Chapter Text
I sit there watching as Mo’at covers my avatar in white paint, every stroke she puts on the body she whispers a prayer to Eywa, I have made Neteyam to get out so my avatar and human body can be cleaned.
“May I ask why you sky people have such a hard time with nudity?” Mo’at asked once she has finished painting my avatar. I sit quietly for a minute not totally sure of the answer.
“I can give my hypothesis on why most people are uncomfortable with nudity,” I offer after I come up with an answer. I glance at her and she nods for me to continue.
“So I and a lot of other people view nudity as sexual because a lot of people only get naked to get dressed into different clothes, shower which most people do alone, and then sex. We tend to use clothes as expressions of self, social status, to show respect for their gods, keep safe from the sun, or to keep warm,” I explain as best as I can, however humans are weird and it's hard to explain it all. I look back over at her and she is clearly deep in thought.
“DId I explain it badly?” I ask already trying to come up with different ways to explain it better.
“No no you explained it just fine, I just think sky people cultures are odd.”
“You know what that’s completely fair,” I laugh, causing her to smile, she walks over and hands me a pot of paint and a basin of water to use as a mirror.
“It is wonderful to be able to hear you laugh even after everything you have gone through,” She says softly before gesturing to my avatar. “Use the paint to mark your face in the way I have.”
I nod and take a deep breath in before taking off my mask and trying to paint to the best of my ability with the water as my mirror and having to put the mask back on over and over again and causing the paint to smear at least three times. I run my fingers over my face, the white ash and oils coating my skin and giving me a good exfoliation while also being incredibly soothing. I put my mask back on after I’m done and I lift my gauze from where it sat on the water to find Jake has entered the hut and is staring at me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.
“You good?” I question as I slowly stand up however I barely reach his waist in height. He shakes his head and blinks a couple times.
“Yeah sorry I’m okay, I was told to go check on you how’s everything? Are you ready, nervous, excited?” Jake apologizes however he is speaking far too fast to be okay.
I just look at him for a few moments with a look of ‘I don’t believe you’ before saying, “Yeah I am okay everything's going pretty well I least I think,” I glance at Mo’at who nods in agreement.
“They are doing just fine Jake, if you could start rounding up our people to get ready for the ceremony I want everyone ready and in the correct head space before we start,” Mo’at requests as she grabs a kind of sage and begins cleansing me and my avatar. He nods and quickly leaves the tent to begin rounding up people.
“We lost someone very important right before he went through the eye of Eywa, I think he is worried you aren’t going to make it through. However I know you will be okay, you will do great, Eywa is happy to move you through bodies,” Mo’at explains after he leaves.
“Dr. Grace Augustine right?” I ask as I look at her, she just nods, she puts her hand on my mask and waits a second for me to get a deep breath in before lifting it up before blowing smoke into my face and into my mouth before quickly bringing the mask back down.
“Breathe it in.” I do and immediately my throat burns and I start coughing hard, my eyes water slightly as I cough for a few seconds before the mask does what it was made to and filtering out the smoke and allowing me to breathe.
“We didn’t do this for Jake’s ceremony, his bodies were just cleaned but he requested I do everything I can to make sure you will make it through,” She says calmly as she helps me stand.
“Really? Why?” I question as I stand up and glance at my avatar wondering who’s going to carry it to the area. ‘Probably Neteyam,’ I think as my eyes move back to her face.
“Appaently you are the only person who can make Neteyam wheeze with laughter right now, he wants to protect that, and so do I.” With that she just leaves leaving me thoroughly frazzled and I just get to sit with very mixed emotions until Neteyam and her walk back in.
It is clear Neteyam is incredibly nervous, the only person right now who is calm is Mo’at but it is very important that she has a clear mind for this. Neteyam picks up my avatar carefully and glances at me and then Mo’at.
“This way,” she says calmly as she leaves the tent expecting us to follow, which we do. I look around and just marvel in the beauty of the night on Pandora, everything glowing purple, blue, and green, Polyphemus glowing brightly next to the moon I call home now that never allows complete darkness. We walk through the camp and I notice that basically everyone is already at the ritual sight and I start to feel major anxiety start crawling up my legs, up my stomach and up my throat.
“Oo this is real,” I whisper and Neteyam looks down at me while still walking.
“This is very real, but it will be okay, you will be okay I promise,” He whispers back as he wraps his tail around my leg trying to help ground me. It doesn’t do much but it is better than nothing, making it slightly easier to walk and breathe and my heart beat.
We arrive at Tree of Souls and I just stop in my tracks in amazement. It is absolutely breathtaking which is a shame cause I just got my breath back. My eyes don’t know where to look first, next and last, the omaticaya in deep meditation chanting in sync, the ground pulsing with energy, the roots flashing in sync with the energy, however my eyes finally decided to land on the bright purple and pink tree where all the roots connect too. It seems to glow with the beauty of Eywa herself. My mouth just hangs open as I stare and that earns me a chuckle from Neteyam despite his own anxieties.
“Breath taking isn’t it?” He questions as he stops next to me and gives me a minute to take it all in.
“That’s an understatement,” I whisper as I just stand there for probably way too long before I finally remember I am kinda the star of the show and don’t want to hold everyone up. I begin walking along the sides of where everyone is before walking up to the elevated stone area the tree sits on. Thankfully for my own anxiety no one is looking at me; they are very deep in meditation.
“Lay here,” Neteyam whispers to me as he lays my avatar down on the moss at our feet. I take a deep breath, and lay down.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” I whisper as I look up at him, laying down in a human body he looks like a total giant. He smiles softly and brushes my hair out of my face before squeezing my hand.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” He whispers back before heading down to join his people. I take a very deep breath trying to calm my nerves and close my eyes focusing on the chanting and silently hoping nothing goes wrong.
It doesn’t take long for my brain to fall into a meditative state and I can barely feel as roots from the moss begin to grow up my body, into my ears, around my mask, over my legs, my arms , and my torso.
Soon I feel my consciousness begin to move out of my body and for a moment I can’t hear anything, but I can see EVERYTHING shapes, colors, sounds, every Na’vi or avatar body on this planet and then… slowly my hearing starts to come back… Chanting fills my ears and it is much louder than it was before, I can feel the energy from everyone else moving through me, I slowly very slowly open my eyes and I am definitely not in the same position I was in moments before. I carefully lift my arm up and look at it, a deep shade of blue stare back at me.
The chanting quickly fades as I slowly sit up, I can’t help the massive smile that appears on my face as I glance at my human body which is definitely not in a pod. I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up to find the face of my best friend and partner smiling back at me.
“Welcome to our world,” he whispers in my ear as I feel him kiss my cheek which I’m actually kinda surprised about because of his lack of liking pda. He takes his hand off my shoulder and walks over to my human body and gently removes the mask. I watch the body jerk slightly a few times before calmly down and slowly stop breathing. I can’t help but feel a bit sad but for the most part I am over the moon (pun intended) about the fact that this is my body now. I watch as Neteyam gently opens my eyelid and pull out the stone from it. However, like everything in the Sully family the quiet pretty quickly goes away when I feel two bodies slam into mine with excitement as Kiri and Tuk start spilling out congratulations.
“Alright, alright they are probably exhausted give them some breathing room,” Jake says as he pulls away his daughters and pats my shoulder before leading me and the Sully’s to the guest hut. Immediately Kiri, Tuk, and Lo’ak begin asking all of the questions on what I saw if I heard Eywa speak to me, what it felt like. I give the best answers that I can until they eventually get tired.
I lay down with Neteyam as everyone else claims their own mats. I notice that Neteyam seems to be purposefully trying to stay awake and when everyone else falls asleep he quietly stands up and pulls me up.
“What are you doing?” I question as he pulls me out of the hut and starts heading for the edge of the village. He just puts a finger to his lips and smirks at me which is likes to do when he’s planning something. I roll my eyes at him however a smile stays on my face.
As we walk my ears twitch at all the sounds of the wild life and I keep getting distracted by all the pretty bioluminescence, in which he gently pulls me by my hand to keep me moving. Eventually we reach a vine leading to the floating mountains and I make him stop.
“Neteyam, I’m not good at climbing, I never really got the chance back at home I can’t climb up that,” I remind him never having had to actually really climb in my life or really just the opportunity with the hell that is Earth.
“Right I forgot about that,” Neteyam admits with a smile before continuing, “Welp ikran it is, keep your eyes out over the forest.” He puts his first two fingers into his mouth and lets out a whistle and soon his ikran lands next to us. He climbs on and holds out a hand for me to help me climb on behind him. I take his hand and go to lift my body on behind him but with the excitement of everything and such a long day I completely buff it and land flat on my back earning me a laugh.
“Don’t you laugh at me jerk, it’s been a while!” I say, also laughing. He pops off and instead of helping me up like a normal person he lifts me up and places me on the back of the ikran before climbing up after me.
“I would have been fine!” I protest as I wrap my arms around his waist before he lifts into the air.
“Yeah yeah whatever you say, sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart? What’s with the petname?” I question with a small laugh, I follow his direction and keep my eyes on the forest and just wow, the higher we climb the more everything glows, it’s like the forest is the glowing moss under our feet but so so so much bigger.
“Don’t sky people tend to call their partners by petnames? You get to be sweetheart now, just enjoy the view.”
After a while we land on a floating rock with a beautiful waterfall flowing off the sides of it and it’s just a beautiful quiet little paradise. As I am looking around exploring all the little plants I don’t notice Neteyam sit down and start messing with something until he says my name. I turn and find him smiling at me as he gestures for me to come over. I walk over and finally glance at what he is messing with a small string with a.. Stone? On it.
“What’s that?” I question as he holds it out to me and I take it looking at it, which is when it clicks.
“You know about how we all have a song cord, right? Well I thought that now you are a proper Na’vi you should have one too, I’ll show you how to add new stones when you feel you need them and how to sing it properly,” he says and I watch him get more nervous, which is when I remember that Na’vi also give gifts as courting rituals.
“It is beautiful, thank you Neteyam,” I say with a smile. I shimmy so my hip is against his and gently kiss him before laying my head on his shoulder before he can see me blushing. I feel his arm wrap around me before he lays down pulling me down with him so I am laying with my head on his chest. I smile and close my eyes as I lay an arm over his stomach and slowly fall asleep.