Kiri sat next to Sawnee inside a tent. A CPAP machine was placed next to the critically injured patient, where it delivered, via a mask, a steady air supply. The mate, Kilvan, knelt close with his clasped hands hovering over the womb as he murmured petitions to Eywa that both would live.
The Pandoran Nightingale routinely refreshed the cold compress, kept the incense bowl lit and replaced old bandages. She also mouthed the words to a chant Mo'at had taught her, trusting that she didn't need a voice for the supplications to be heard.
Part of Kiri's training meant seeing to the sick and injured, just as her grandmother and father would routinely do. She was already equipped to handle diseases, thanks to her advanced knowledge of botany, but she was invaluable when it came to emergency trauma. After a bullet almost killed her father several years ago, Kiri taught herself how to treat gunshot wounds. They were some of the most difficult for the Na'vi to heal, and because of this, Kiri was often called upon like a paramedic.
When Sawnee was brought to her at death's door a few days ago, Kiri fought tirelessly to bring her back. Today, the young healer was checking in on her recovery, and her timing couldn't have been better, for Sawnee's mate was about to seek help after his wife's breathing became laboured. Due to Kiri's attentiveness, Sawnee was once again brought out of the danger zone and into calm waters, renewing her family with hope when her bandaged chest rose and fell like the steady tide.
Having been of service, Kiri bid farewell. Kilvan bowed his head in thanks, but she signed there was no need to thank her as she was only carrying out her duty. Upon leaving the home, the attendant of Eywa heard a great commotion coming from the entrance and ran ahead to see what was happening. Past the disturbed throng, Kiri spotted her father carrying a bleeding man and identified the pierced ears of Äi'ut.
"Where's Kiri?" Jake cried.
The girl in question ran up to her father, who, with a nudge of his head, directed her to follow him into the avatar clinic, where he then laid the dying Na'vi onto a gurney. Jake placed Äi'ut in the recovery position by rolling him onto his side and bending one leg towards the stomach to support the body. Kiri applied gauze to the wound and assessed he was suffering from pneumothorax. On her call, a mask was strapped to his face to administer oxygen as she ran for where the chest seals were kept. She prepared four of them to apply to the entry and exit wounds, all the while keeping an eye on his vitals.
During the procedure, Max came in hoping to tell Jake what happened, but when he saw the urgency, he forgot all about the event and scrambled to help.
Cramped, under-equipped and over-crowded—Äi'ut was eventually, and miraculously, brought into stable condition owing to the non-stop efforts of a dedicated handful. Both blue and white shoulders relaxed, or hands were clasped, as relief and congratulations were shared, but one quarantined himself from the mood by remaining near the cot of the still unconscious man. His dour gaze lingered on the face now covered by a breathing apparatus, and the olo'eyktan thought about how, only a few years prior, he had led the boy up the hallelujah mountains for his Iknimaya. His palm drifted onto his daughter's shoulder. "Irayo, Kiri."
The lines on his face said it all, and the mute girl replied with a bow of her head.
Neytiri entered in distress upon hearing the tragedy that befell her rescue party. "How is he?" she urged.
Jake didn't look up as Max answered, "We've done all we can for now."
"What has happened?"
"You tell me," Jake growled, and it wasn't just Neytiri who was taken aback.
"Jake?"
"You set off the bombs when I told you not to! Spider could be dead!"
Kiri immediately bleated, only to be ignored by her parents, who were too focused on other things.
"Jake." Neytiri swallowed, trying to maintain composure despite her spinning head. "I thought Spider had been rescued by my hunters. Vrrtepeyktan was at the window—shooting. It could only have been my hunters! When that demon started running out of the cabin, I had to act!"
"I arrived to hell! The rescue party was shot dead. Twe'tute'tam. Tsimpa. Everyone except Äi'ut. And the link shack blown to pieces!"
"Was there no sign of Spider?"
"Nothing."
"Then this must mean he was taken by Vrrtepeyktan!" Neytiri insisted, her daughter thrumming silent pleas against her arm.
"Then we've lost Spider…" Jake's anger hit a boiling point, and he struck a wall.
With an unintelligible shout, Kiri smacked her fist, too, finally grabbing everyone's attention.
"There is no going into that city, Kiri," Jake quavered. "There is nothing I can do."
Again and again, she smacked the table, refusing to give up.
"There's nothing I can do, Kiri! Spider's gone!"
Black hair dangled before burning eyes as the inconsolable mute girl wailed in grief until she suddenly shoved her father back.
Jake fumbled and gaped at his aggrieved daughter. "Kiri…I'm sorry."
Words could not diminish her rising emotions; it instead made her heel pivot, and she ran out of the clinic, away from the names on her back, to the farthest spot her soul could find.
When the room went quiet, Neytiri was the first to speak. "You should have controlled your anger."
Jake's eyes sped from the door. "Me? What about you? You hit that trigger knowing Spider was nearby."
"I told you before. I thought he was safe!"
"How could you know! Do you even care about him?" his voice cracked.
Neytiri answered the insult with a hiss. "Do not ask me that! Do not! Not after I took you into my people's village, shared my home with your kind, and cared for your Skypeople like Na'vi! I have denied you nothing of mine to make room for yours! Do not ask me that!"
Tired from spending so many emotions, Jake could only weakly raise his hands in supplication in an attempt to calm Neytiri down. She was still raging and shedding tears of anger when he pressed her shoulder. "Alright," he spoke. "Alright…"
"You know I would not do anything to hurt him!" she wailed. "I am not a monster!" Her eyes fell away in shame, and she wept. "If I did hurt him… Jake, I could not forgive myself."
He took up her face and felt how fiercely she trembled. "Listen. Listen. We didn't find any sign of him, and Quaritch… Maybe we got him, and Spider's okay. We just have to wait."
"I am sorry, Jake. Believe me. I would not choose to hurt Spider."
"I believe you… I believe you…"
The man was at the end of himself and could do nothing other than to press his mate into him.
Kiri sprinted across High Camp, through the caves and up the narrow stairs to reach the mountain's top, where she finally doubled over and screamed at the world. It was a distorted, ugly cry that bounced across an indifferent landscape. She belted for as long and as loud as she could until her throat could handle no more. All she could continue doing was hold her body tightly together. Crouching over her knees, she drew a circle in the ground and gave it eight legs, completing the spell by letting her tears drop in the centre, but it would not conjure him back; he was beyond her magic—a magic that only worked when he was there. Her mind travelled back to the day she first met her counterpart.
Growing up, Kiri felt out of place among the other children, and both her parents noted this with concern. They wanted Kiri to socialize more, but seeing how she preferred the company of other species, her father had an idea. Jake proposed an arrangement with the Para family, and they permitted to let their son Josh visit the Omatikaya village, where he was then introduced to Kiri.
She was drawn to him instantly.
In her silent way, the trusting girl asked the curious newcomer if he would be her friend and the boy of six replied by yanking her tail. After several minutes of fighting and screaming, they were the best of friends.
During storytime, Kiri would invite her new friend into her family's huddle. They would hog her mother's arms, leaving Neteyam to sit in his father's lap and listen to Neytiri read to them from the same children's stories Grace Augustine once read to her students. Over time, Spider would bring his own books, and when Neytiri opened up his DK guide on spiders, his little hands were all over the pictures as he explained to Kiri his nickname. In return, her wiggling hands mimicked the tarantulas crawling across the page, and his sign name was born.
He learned her sign language even before Na'vi and discovered from Kiri that the reason why she didn't socialize was that the other children found her strange. Spider couldn't understand it. To the human, her facial features were perfectly normal; and, as he once told her, there was nothing wrong with looking like your mother. Spider wouldn't allow anyone to disrespect her or Grace Augustine; hence, any boy who teased Kiri about her weird-looking nose was quickly wrestled to the ground by her champion.
His chivalrous actions earned the princess' trust, and so she rewarded her knight by opening up her wild kingdom, where he was then introduced to the members of her court. There was Ria, the viperwolf, and her two cubs, Patun and Yanu, and Zizi, the old hammerhead, who would escort them across the river to pay homage to Oa'ki, the leader of the prolemuris.' Spider prided himself in being Kiri's most loyal subject. He would climb the highest tree to fetch her the sweetest celia fruit or swim to the bottom of the lake to bring up the prettiest shell for her songcord.
Kiri drew up the cord and realized there was scarcely a token that didn't come from him. As the string of mementos rolled past her thumb, her hands began to sing as she relived every precious moment, but when her fingers drifted over the ridges of a certain kelutral seed, she could not bring herself to finish.
On a cliff, Neteyam squatted on a lone tree whose branches extended beyond the ledge, affording him a prime view of the valley below. Accompanying him was his friend, Lew, albeit he was less attentive in his surveying due to hunger. He looped his braid over a branch above and used it to lean forward. "Neteyam," he whined. |"We near eclipse. We should head home soon."|
|"A few more leaps of a yerik, Lew."|
|"More like the plodding of a fwampop."|
Lew waited as his companion whistled through a reed for the twelfth time, but to him, it felt like the hundredth.
|"Neteyam, you risk attracting the wrong attention. Those demons could hear you."|
|"They are not familiar with reed whistles. Besides, I have more reason to be afraid than you. I was captured by them."|
|"That was your own fault. Going over to wave—what were you hoping to do? Invite them for tea?"|
Neteyam grabbed Lew's branch and playfully bounced it.
|"Hey, hey, hey! Cut that out!"|
The prince relented and laughed at his jumpy friend. His attention returned, once more, to the valley, but there was still no sign of his faithful ikran. The rider sighed, tossed away the reed and climbed down.
|"I am sorry about White Flower."|
He didn't look at him as he said, over his shoulder, |"She belongs to Eywa."|
The two men returned to Lew's ikran, Wind and Rain, and Neteyam silently sat behind his friend as the powerful mount lifted into the sky. Soaring back to High Camp, the star, Rigil Kentauru, hid behind the father of the heavens, Polyphemus, and the world went as dark as Neteyam's thoughts. He gazed back upon the black disc dominating the sky and the faint wings of light making up its halo. He remembered the day White Flower chose him.
The hunters who joined him on his Iknimaya warned him to scare away the leucistic ikran and favour a less conspicuous mount, but the prince did not see it that way; in his eyes, a white ikran must be exceptionally intelligent to survive without camouflage. When the alabaster head bucked in challenge, he answered her and, in turn, won the friendship of the rare beast. He found her clever, swift, a little skittish but, above all, profoundly affectionate.
Txurseng came within view, but rather than enter the mountain, Neteyam had Lew perch at the crown, for he noticed Kiri crouched under a Winding Bark. As Lew headed back inside, the brother jumped off to meet his sister. |"Kiri? Why are you up here alone?"| When the puffy eyes lifted, Neteyam realized something terrible happened. With great concern, he knelt next to her. |"Kiri, where is Spider?"|
"He was taken by the Chief of Demons."
"When did this happen?" She signed "this morning" and relayed all that had occurred as best she understood it. Neteyam was solemn throughout, for there was little he could say to alleviate his sister's suffering. |"I am sorry, Kiri."|
"Brother. You are wise. Can you think of how we can get Spider back?"
He hesitated, knowing one would have more luck releasing prey from a palulukan's jaws than a captive from Bridgehead. |"I'm afraid we can only wait."|
"Can we not do anything?"
|"Only pray."|
The apprentice looked away; she was sick of praying—of feeling helpless at every turn like a wingless bird. She signed this sentiment, "I feel useless. I'm afraid for Spider, and I'm tired of feeling afraid."
As the brother reached out to rub her arm, he noticed her shining freckles. |"Hey, Kiri. Look at this."| He lifted her arm to let her see the dots. |"Remember our English poem about tanhì?"|
"In the depths of darkness, when the ruling sun hides,
do the lambent stars, the braver ones, shine."
The girl saw into his peaceful eyes. |"You are not useless, sister. It takes great strength to hold out on hope in the face of uncertainty. Trust in Eywa that Spider will be safe, even in that city. Remember, he is with his own kind. There is that solace."|
She did not have the heart to sign more but showed through a weak smile her thanks. Neteyam helped bring the Omatikaya princess to her feet and supported her with a hug. She melted into the creases of his kind arms when, from under her lashes, she espied a white blur on the horizon. Kiri began shaking her brother in astonishment for him to turn around.
|"White Flower!"|
After running up, Neteyam threw his arms around the pale neck, and the ikran let her rider shed tears of joy upon her leathery skin.
The eclipse had ended, but Kiri already had her glimmer of hope.