They finished eating, and then ransacked both halves of the shack, looking for useful stuff. Prisha's grey sweatshirt was perfect for the chilly caverns at High Camp, but would be far too warm for the lowland jungles around Site Nine. She found a t-shirt of Keith's from Princess of Naradhiwas University, which was too big for her but nice and light, and tied the hoodie around her waist in case she needed it later. They emptied archaeological tools and specimens out of a backpack and loaded it up with food, and Neteyam found a grooming kit that included an electric shaver like Dr. Patel's. He definitely needed that.

"Oh, hey!" said Prisha, pulling something out of a cupboard. "Rob's sunglasses! He's been looking for these for ages."

Neteyam had seen humans with sunglasses – as he understood it, they wore them because they came from a world with only one sun, and the light of two on Pandora was too much for them. He remembered squinting in the light as he'd followed the game trail towards the foothills, but not more than he usually would have on a bright day. He wasn't sure if they'd be useful or not. Even so, he couldn't resist the urge to try them on.

"Let me see," he said, and unfolded the arms to put them on his face. In the dim light of the shack, it made everything very dark indeed. "How do I look?"

Lo'ak snickered. "Like you probably can't see a thing."

Prisha giggled, too, but it was meant differently. "Pretty cool, actually." She offered him the mirror from the grooming kit, and Neteyam held it up for a look.

The image he saw made him laugh, though it was slightly uncomfortable. Apparently, the familiar gold colour of his eyes was a big part of what made him still look like Neteyam. With them covered, he just looked like... like some human. He took them off and put them back in the case, and left it on the counter where one of the archaeologists would hopefully find it.

Lo'ak took a breath from his mask. "Is there anything else we need?" he asked. "We don't know when they'll be back." He bent down to take a look out the window. "There's clouds on the horizon."

Neteyam looked around the human half of the shack, then down at his hands. The bandages were off his eel bites – they were healing, and he could use the left hand now. The right one was still in its cast. He rotated it experimentally. The wrist was still wore, but he didn't think it qualified as broken anymore, even if the humans hadn't been able to replace the bone. He'd been using it as best he was able, but he'd do better with it if the cast were off.

That was something Reet had specifically told him not to do, but he hadn't gotten this far by doing what Reet said. "Is there anything I can use to cut this off?" he asked.

They found a set of clippers the archaeologists used to trim back inconvenient vegetation. These were way too big for Neteyam or Prisha to wield, so Neteyam laid his arm down on the table, and Lo'ak very carefully got the blade under the cast and started to cut through the layers of plaster and bandages. Neteyam gritted his teeth as the dirty metal scraped against his skin.

"I'm not gonna cut you, little big brother," said Lo'ak. "The only part that's touching you is the dull bit."

"I dunno, big little brother," Neteyam replied, teasing. "If anyone can find a way, it's you."

"Not happening. With you gone, I've had to be the responsible one," Lo'ak said. "I kinda hate it."

"You missed me, huh?"

Finally the cast was cut through, and Lo'ak bent it off Neteyam's arm. Underneath the skin was damp and pale, and there was a short cut, healing into a bright pink scar, below the thumb where Reet had put his bones back together. When Neteyam bent the wrist it twinged, and he doubted he'd be able

to grip anything with much strength, but it worked.

The People said scars were stories. They were to be worn with bride, because they showed the things you'd been stronger than. When the humans at Hell's Gate had cut Mimawey's second twin from her body years ago, she'd told them to leave the scar – it was the mark of a battle won. This scar would show that Quaritch hadn't cowed Neteyam no matter how hard he'd tried He wondered, if they succeeded in making him a new body, was there a way to make sure it had this?

They got an unpleasant surprise when they went back outside. Lo'ak had mentioned that clouds were forming, but the window faced south, towards the dig site, so he hadn't been able to see the full extent. When they looked west, where the weather moved from, they found dark storm clouds piling up over the jungle. Not only was there rain on the way, but they were going to be moving towards it.

"We'd better hurry," said Lo'ak. He looked down at his companions and grinned. "Wanna see? I can lift you up?"

Neteyam gave him a gentle shove. Lo'ak laughed.

Tìtstew made unhappy noises as the three young people all climbed onto his back again, prompting Lo'ak to tell him off. "Don't be dramatic," he said, grabbing a kuru to make tsaheylu. "Look, we're halfway up a hill and there's a breeze blowing. You can just catch that, and up we go."

The banshee snorted, but obeyed. His flapping was unnecessarily laboured as they climbed through the air. Neteyam, who was familiar with banshees and how much they could carry, could tell – Prisha could not.

"Is he okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, he's just complaining," Neteyam said.

They circled as they gained altitude. The wind ahead of the storm was beginning to shake the trees around the archaeological dig, but it lifted Tìtstew's wings quickly, and they turned towards the approaching clouds.

Neteyam had assumed they'd have time to cover a bit of ground, maybe even to make it as far as Kilvanoro. They could hide in the caves there, where there was plenty of space to avoid both any intruding Sky People and Pa'ay and the people guarding the stolen explosive. But the clouds seemed to pile up unnaturally fast, getting higher and darker until they towered over the floating mountains. It wasn't long before the first few cold, stinging raindrops began to fall.

Even then, by silent agreement Lo'ak and Neteyam decided to keep going for a little bit, hoping to get out of the foothills. Then lightning flickered inside the cloud, and the flat black bottom of the thunderheads dissolved into mist as rain poured down on the jungle ahead of him.

They had no choice. Even if they hadn't minded getting wet, Tìtstew might be merely complaining about carrying his rider and two humans on a sunny day, but on a stormy one the lower air pressure would make flying far more difficult. They had to descend into the canopy and look for somewhere to sit it out.

"Stay here, we'll be back," Lo'ak told Prisha again.

"Uh-huh," she said, looking askance at Tìtstew, who glared back at her in turn. Prisha reached forward to gingerly scratch him around where his right kuru met his head. Tìtstew, startled, shook his head, and she withdrew her hand as if he'd bitten it.

The boys split up as rain began to audibly patter on the leaves overhead. The jungle was full of hiding places – the problem would be to find one that could accommodate all three of them. Fortunately, it seemed that Eywa was looking out for them. It didn't take long.

"Bro!" Lo'ak called out. "Over here!"

Neteyam looked over his shoulder to see where the voice had come from, but at first he saw nothing but trees. He'd noticed that humans were not as good at telling the direction of sounds, even before he'd become one, but this was the first time he'd been bothered by it. What if he were lost and never found them again?

A moment later the panic melted away again when he spotted Lo'ak waving to him. Neteyam climbed over the rocks and brush to see what he'd found.

It was a section from a large tree that had died and fallen over many years ago. The original trunk had been at least ten metres across, perhaps one of the trees that grew in colonies to form a hometree, although this one seemed to have been isolated. The top was covered with fungi and foliage, which in dry weather would be a home for countless flitting insects and small animals, like a coral reef. Below was a shadow where few things grew. A few stingbats were roosting on the underside, but they didn't seem bothered by the brothers inspecting their home.

"Better than being out in the rain,"s aid Neteyam.

Lo'ak called to their companions. "Prisha! Tìtstew!"

The banshee crawled over with Prisha still on his back, and she climbed down to crawl into the dry area. Lo'ak sat in the middle with Neteyam on his right and Prisha on his left, and they settled down to wait out the storm. Thunder rumbled and heavier rain began to patter on the wood above them.

Neteyam unlaced his boots and took them off, then pulled his socks off and stuffed them into the boots before stretching out his legs and wiggling his toes, which were feeling very squashed. He also took off Spider's blue shirt and hung it over a root to dry a bit. Lo'ak had no need to do the same, but Prisha was now shivering in Keith's damp t-shirt.

"Both of you, look away," she ordered the boys.

They obediently turned their heads to let her change, and stared out at the rain dribbling off the leaves and vines and running down Tìtstew's neck and back. Then the sound of the precipitation suddenly changed, and white pellets started to fall. Hail was not entirely unheard of in the jungle, but it was certainly unusual, and Tìtstew didn't like it at all. He hissed and then crawled under the section of fallen tree with the kids, who had to flatten themselves against the wood to make room for him. Only moments later there was a crash overhead, and a piece of ice the size of a human thumb bounced off the wooden canopy and landed just beyond the edge of their shelter. Lo'ak swore in surprise, while Neteyam just stared.

A moment later, dozens of such chunks were pounding down, shredding leaves and tearing twigs and bark from the trees. Prisha, now back in her grey sweatshirt, cried out and moved closer to the boys – Lo'ak put an arm around her as all three wiggled back as far as they could into their makeshift shelter. Titstew tried to do the same, and extended a wing as if to shelter them. For a few minutes that seemed like forever, the ice rattled all around them, breaking into pieces where it hit the rocks and piling up among the torn vegetation.

Then it was over, and there was only cold rain as the storm moved further east.

"I've never seen anything like that," Lo'ak said.

Prisha gingerly reached out and picked up one of the bigger lumps, letting it roll from side to side as it melted in her palm. "I hope Dad and Dr. Spellman made it back okay. That would tear up the rotors on the dragon in no time, and we can't make new parts."

Lo'ak and Neteyam exchanged a look as both had the same thought at the same time. "It would sure stop a battle, too," Lo'ak said. "The Sky People would have to fall back."

"And our People would have to seek shelter," Neteyam agreed. It was as if, like a mother tired of watching her children argue, Eywa had simply said that's enough.

Prisha dropped the lump of ice and dug into her backpack. "Give me a minute," she said.

After a bit of rummaging, she pulled out one of the electronic devices they'd taken from Konstopoulos, and the set of screwdrivers.

"This might take a while," she warned. "All this stuff has passwords on it. I know all the security loopholes for the stuff back home, but this is fifteen years newer and I don't want to take any risks. I'm gonna have to take it apart a little, but then we should be able to listen again if the interference isn't too bad."

Neteyam was about to accept that, but then he had an idea. He knew what a password was, and he knew it was something you had to be able to remember, so most people chose something important to them. Dad's passwords at Hell's Gate had all been the kids' birthdays according to the human calendar. "Try maverick," he said. "It was her banshee's name."

"You're not allowed to use an English word," said Prisha, but then she started typing anyway. "A lot of people get around that, though, by replacing vowels with numbers... so let's try M-4-V-3-R-1-C-K."

The object in her hands made a musical beeping sound, and the display sprang to life.

Prisha set to work, going through menus and turning off anything that might transmit instead of receiving, talking to herself as she did. "I'd like to manually remove the transponders, just in case... but this should do as long as nobody's going out of their way to track us. And even that might not stop somebody pinging its location by satellite..."

Neteyam watched, fascinated. His new appreciation for the complexity of human machines made Prisha's deft manipulation of them all the more impressive. It reminded him of the weavers, throwing shuttles through the looms at apparent random and yet in the end a pattern emerged.

"Here we go!" she said triumphantly. "The frequency we found them on earlier was... around here."

There was a screech of static that made Lo'ak's ears flatten back, and Neteyam, unable to do the same, had to clap his hands over his. Then it settled down, and Prisha fiddled with the settings until she found voices.

... word from Konstopoulous, said one. The other scout reported in, though. Dvorak. He found the dragon.

Prisha's face went pale. Lo'ak reached over her shoulder, worried she'd drop the radio, but she recovered.

We're sending coordinates now, the voice went on. He's gonna wait for us, but he says it appears to be abandoned. Windshield's smashed from the hailstorm, and the onboard computer's been wiped.

Of course it has, a second voice grumbled. Get some people in there to search the surrounding jungle. I don't want even a bug to be able to hide in there, never mind anything sentient. And keep looking for Konstopoulous, we're getting worried about her.

Yes, Sir!

"Oh, no," said Prisha in a whisper.

Neteyam reached across Lo'ak and put a hand on her knee to comfort her. "It's better than them being there when they found it," he said.

"Dad won't let anything happen to them," Lo'ak promised.

Something occurred to Neteyam that hadn't before. "Dr. Spellmam can just unlink and tell everybody where they are, right?" At least, he assumed Dr. Spellman was using his avatar... but Neteyam didn't remember seeing the man in the whole time he'd been at High Camp, and avatar drivers needed to look after their human bodies, too.

But Prisha shook her head. "He actually tore a ligament in his ankle just the day before you showed up," she said. "His avatar got put back in stasis to recover. It'll be healed by now, but you seemed so important, he didn't want to wait."

If Neteyam had been paying attention he would have noticed and asked about that earlier, but he'd been too busy feeling sorry for himself. That was going to have to change if he wanted to accomplish anything.

"Dr. Spellman knows what he's doing, avatar or no avatar," said Lo'ak. "The People taught him how to survive. He'll look after your father."

"And Dad will look for them as soon as he realizes they had to leave the dragon," Neteyam agreed. "Especially if he thinks Lo'ak's still with them." The thought came unbidden: Dad wouldn't lose another son. Neteyam shivered as if to physically dislodge the idea. "There's lots of places in the foothills where they could shelter from the storm."

Prisha hugged the device against her chest for a moment, then took a deep breath and crawled around Lo'ak's legs to sit in between the two boys instead. "I'm gonna give you your first computer lesson," she announced.

That was a surprise, but Neteyam knew where it came from – she didn't want to think about what might be happening to her father. He didn't want to think about his father worrying over him and Lo'ak, either, so he said, "okay?"

She brought up a screen displaying no images, only text. "The first thing you need to know about computers is the language they speak."

"Don't they speak English?" asked Lo'ak. They'd heard the computers in Hell's Gate responding to voice commands.

"Only because we tell them to," Prisha said. "Computers actually speak in numbers, but it's a special type of number. Humans count things in tens because we have ten fingers. Na'vi count in eights because you guys have eight fingers."

Lo'ak snickered and held up his hands, wiggling his own ten fingers. Neteyam grinned and also extended his five-fingered hands.

"Present company excepted," said Prisha. "Computers count by twos. So where we would write one, two, three..." she traced the numerals in the lichen growing inside the hollow log, and the organisms responded by starting to glow, showing them clearly. "A computer only has two digits to work with, zero and one, so it would say one, ten, eleven." She drew those below the first set of numbers. "So using just zero and one, you can represent any number you want. Computers don't have fingers, but they've got electrical current that can either be on or off. If the current is on, the computer understands that's a one. If it's off, that's a zero. And we can use that to tell computers what to do."

She went on from there, talking about machine code and programming language, and how a device called a compiler was used to translate from something a human could understand into instructions for the machine. Lo'ak quickly got bored with it and after a while he seemed to nod off, but Neteyam listened intently even when he didn't understand. Human machines seemed so simple to use, the way they responded to voice or to touch, and yet on the inside they were so incredibly complicated.

And why shouldn't they be? Communing with Eywa was simple – you made tsaheylu and you spoke to her. Yet Eywa was in every tree, every root, every strand of moss and buzzing insect and sprouting fungus on the entire planet. All those things thinking together had to be enormously complex to keep track of and talk to every single person and creature at the same time. Maybe Eywa, too, thought in her own language, and only compiled it into ordinary Na'vi when she wanted to talk to her children? It would certainly give Neteyam a very different perspective next time he connected with the Great Mother.

The idea that he might yet be able to do that again made the pit of Neteyam's stomach tingle in anticipation. It was an action he'd never take for granted again... and something he would have to introduce Prisha to, as part of her lessons on surviving outside. Would she find it comparable to her computers?

Neteyam found himself wondering what Prisha's avatar would look like. Humans in general were short, round creatures, and Prisha was smaller and plumper than most, very different from the People. He tried to picture it, and couldn't... he couldn't imagine the avatar that would match her. He would just have to wait and find out.

"Why are you staring at me?" asked Prisha.

Neteyam sat up straight. "Sorry. I wasn't. I was just staring off into space."

He heard Lo'ak snicker.

"Too much information for one day?" Prisha looked apologetic. "Sorry, I should try to pace it better. Get me started and I can go on forever."

"It's a lot," Neteyam admitted. He wouldn't remember it all, but he wasn't as concerned about that as he'd been about some of the things he'd tried at Site Nine. This was just a first lesson about something entirely new to him. Not like throwing a ball or climbing a cliff.

Lo'ak held out a hand beyond the overhang of the wood. "It's stopped raining," he observed. "We can have something to eat and dry off."

"Good idea." Neteyam stood and arched his back, stretching his arms above his head. Lo'ak got up in preparation to do the same thing and knocked his head on the ceiling. Neteyam stifled a snicker and decided to pretend he hadn't seen that. "All right, Prisha, I had my first computer lesson, time for your first outside lesson. I'm going to show you how to make a fire after rain."

Prisha put the tablet in her backpack and got up, brushing moss and leaves off her trousers. "The dead lady... she had matches and stuff in her bag," she said.

"That's cheating," scoffed Lo'ak.

"You need to know what to do if you don't have those," Neteyam said. "First, we need to prepare a spot."

They moved wet foliage aside and turned some stones over to be dry side up, creating a space where the fire could burn. Sheltered areas provided them with dry moss, twigs, and grasses, as well as a few tufts of txepkìng plant, which the humans called tindersilk. The long, fluffy fibres on its seeds, designed to catch the wind, caught fast and burned hot, making them ideal for starting fires. Neteyam showed Prisha how to stack it up so things would burn in the proper sequence.

"Now you need a spark," he said.

Prisha nodded. "We've got fuel and oxygen, so we just need heat."

"I've got firestones," said Lo'ak. He pulled them out of a pouch on his belt.

"Have a look, you'll need to know how to identify them," Neteyam said.

Prisha took the stones from Lo'ak and weighed them in her hands. "This one is flint," she said. "So the other one must be something with lots of iron, to make sparks."

"Strike the second one against the flint at a low angle." Neteyam mimed the motion necessary. "Give it a try."

Prisha went to do so, rearranging her fingers to try to get a better grip on the large stones. Then she hesitated. "Fuel, heat, and oxygen. Is it a good idea to do this when I've got oxygen canisters on my back? Oxygen can explode."

"I'll do it," said Lo'ak. He demonstrated how to strike a spark, and the tindersilk burst into flames. It burned out very quickly, but by the time it did, the twigs and mosses had started to catch. Lo'ak blew on it to fan it, and soon they had a fine campfire. All three moved closer to it to warm their hands and faces.

"If we can get into this place," Prisha said, "I'll see if I can start up a console and teach you some basic programming. Then you can see how some of the stuff I said today works in practice."

"And when we've made you an avatar, you can try to light a fire properly," said Neteyam.

They prepared a meal for themselves as the clouds began to clear, showing the sun low and red in the sky. There wasn't any time left for travel today – they would have to spend the night here. Neteyam felt a lot better about than than he had when he'd been alone in the jungle before. He, Lo'ak, and Prisha could take turns keeping watch for predators or Sky People. They had the rifle and Lo'ak's crossbow as well as the obsidian knife. And if it got cold, they could share body heat.

As the sky darkened, sparks from their fire spiralled up on the rising air to melt away as the first stars began to appear. Neteyam's eyes went first to one particular bright one Dad had taught them to find as children – the eye of Kenten, the zig-zagging fan lizard constellation. That was Sol, the nearest star that wasn't actually part of the three-sun system they lived in. That was where the Sky People came from.

He wondered what else was up there. What sort of other worlds might there be, even further away? "You had me listen to that one that kept clicking," he remembered. "Where is it?"

Prisha lay back on the damp ferns and looked up. "Okay, see those two really bright stars, one above the other, that are gonna go behind the planet in a minute?"

"Yes?"

"The top one is called Sirius and the bottom is Canopus. The Vela pulsar is in between them and a little off to the left, so somewhere in there." She pointed. "You can't actually see it, though. You can only hear it on the radio."

Neteyam lay down as well to better see where she was pointing. As she'd said, there was nothing much there, just dark sky. She'd described it as a dead star, spinning impossibly fast... and yet it was entirely invisible.

"When a planet passes in front of a star," Prisha said, "that's called an occultation."

"I thought it was an eclipse," said Lo'ak.

"Only when it's one of the suns," Prisha told him. "On Earth, they've got one sun, and a big moon that looks the same size in the sky, so when there's an eclipse the moon covers the sun perfectly and you can see a special part of the star called the corona that's never visible at any other time. I've seen pictures of it. I guess I'll never see it for real."

They lay there a while, watching the sky drift overhead while the aurora flickered like their campfire. The great disk of the planet slid first over the star Prisha had called Sirius, then over Canopus. As the sky got darker the planet brightened, and the blue glow from it began to drown out the surrounding stars.

It had been a long time, Neteyam thought, since he'd really looked at the planet. It was just always there, as dependable as the earth and air, not really worth paying attention to. That was a shame, because the bands and swirls on its surface were beautiful. Dr. Spellman used to have a poster in one of the labs at Hell's Gate with a painting made by a human artist long ago, showing a sky full of swirls and spots similar to the ones on the planet.

From here it looked silent and steady – but like the Vela pulsar, the planet was actually a loud place. The sounds on the radio had been muffled, but then, they were coming from far away. Up close, they must be deafening. There had to be howling winds and terrific thunder and lightning, as well as the crackling of the invisible magnetic energy. All those tranquil stripes and spots were huge, the size of the whole world... a circular shadow floating across them might well be cast by Pandora itself, showing just how great the difference in size really was.

Prisha had also said there was a planet similar to it circling Sol. There, similar violent weather went on, and moons whirled through alien skies eclipsing other stars... and that wasn't even the only other solar system. One of the scientists had once told Neteyam that of the thousands of stars that could be seen on a dark night, almost all of them shone on their own collection of worlds, which might be like this one or entirely unlike it...

Neteyam had to stop that train of thought there and shut his eyes, focusing on the cool earth and the moisture soaking into his shirt to ground himself. The planet in the sky was something so familiar, and yet in that moment it had suddenly seemed huge and threatening and bizarre. Was that what it looked like to humans?

He caught his breath and then looked up again. There it was, Naranawm the Great Eye, just like it had always been – but it was never going to look the same to Neteyam again.

Neteyam's sleep that night was uneasy. He'd slept indoors the past few nights, and before that for days on end at Site Nine. He hadn't liked the silence there, but he'd started to get used to it, and now the sounds of the forest seemed very loud – not threatening, but intrusive nonetheless. When Lo'ak went to sleep and Neteyam took his turn on watch, it was a welcome chance to refamiliarize himself with the nighttime symphony.

While Prisha and Lo'ak slept under the section of tree trunk, Neteyam listened carefully, recalling the name of each bird and insect, and trying to identify their calls, whether they were frightened, angry, or looking for a mate. It was reassuring that he could still do this, still see and hear the world as he used to, even without being able to tell exactly where the sounds were coming from.

Lo'ak didn't seem to be doing well, either. He began whimpering in his sleep, his tail switching in distress. At first Neteyam tried to ignore this, but then he took pity and crawled over to shake his brother awake. Lo'ak flinched from Neteyam's hand on his shoulder as if he'd been bitten. His eyes flew open, and he stared at the sky panting for a few moments before looking to see who had touched him.

"You were having a nightmare," said Neteyam.

"I know," Lo'ak said sourly. He rolled over onto his back. "Sorry."

Neteyam returned to the campfire, intending to let it go at that – but a moment later he heard objects moving, followed by a click, and a light came on. He turned his head to see, and found that Lo'ak had turned on a flashlight they'd taken from the archaeologists' camp and was shining it on his hands. When he realized Neteyam was looking, he quickly turned it off again.

"Sorry," he repeated.

"It's fine," said Neteyam.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Lo'ak came and sat down across from his brother. "I have dreams about it a lot, actually," he said, looking down at his hands.

Neteyam could guess what it was. He wasn't sure he really wanted to know, but he asked anyway. "What happened?"

"Tuk and Tsireya and I went to warn Payakan about the Sky People," said Lo'ak. "But Quaritch found us, and we ended up tied up on his ship. You came to get us, and... well, we all should have just gone home, but I didn't want to leave Spider. So you came with me, and you got shot." He put a hand to his collarbone.

Neteyam did likewise. There was nothing there, of course... that, too, had happened to somebody else.

"I took you back to Mom and Dad. I thought they could... but they couldn't. I never even got to apologize."

Neteyam swallowed. "I'm not mad at you," he said.

"Yeah, but you already said you don't remember that," Lo'ak reminded him.

That led to another question that Neteyam wasn't sure he wanted to ask, but felt like he had to. "Am I in Eywa?"

"Yeah," said Lo'ak. "But... well, Mom and Dad said you were. They said you're at peace. I haven't actually... not since... you know. I couldn't. I know I was supposed to, but I pretended. I think Kiri could tell, but she didn't say anything."

Something in Neteyam's chest crumpled. Lo'ak was denying himself communion with the Great Mother... because of him? "You gotta," he said. "Next time you get a chance. That's not good for you."

Lo'ak shook his head.

"Do it for me, because I can't anymore," Neteyam tried.

That made Lo'ak look up. "You will, though."

"Tell you what." Neteyam held out a hand. "Next time we go together. If anybody can tell me not to be mad at you, it's me." He didn't think he'd be mad at Lo'ak anyway, but it seemed worth saying. "Deal, big little brother?"

"Deal, little big brother – and I'm gonna call you that forever, just so you know," said Lo'ak, forcing a smile. "When we were little, Grandma told me I was going to grow up to be taller than you – she said she could tell by the size of our feet or something."

"I don't remember that, either," Neteyam said.

"She only said it to me, I think. At the time I thought she was lying to make me feel better," Lo'ak explained. "I don't think this was what she had in mind, but I'll take it."