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"Jake Sully." Neytiri's voice is warm and urgent in the darkness.
Jake returns to his Avatar smiling. The freckles across the bridge of Neytiri's nose glimmer in the cobalt darkness. It is still evening, though dawn approaches. He always tries to return to her before morning, if he can. It is quickly becoming the best part of his world, opening his eyes to Neytiri.
"Quickly," she says, releasing the edge of his hammock and straightening on her branch.
Though accustomed to her demanding routine, she usually allows him to adjust first, and eat some breakfast. But today she is impatient, excited. Her eyes sparkle with secrets - the best sort of secrets. Jake is familiar with that light in her eyes. She gets it before she shows him something amazing. He clambers out of the hammock onto the branch. She gestures for him to be silent and to follow her.
She treads along the winding branches of the tree as though she is one with the tree, the only proof of her touching the limb at all in the flurries of bioluminescent light which flares beneath every step. Jake quickens his pace behind her, tracking her effortless stride, the swing of her braid as it falls over her shoulder when she turns to look at him. Through the darkness, she flashes him a grin. He returns it without quite intending to - her enthusiasm is infectious.
"You have much improved, Jake Sully," she remarks, before leaping over the edge of the tree and freefalling to the ground below. He races to the edge. Although he is more practiced now, in the art of falling safely, he has not mastered it to the form she has. She makes falling graceful and impossibly beautiful, as though she is dancing with gravity itself. The final leaf she's folded over dips gently to the forest floor and she steps onto the moss with another flare of light.
"Come," she says, "we need to reach it before sunrise."
Jake retreats a few steps, then flings himself over as well, falling forward in a series of aerial flips. His hands catch the first leaf and drag it down until he can glide across the next one. Down, and down further, he goes, until he lands heavily in the flora beside her.
Neytiri spares him another smile. With a nod of her head, she sets off again, and he sprints after her. As she moves through the forest, she calls out softly for her Ikran. Jake does the same, wondering where it is she's taking him that they need to fly to reach before dawn.
The Ikran drop through the trees, landing lightly before them. Neytiri sweeps a hand along the flank of her Ikran. It chatters affectionately to her, jutting its head back for her to scratch beneath its jaw.
"Where are we going?" Jake asks. He mounts his Ikran, also, and leans closely against its neck, embracing the sensation of sharing a heartbeat and breath. They rise above the treeline. This will be one of the things he misses most, when the division pulls out and he returns to earth. Flying. Weightlessness. Living an existence alongside Neytiri.
She peers sideways at him, gently guiding her Ikran closer to him. His Ikran snaps its jaws, flapping its wings harder to get ahead of Neytiri.
Dawn warms the edge of the sky, blending the cobalt into a deep periwinkle. Back on earth, Jake never paid attention to colors. He had not paid attention to anything, really. After he lost the use of his legs, the world had taken on a grey quality. Pointless, purposeless, lifeless. Losing his twin brother had been devastating; being denied the procedure to repair his partial paralysis only augmented that. He thought he would never find the desire to live again, until he had been approached for the Avatar Project. Until he had entered the Na'vi community.
The burst of colors, the alien hues of the planet seemed to seep into his brain and remind him that perhaps the universe was a beautiful place after all. The first time he'd been in the forest collecting samples and studying with Grace and Norm, he'd missed his brother badly. He would have loved Pandora.
"Jake Sully," Neytiri says sharply.
He blinks back into himself, returning to the flight. He isn't sure how long he was staring at Neytiri, or how long she'd been trying to get his attention.
"Yes?"
"We are here. Land and dismount - there." She points below them, to where the forest dwindles to soft, white sand, stretching out to cradle the aqua waves of the ocean. Her Ikran dives for the shore. Just before it reaches the ground, she leaps from its back and drops to the sand. Jake laughs; his Ikran lands beside her and Jake slides down its body. It nips at the beaded armband on his upper bicep. Jake strokes a hand down its face.
"Hurry. It's almost sunrise." Neytiri sprints for the water. Jake launches after her, kicking up plumes of powdery sand behind him. When he nears her, he bumps his shoulder against hers, playfully. Neytiri nips at him in response.
"What's the rush? Why are we trying to beat the sunrise?" he asks.
"Because, we are going to hunt something that can only be found in the space between darkness and dawn. Before the sun bathes the sky." They splash into the water. There's no shock upon entering the water. It is almost too warm. Jake's toes squish down into the sand. He laughs, startled and delighted at the sensation. Turning, he looks to see if Neytiri is enjoying it, too.
She springs out of the water to tackle him. "Under, under," she urges, laughing.
He resists her, until she plants her hands on his shoulders and attempts to push his head beneath the surface. With a splutter, he grabs her by the waist. His intention is to launch her airborne and toss her in the water away from him so he can ease in as slowly as he pleases, regardless of her haste. But the moment his hands are on her skin, and he feels her very alive shape under his fingertips, he stills. She is a warrior, a hunter. Her body is sinewy and supple with muscle, yet slender and feminine. Although the clothing of the Na'vi is minimal, to keep is as nonrestrictive as possible, Jake does not often think about it anymore.
Now, however, with her legs twined around his waist, and one of her hands grasping a fistful of his hair, and the other grabbing onto his shoulder, he is hyperaware of the lack separating their bodies.
"Jake," she says, softening her position in his arms. "Jake, what's wrong?"
Slowly, he slides a hand from her hip down along the span of her outer thigh.
Her eyes widen and for a moment, he thinks he sees something inside them, a flare of recognition. Jake doesn't dare to pursue the line of though, does not allow himself to focus on the hungry thoughts raging through his mind. He cannot have her. He is not stupid enough to think that he will ever be worthy of her. To think that she would ever be satisfied with his Avatar. Or his human self, as the operator of the Avatar. If she were to see him, to really see him, she would be disgusted. She would reject him.
Neytiri pushes him away. "Stop delaying," she says, and dives under.
If Jake didn't know better, he would say she was trying to distract both of them. Sucking in a breath, he ducks under the surface.
The brine of the water stings his eyes at first. He releases his oxygen in a slow line of bubbles, allowing his body to adjust, the way Neytiri taught him.
Apparently, her body has already adjusted and she swims purposefully to the ocean floor, past the trailing tendrils of kelp and vibrant clusters of coral. The water here is lighter than earth's water, almost like moonwalking.
Schools of fish shoot past, nearly close enough to touch. Jake reaches out a hand, and their fins emit a red warning glow for him not to approach. He gazes past them at Neytiri, who shakes her head and points to the ocean floor. Reluctantly, Jake swims down to join her. The sand puffs up under his feet. She places her hand against his arm and gestures for him to relax his body and close his eyes, but to keep his hands extended.
He has never trusted anyone the way he trusts her, he realizes, as he does exactly what she wants him to do. She keeps her hand on his arm, and the touch is difficult to ignore. A tingling sensation ignites beneath each of her fingertips, hot and electric against his skin until she's branded in his bloodstream. It is going to be impossible to leave her. But he was only given three months, and already two have passed away. The days are draining away too quickly, falling from Avatar to human and back again within a twenty-four hour span. Returning to his human body has also become dreaded. At first, he thought it was only the loss of mobility he mourned, but with each passing day, he realizes it is much more than that.
The Na'vi have touched his very soul. He will never return to the man he once was, for he has lived an entirely different life, become a person so much better than he had ever imagined he could be. He'd found a family who saw him, who cared for him as, if not one of their own, then an honorary member.
The tension drains from his body until he is hypersensitive to every drift of current, every flash of movement and pocket of energy around him. He breathes in the ocean and relishes the salt on his tongue.
She hadn't explained what they were here for, only that it needed to be done during this very specific time.
He shivers a little when Neytiri moves behind him, pressing herself against his back and extending each of her arms rest on top of his. She guides his hands, turning them over. It reminds him of when they hunted over the river, and she taught him the absolute stillness until prey surrendered to you. He suspects that they are doing something similar. Perhaps he is supposed to catch a fish relying on his other senses, not sight?
Flickers of energy bloom from the ocean floor, bubbling against his hands. He digs his toes deeper into the sand, and feels the movement of a creature as it unearthed. He focuses on the ripples it sends through the water while it floats helplessly to the surface. Neytiri guides Jake's hands to close around it and pull it to his chest.
She swims around him, lightly tapping his eyelids with a finger. He opens them. She beams, and there it is. Pure sunshine and light. Pride. She is proud of him. His mouth drops open a little. She is so incredibly beautiful.
Strokes quick and powerful guide her back to the surface and as though they are tethered, Jake bobs up behind her, scarcely casting a thought to the object in his hands. They swim to shore. Once in the sand, they flop onto their backs and gaze at a sky now vivid with morning.
Jake examines the object they'd called up from the sand.
"A shell?" he asks.
Neytiri grabs it from him. "It is not just a shell, Jake Sully. Do you know why it can only be found in the moments between night and dawn?"
A smile curls over his mouth. He props his head in a hand to watch her.
"It is because they are born at night - little flecks of fallen stardust. As they sink, the minerals surround them and expand them. They sink down into the sand, and by dawn, are so far submerged in the earth they are nearly impossible to retrieve." Her tail lashes against the side of his leg. "To retrieve them requires patience and stillness. The more movement, the further they burrow." She tips it back into his hands.
He turns it over, trying to see it as she does. It is beautiful. It glimmers opalescent in his palms.
"What purpose do they serve?"
She whacks him in the back of the head. "What purpose do they serve? Is it not enough that they forged an existence for themselves?" At his look, however, she smiled in spite of herself. "We harvest them because they have unique medicinal properties. They will heal, Jake Sully." She snatches the shell back from him. "This is the last time I take you to retrieve one."
She tries to roll away from him but he catches hold of her waist and pulls her back, dragging her through the sand. It clings to her skin, the white grains stark against the blue.
"Thank you," he says. "I'm glad you brought me with you."
She narrows her eyes. "You seemed quite reluctant to leave the hammock. And go under the water. All that resistance meant we were only able to obtain one."
"I'm sorry." He wasn't, though. Not really. He laughed and she smacked him again. "Next time, we'll get more."
"Hmm," she says. One of her hands amiably reaches up to tilt his chin down, forcing him to meet her eyes. "All right. I supposed you deserve a second chance. But you must trust me, next time. No hesitation."
He ducks his forehead down to hers and stares directly into her eyes. The close contact ignites him, but he doesn't pull away. "I do trust you, Neytiri. I trust you, with my life."
She stares at him, startled, her fingers curved sharply into his jaw. For one mad second, he hopes and wishes and wants her to drag his mouth down to hers. Instead, she flattens her palm over his face and shoves him back from her.
"As you should," she says, rising from the sand. He straightens after her.
"Now, we ride. Come, Jake Sully. We can't neglect your training." She whistles for the Ikran.
And then they are flying and hunting and scouting and Jake doesn't want the day to end.