised voice.
"Then why the hell I just happened to find two stains of blood in this knife?!" Jake asked with even louder voice, showing Koward the flat side of his knife.
Koward's eyes went wide open from alarm when he noticed the two stains of blood near the edge of his knife. The blood was coagulated and the stains faded, as if the blood was hurriedly wiped away but the knife itself wasn't cleaned properly.
Palree, Baldang and Li'mane gasped aloud, but not out of shock of Jake finding the blood stains from Koward's knife but rather out of alarm, as if they knew something what the others didn't, aside of Koward and Punkun. However, this didn't go unnoticed by Jake.
Punkun just stared at the scene in horror and fear for his own skin, but soon he turned away from it and tried to keep his composure so as not to arouse suspicion... although at this point it seemed already impossible.
Koward then turned slightly to the left to give a quick glance towards Punkun, but immediately turned back to Jake after Punkun shot at him a brief but fierce "Don't look at me, you skxawng!"-like look in order not to draw any attention to him.
However, unfortunately for Koward and Punkun, Jake didn't fail to notice that either.
Now fully convinced of the true course of events according to Spider, Lo'ak, Neteyam, Kiri and Kai'ani's versions, Jake stood up while looking down at Koward with the angry frown on his face. As the Olo'eyktan stood in front of the sun, his shadow fell instantly upon Koward's form, further demonstrating the strong influence of his Toruk Makto title. Koward pursed his lips again as he looked up at angry Jake, near petrified still from fear of what was coming for him.
"Since you and your friends never made it to the forest to hunt, and that you just said that you always take care of your knife, this blood cannot be from the recently hunted animal, right?" Jake questioned strictly, as he pointed his finger at the blood stains in the knife. "Does this prove what my daughter claimed she saw to be true? Does this prove that Punkun borrowed your knife to cut himself like this to frame Spider for the attack on him with a knife, which he supposedly didn't commit?"
Though Koward was sweating even more and breathing rapidly from the growing anxiousness, he didn't say anything. However, this wasn't out of the reluctance like earlier but rather out of fear of what Olo'eyktan would likely do to him.
"You're not going to talk, right?" Jake questioned with the raised eyebrow, but he did not allowed Koward to explain as he spoke again. "Then I have to rely on the old saying from Earth: silence is a sign of consent."
Jake then walked away from Koward and towards Punkun, showing the boy Koward's knife to try to refresh his memory of the deed he had obviously done with it.
"How about you, Punkun? I have taken a notice that you haven't answered to your mother's question, and that you weren't going to answer until your father spoke up for you." Jake said firmly. "So, does this knife look familiar to you? And the blood stains? Do they look familiar to you too? Is this the knife you inflicted those wounds on yourself as my daughter claims?"
Punkun looked at Jake with a barely maintained composed gaze and shook his head to deny everything that had been leveled against him, while covering behind his father... or at least tried, because his mother was still holding him still by his shoulders.
"Start talking, Punkun! Is this all true?" Athera hissed, backing Jake up as she narrowed her eyes into the narrow glare as she looked down at her son, though Punkun tried to avoid the eye-contact with his mother.
However, Tha'non once more stubbornly stood up for his son's defense.
"Leave my son alone!" Tha'non said with the hiss of open defiance to the Olo'eyktan of Omaticaya. Jake, however, didn't hiss back at him but held firmly his ground, not allowing Tha'non to gain dominance over him.
"All of you! All of you are poisoned by this demon boy's influence! All of you are just making absurd and false accusations against my son instead of blaming that...that filthy thing... for his evil presence in our village and its effect on you and its consequences!" Tha'non said while accusing everybody around him in rage, this time caring nothing of it if he was speaking with such of outrageous tone to the clan's most authoritative figures (Jake the Olo'eyktan and Mo'at the Tsahik).
"Tha'non!" Athera chided her mate for his way of speaking towards their clan's leaders, but Tha'non ignored her.
"So as long as you're all under the corruption inflicted on you by that demon boy's presence, none of you has any right to judge my son for such of outrageous charges! No one, and nothing can judge my son for anything!" Tha'non stated firmly.
A silence fell over Sullys' Marui, while both Jake and Mo'at glared at Tha'non for speaking to them in such an insolent and defiant manner, while Neteyam, Lo'ak, Kai'ani and Ka'ani glared at him angrily for still defending his son even in the face of overwhelming number of clear evidence that proved highly against him, while both Kiri and Spider wrapped their arms protectively around of each other. And while Tha'non maintained his defiant stand against the charges against his son, the other boys' parents and Athera were left unsure of which side they should take, even though they were forced to acknowledge to themselves the fact that the evidence for the accusations against Punkun, and through him their sons, were not only clear, but also reasonable. Palree, Baldang, Li'mane, Koward and Punkun remained where they were, all anxiously waiting for how this was going to end... from their part.
The intense standoff continued for a moment, until something caugfht Mo'at's eye from above and she turned her head up to see what it was. When she realized that what it was, a small smile briefly visited on her lips, before she turned back to Tha'non.
"You're right, Tha'non." Mo'at said, stepping forward.
Her words earned the surprised, confused and puzzled looks from everyone around her... even Tha'non looked surprised after she had said this.
"Since we're all affected by the humans' presence amongst us, none of us, and nothing, can judge your son." Mo'at explained simply
"Grandmother...?" Kiri questioned.
"Mother?" Neytiri questioned, puzzled by her mother's words.
"Mo'at? What are you talking about?" Jake questioned.
"Tsahik. That isn't right! Least fair for my daughter!" Ka'ani said in protest.
However, instead of answering to them or explaining the meaning of her words, Mo'at simply held her hand up to silence them all, which they respectfully did.
This led Tha'non to think that after so much effort to speak "sense" into everybody here, he had at least managed to reach Tsahik from under the shadow of 'corruption' caused by the Spider's presence. With the belief that Mo'at had taken his side on this one smiled smugly to himself.
However, he was quickly proven wrong when Mo'at fixed her firm gaze on him, before she said her next words in powerful and authoritative voice, which openly dared Tha'non to challenge them.
"But there is only one who can judge your son." Mo'at declared with strong voice. "Only one who is far beyond the reach of human influence, but who has learned to coexist in peace and harmony with their presence. It's Eywa herself!"
To be continued...
NEXT PART: EYWA'S JUDGEMENT.