The family gathered around the limp body of the adolescent Na'vi girl. Pungent smoke rose from the smouldering embers of a fire that had long since gone out; no one had diverted their attention long enough to reignite it. Jake Sully's face was thick with worry lines as he looked upon his girl, her pained expression still frozen on the moment she first collapsed to the floor. There was nothing he could do to pull her out, no word that could draw her back to him; he could only wait. He had been heartsick throughout the night that, come morning, he was physically nauseous.

Neytiri touched his hand. He turned his head, having forgotten there were other people in this world who needed him. The empathy in her refulgent eyes reminded him that she, too, had waited for a certain loved one to pull through this passage. Jake took the limp fingers of his daughter into his creased palm and rested his forehead against his wife's. His eyes were dry, but his heart was weeping.

Then her chest rose, and her mouth gaped for a cry.

She had woken from a dream that overpowered her and was desperate to run away. The girl convulsed about the floor as Jake and Neytiri rushed to hold her down, for she risked hurting herself in her mad writhing.

"Neteyam, help her!" Jake cried to his son.

Before Neteyam could make a move, another swooped in. The human was no older than seventeen, clad in a loincloth and sporting a mane of dreadlocks. The boy propped up the giantesses' head onto his knees, holding it steady as she thrashed about. He pressed his visor to her forehead and breathed gentle whispers.

"Kiri… Kiri…"

Like strange magic, his incantation put her seizure to flight. Kiri's body relaxed, and her breathing steadied. Her eyes opened to the sight of him upside down in her vision, and all hints of the terrible night left her face. He smiled at her, and the girl took her two hands, crossed thumb over thumb, and fanned her eight wiggling fingers while smiling back. The boy leaned far over Kiri, and they locked in an upside-down hug that could not be undone.

Jake issued a long sigh of relief. His daughter survived her Dream Hunt, and he could relax knowing she'd never have to go through something like that again. "How did you do that, Spider?" the Australian exhaled.

The boy was well entangled in the gangly limbs of Kiri when he looked up at Jake. "I don't know, old-timer."

"'Old-timer'?" he chuckled. "This body isn't that much older than yours."

"Avatar ages don't count," Spider joked as he continued rolling about the floor with his Na'vi. The family smiled at the sight of these two cubs of separate litters, playing like there wasn't a world of difference between them.

"Kiri," Neytiri called gently. The girl stopped her play to give her mother her full attention. "The clan is waiting."

She left Spider's side with reluctance as Neteyam offered his hand to lead her out of the great tent. Outside, the whole of the Omatikaya clan awaited her triumph. She stood motionless before them, but a discreet tap on the back from her supportive brother encouraged her to step forward. Then Jake emerged from the tent, now adorned in the feather mantle of olo'eyktan (chief), and stood proudly before Kiri. With his hands hovering over her shoulders, he addressed her in the Na'vi tongue.

|"My daughter, you are a part of the people. Forever."|

One by one, the entire clan linked hand to shoulder around Kiri, forming an interconnected ring that spanned to the edge of their great cave. She was nervous to be the focus of so much attention and looked to Spider with pleading eyes. He stood off to the side, unable to enter the clan's ceremony and gave her a half-smile with a shrug, indicating he was just as helpless as she.

Mo'at sat cross-legged before her fidgeting granddaughter, who was running her fingers through her unkempt hair. Even though she was now considered an adult member of the tribe, Kiri was far from such maturity. She moved her head this way and that, trying to figure out how to describe her dream.

With her wooden scoop, Mo'at sprinkled incense into the fire between them. It burned fresh, pleasing scents that heightened the mind, helping Kiri to draw out the dream locked in her memory for her tsahìk to interpret.

Spider knelt by the two women, acting as Kiri's translator. Sign language was common among the Omatikaya, but rarely was it used as a sole form of communication. Kiri and Spider spoke it so often that it evolved into something more complex than the original language. They had their own dictionary of words that only they understood, and while it made for fun jokes at the expense of others, it crippled Kiri from articulating herself without Spider's aid. He was her tongue, and seldom did he let her suffer a separation from him because of it.

|"Let your hands speak, Kiri. I see you,"| Mo'at cooed.

Kiri took a deep breath and flashed a series of complicated signs that Spider was somehow staying on top of.

|"It began like this. I was in the hall of my mother. She sat in her chair, busy with her work of studying life…"| Spider translated.

Mo'at gave him the stink eye. A Dream Hunt interpretation is a private matter that should only remain between dreamer and tsahìk. She tolerated Spider at first for Kiri's sake, but the elder soon found her patience wearing thin. Kiri, no matter how much she loved her human, still deserved her privacy.

|"Skychild, this is for Kiri to tell me. The dream is not for your ears."|

Kiri reacted by throwing up her hands in protest.

|"I'm trying to help, Mo'at. Kiri needs me,"| Spider insisted.

|"She must learn one day to do without. Go, I must talk with my granddaughter alone."|

|"But—"|

|"Out,"| Mo'at hissed and shooed him out of the tent with her incense scoop like an annoyed grandmother catching her grandkids near the cookie jar.

Kiri clutched herself tightly after seeing him leave and leaned forward on her knees.

Spider tumbled out of the tent on all fours and leapt from rock to rock. He was well accustomed to flying away from annoyed Na'vi—being a dwarf among giants, that was a healthy skill to have.

|"Mo'at kicked you out, didn't she, clan brother?"| Neteyam smiled, stepping out from behind a tent. Some of his braided hair was wrapped around a small bun, while the rest dangled freely and bounced as he shook his head. |"Should not have insisted on your presence."|

Spider, while squatting like a Gibbon atop his stone perch, shimmied his head in response. |"What's wrong with that? You know people struggle to understand Kiri."|

|"That's because you two turned finger-speech into your own private language. I, myself, can't understand half your gestures,"| Neteyam teased, running his fingers across the head of his father's ward.

Neteyam was a handsome Na'vi of fifteen, the first and only son of his parents. His face was sculpted like his father's but bore the features of his mother. What surprised Jake the most was how much Neteyam took after his great-grandfather, not from his Na'vi heritage but his great-grandfather from Earth. Jake remembered him as a goofy old codger who always slipped money on his guests without their knowing. Neteyam had the good breeding of both Omatikaya nobility and outback hospitality. Paired with a winning smile, he had all the makings of a great leader.

Spider flicked up three fingers—the sign for "cut it out." He had a brotherly love for Neteyam, as both were raised under Jake's tutelage. While Sully trained his son to be the next leader of the Omatikaya, he taught Spider with the intention of one day being a leader for the humans—of those who were allowed to stay. However, Jake soon discovered that it was Spider who took more to the Na'vi way of life, and it was Neteyam who enjoyed learning from humans. He'd catch his son writing his ideas on paper while Spider was off catching prolemuris' in trees.

|"I fear Kiri is getting too old for you,"| Neteyam said. |"Soon, she'll be too big to play with."|

|"She's already too big for me,"| Spider laughed, pointing to a bruise he earned from his hug earlier.

|"To receive that from a soul as gentle as Kiri only proves my point."|

Spider raised a brow. |"What point?"|

|"That you two are no longer children. At least, she no longer is. I forget Skychildren do not go on Dream Hunts."|

|"We do, too,"| Spider argued before slipping into English. "But Pops won't let me take the drugs."

"What is 'pops'?"

"It's slang for 'father,'" Spider replied, surprised he hadn't asked what "drugs" was instead.

"Again, with this slang." Neteyam grimaced, always struggling with that informal speech. "If we're going to be speaking in English, at least be more eloquent."

"Eloquent?" Spider snorted. "Now I know you didn't get that word from the old man."

"I learned it from your sages who live here. You should be more diligent in learning the lexicon of your race."

"Piss off!" Spider then grappled Neteyam, and the two wrestled one another in play. He may have been small, but he could still hold his own with the other Na'vi kids. Being well versed in their physical advantages and disadvantages, he discovered their thin waists made them top-heavy—a clasping of the legs around their stomachs and a grabbing of the tail could bring one down every time, as Neteyam soon suffered.

"The room turned into a—"

Mo'at waited patiently for Kiri to think up the correct gesture. The girl huffed, trying to come up with something before floating her hand over her palm.

|"Flatlands?"| Mo'at suggested.

Kiri's face pinched, and she shook her head. She mimicked a person sweating under a hot sun.

|"Desert?"|

Kiris' eyes lit as she directed a yes to her tsahìk.

|"The room became a desert. Interesting. Have you ever seen a desert, Kiri?"|

She shook her head and signed, "I know them through my father's stories. When he talks, it is real in my mind."

|"Yes, I have only heard them through stories too. How do you know this was a desert you were in?"|

"There was no green."

|"What happened when you were in this desert?"|

Kiri hesitated and cast her gaze downward.

|"What is wrong?"| she inquired, massaging Kiri's ankle.

The girl strummed her anklet of twine and looked away wistfully. Her eyes returned to her grandmother when she was ready to sign again. "I was on the surface, and I stood. Something bad happened. I…changed."

|"Into what?"|

Kiri gulped. "A tree."

|"A tree?"| Mo'at mused. |"That does not sound terrible."|

"It was!" Kiri screamed by throwing her fists onto the ground. "It was terrible. My arms stiffened. I could not move. I grew, and I grew. My mouth was stone—wood. No moving. I grew until I grew no more. The horizon was everywhere far below, and my body was a kelutral."

Mo'at leaned back, ruminating over the dream. |"You turned into a Hometree?"|

Kiri nodded, turning sullen once again. "Many ikran rested on my arms. I couldn't move."

|"Did The People dwell on you?"|

Kiri paused to think. "I don't know… I felt like no one cared that I became a tree."

Mo'at pondered long on the strange vision. The kelutral trees were the largest and most ancient trees across the moon. It was inside one of them that the Omatikaya made their previous home—a once happy memory now steeped in mourning. |"I do not know what Eywa is saying to you, Kiri. To become a kelutral can have more than one meaning. None of them are bad."|

Kiri was still pouting that her Dream Hunt had the nerve to turn her into a tree.

|"The kelutral are ancient spirits. They came before all other trees. The kelutral are also very strong. One can house a multitude and not break."|

The girl perked up from this flattering description.

|"A tree takes root and grows into many branches. This could also mean growing into a family."|

With that, Kiri lost all patience for Mo'at's words and locked up. Shaking her head in tight motions, with freckles glowing from embarrassment, she gestured to Mo'at that she wanted to hear no more.

|"What is wrong, child?"| her tsahìk gasped. |"It could mean growing into a great line—"|

Kiri cut her off by smacking her palm onto the ground. She shook her head and replied, "I don't want to have a family. I'm a freak."

"Kiri." Mo'at tried to console her, but the petulant girl flew from the tent.

Outside, Spider and Neteyam watched Kiri run from the scene. The cavern filled with the pitter-patter of bare feet dashing over wet rock as the boys exchanged worried looks.

|"What could have upset her?"| Neteyam wondered.

Spider said nothing as his eyes followed Kiri heading towards the human camp.

Kiri pushed open the vaulted door and let it shut behind her. She was now inside the avatar clinic, where drivers took their bodies when injured. For this reason, the field cabin was not pressurized, allowing the carbon dioxide-rich air to circulate within, making it the only unit that Kiri could linger in for longer than two minutes. Mindful of her flicking tail, she carefully threaded past the delicate lab equipment. The white overheads washed out the colour of her skin and muted her glow; this was a lifeless environment, unlike the world outside, but she endured it for one reason, and it was floating inside an amino tank. It rested behind white partitions that Kiri drew aside with the utmost respect. Closing them behind her, she quietly approached the avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine. The undressed body was devoid of spirit but preserved via an artificial umbilical cord so it would not decay.

Kiri pressed her face against the glass and started to weep. It wasn't long before Spider arrived, with her wet eyes following his shadow as he approached the curtains. He drew the drapes and entered her sanctum with the same reverence.

He took his two fingers and tapped his mouth twice—her sign name. She wasn't deaf, but he still used finger-talk. He found it brightened Kiri's mood when he shared in her limitations.

She looked up at him from under her brow, then brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. Since she was on her knees at the foot of the amino tank, Spider scooted down next to her.

"Didn't go well?"

"No."

"You disrespected Mo'at," he was loath to remind her.

She blew out a long breath. "I know. I'm going to have to apologize to Grandmother later."

Spider's eyes studied her inquisitively. "Why did you run off?"

"I… I was embarrassed by what Grandmother interpreted."

"What did she say?"

With limp fingers, she replied, "Grandmother thought my dream meant I would one day have a family."

Spider suddenly became withdrawn, with his eyes falling to the tiles. Kiri tapped his shoulder, for he had slipped from their eye contact, meaning the conversation had ended. He apologized. "Why did that bother you?"

Kiri huffed. "I know I'm different. I don't feel comfortable with others. I was born strangely." Her head nudged to the body in the tank. "That's why I can't talk."

"You don't know that."

"I was cut out of my mother," Kiri insisted. "A Skyperson birth—wrong. I can't talk. I have five fingers. I am not true Omatikaya. Why would Mo'at speak of family? I don't want to be a mother. Mothers die." Spider reached to rub Kiri's shoulder as her tears started up again. "I can't even speak to her in the tree," she lamented, wistfully mimicking long weeping sprays. After a respite, the girl managed a weak smile and gestured to the boy. "I only want to be with you, Spider. I'm glad the boys leave me alone." After she signed her sentiment, she returned to gaze upon her mother.

"At least you know who your mother was."

Kiri looked at him apologetically. "I forget you know not your parents."

Spider shrugged it off. "I have my adopted family back at Hell's Gate." Kiri then asked when he would go to see them again. "Jake's taking me over soon. He wants to go over our security. He says every day that's quiet is another day for the enemy to plan an attack."

"I'm sorry the others chose to leave."

"Don't worry about it. Anyone who took Ardmore's package of easy living at Bridgehead isn't worth a fart."

She chuckled. Spider was a crass little monkey-boy, but he was her crass little monkey-boy. Sitting cross-legged, Kiri threw her spidery limbs around him and began rocking back and forth. He breathed her scent of freshly broken seed pods and thought to himself how much better his Na'vi was than all the rest. She was gentle and caring but also misunderstood. Only he knew the private language Kiri spoke. Only he was privy to the innermost areas of her heart. She was the one child he spent the most time with; not even the other humans interested him as much as her. It was Kiri's jungle he played in and her campfire he sat around. Though Jake was his tutor, he existed for Kiri.

Having been a long day, the two leaned back and slept in a huddle beside the amino tank, as was their habit. There was no other world outside of them. There was only this Na'vi and her human.