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Spider found inserting himself back into the Na'vi lifestyle a little more challenging than he anticipated.
The Sully family had made their home with the Reef People, forsaking returning to their old lives in the forest. It was too dangerous; the RDA had cracked open traversing the jungle and would destroy anyone and anything in their way. Especially if they happened to be related to Jake.
An archipelago far to the south, however, was easily defended. Maybe easily was a stretch of the truth, but building boats and marine weaponry took resources that humanity couldn't quickly create or put aside for the sole purpose of antagonising the native population. Colonisation efforts came first, and they weren't going to be doing that over the ocean in a hurry.
It meant that when the time came for Jake to introduce him as another member of his family, recovered from the human warmongers and seeking to come back to his true home, the olo'eyktan and tsahik regarded him with an air of mildly hostile bemusement. They took a lot of convincing; a lot of the tsahik glaring daggers and pulling him this way and that while she made her assessments, snapping at her mate that a human did not and would never deserve to live among the Na'vi. Useless creatures, bringing death and destruction to all they touch, and so on and so forth. Nothing that he hadn't heard before from others.
But in the end, they didn't say no. In fact, they said the same as the family were originally told - learn their ways, earn his place, be useful, and they would allow him to stay.
From what he quickly learned, the family had a hard time settling in over the previous months, and there was a good reason as to why it took so long for their full acceptance. He didn't expect his experience to be much better, but the Metkayina were a special kind of mistrustful. Worse than how stand-offish Neytiri had become around him, although he couldn't find it in him to blame her.
With the former, however, he assumed that word must have traveled about what happened with the Ta'unui settlement, and how he had to stand by, helpless, while Quaritch and his team had razed villages to the ground. His pleas to stop fell on deaf ears, words engulfed by the flames. By then, the damage to his reputation had already been done. There weren't any other teenage boys who could speak their language fluently hanging around Pandora.
Daily life revolved around dozens of wary green-blue eyes glossing over him while going about his business in the village, followed up by muttered comments and remarks about a human living among them. More than once, a broad hand had reached out from behind his back to tug at his hair as he passed. Whirling around to hiss at whoever his assailant was would be met with laughter and pointing, jokes at his expense. Somehow, it was always a different kid doing it.
Lo'ak mentioned that he dealt with the same kind of shit, and they'd get over themselves. He had enough tail pulling and ear yanking from the clan members to last a lifetime, but it worked out. He had a Tulkun brother, had learned how to dive, and even achieved the impossible in mending his relationship with his father a little. Even the olo'eyktan's daughter kept making eyes at him. Life was panning out pretty well for him, and he felt proud that he'd figured out his right place in the world.
But he, Spider, wasn't just a forest kid like Lo'ak or Tuk, or like Neteyam had been. He was regarded as something else entirely. If his brothers and sisters had demon blood inside them, then he was the equivelant of looking at a whole new species to the Metkayina - which, he guessed he was. Given the isolation from other clans, and how their every passing interaction with humans previously had been in relation to their tulkun brothers and sisters getting slaughtered to have their brains drilled into. Didn't take a genius to figure out why they were so reluctant to interact.
There was one person who was happy to have him around, however. To Kiri, who immediately threw her arms around him upon returning to the village after the battle at the Sea Dragon, he was still her favourite monkey boy. That much hadn't changed in their time apart, and he never thought he'd feel so much relief to return to his best friend's side. Where they both belonged. Even if the Metkayina never fully accepted him, her welcome and enthusiasm was enough.
If he was going to be accepted by the clan, though, it would be through her enabling it and showing him the ropes.
One morning, she tugged him out of their marui home and along the springy woven walkways making up the village. Each step sent him bouncing, at odds with the soft undergrowth and soil he had grown so used to, but the sun beaming down and warming his skin was a welcome change to what few shafts of light cut through the forest canopy. The villagers shot looks as he passed, tending to their hobbies and duties, but he scarcely noticed them while chasing after Kiri.
Bringing him to where the pathway slung low against the ocean, tide lapping at the underside, she pointed down into the water. "Look,"
Eyes squinted against the glare, he spotted what she was so eager to show him. A school of dark, long necked creatures wheeling through the turquoise shallows, chittering and whistling while they played with each other. Breaching the surface and diving beneath in wide arcs, spinning around and sending showers of spray glinting into the light as they dodged in and out of the coral formations. As they frolicked, he spotted their pale undersides and the varying patterns of red and yellow on their back, although each looked as similar as the other. The only differences that he could tell were the blotches of pink-red close to their faces.
"These are ilu. They live around the reefs." she handed the basket of fish to him and hopped down into the turquoise water, making a short clicking noise and clapping her hands in their direction.
Seeming to sense her presence, one ilu broke away from its companions and surged over before she could finish calling. Four wide fins propelled it, with two smaller flippers helping to power through the water to reach them. Letting out a joyful sounding chatter, it burst forth and rubbed its head around Kiri, who received it with a giggle and whispered greeting. She held her queue out, connecting through its neural whip, and her eyelids fluttered shut momentarily. What was going through their minds was anyone's guess, one being to another working in total harmony, but it looked to him after a few seconds.
Shifting away from Kiri, it popped upright, head poked up high to his eye level. Rows of sharp teeth glittered in its mouth, and its breath misted up on his mask. Four round eyes met his gaze for the briefest moment, then flitted away and past him, and then down to the basket of fish. It darted for them, and Spider swept it away just in time before it could dunk its entire head into the pile of tasty treats.
It clicked and whined, retreating back to its rider's side in almost a sullen, sulking manner.
He had sat on the back of and ridden them before, but didn't process it in the heat of the battle, or during Neteyam's funeral. Between the adrenaline and grief, the novelty of meeting another of Pandora's creatures flew right over his head. With one being presented just for him, he saw that the same playful, mischievous nature extended towards the Na'vi just the same. "How did you meet her?" he asked.
"She found me, and chose me to be her friend," she replied.
Spider made a quiet, interested noise. Same way as she bonded with her first and second ikran, then. Where the others had to battle their partners to prove their worth, she walked into the rookery and up to the first banshee she saw, like she was invisible to the rest of them. Everyone always said she had a way with the flora and fauna, and bonding effortlessly with an ilu proved that aspect of her hadn't diminished in the slightest.
"Be gentle with her," she smiled, soft and inviting, one hand cupped on the underside of her ilu's neck. "Ilu are not like an ikran, they're friendly."
"They better be, I didn't sign up to getting eaten," he smirked. Putting his hand into the basket dangling down, he waved a flat skate fish towards the creature's face. "You want a fish?"
The ilu whined and chittered, shying away from his hand and back towards Kiri. His face fell. Seeing the humans running the SEC-OPS machines must have spooked it. Being chased and having to escape from their grasp would frighten anyone, let alone something that had never had to worry about a threat bigger than an akula sharing the ocean with them.
Kiri moved with her mount, hushing her. "Steady, steady…he is not one of those humans."
Heeding her words, she began to settle. Slowly, cautiously, she approached again. Examined him and the fish closely, head weaving back and forth to judge the distance between themselves. He tried to avoid making eye contact and looked everywhere but directly at her, guessing it would make her nervous - the same as any other Pandoran creature would interpret it.
"You ready? You want it?" he asked her, making to throw it as she flapped upwards a few inches in preparation. Tossing it into her mouth when she next rose up, the ilu reared up and grabbed the fish, then tilted and slapped one fin hard against the water as she landed. It sent spray flying up into his face, and she let out a barking cry that sounded exactly like laughter as she backed off.
"Hey!" he flashed his teeth at her, wiping the droplets off with the back of his arm. Even the wildlife was in on pranking him.
Covering her mouth with one hand to hide her own amusement, he heard Kiri scolding the ilu with gentle words. Then, she reached out to pull at his arm. "Come, try again. Sit with her."
"Kiri, she's gonna lose it if my blue washes off."
"Oh, monkey boy can handle flying on a fearsome ikran, but won't say hi to this? Getting splashed was too scary?" she put a hand to her chest, mock offended. Then, quietly, she leaned into the creature and whispered, "He does not deserve you."
That did it. Giving an indignant scoff, he pivoted, shifting down from the walkway. "No way, let's go." He plopped down into the pleasingly warm water, rising up almost to his neck before his feet hit the soft sand. He tilted his head back, keeping his mask out of the way just in case that was the day the seal decided to break and let water in, then waded out a few steps.
The ilu lay flat beside Kiri, bobbing just beneath the surface and waiting for his arrival. Spider moved in closer, watching for any signs of fear or distress from a non Na'vi getting within its personal space. Her gaze flitted back and forth between him and the basket of fish on the side, waiting with barely restrained patience for him to make his move. She wanted her reward for putting up with the small, pink creature.
Before he could let himself hesitate, he reached out with both hands and hoisted himself up on to the base of her neck. Without a saddle to hold on to and find his balance, he slipped around on her smooth, leathery skin. Gripping with his legs allowed him to fall into a more natural position, leaning slightly forwards and over her body.
"There you go," he murmured, patting the beast. She felt wholly unlike an ikran or pa'li, yet deeply familiar at the same time. Her mouth opened and closed slightly as the ebb and flow of the tide lifted her snout from the water, and her back fins moving to keep them afloat sent her muscles rippling beneath her thick hide.
He grinned at Kiri. "Check it out, I've got her handled already."
"Alright then, if you're so confident," Giving a soft snort of amusement, she disconnected her queue from the ilu and stepped back.
His heart leapt, holding on that much tighter and bracing himself in preparation to be thrown off. To his surprise, though, she allowed him to stay. Drifted away from Kiri, and her backmost eyes flicked to him as if questioning and reassuring whether he could be trusted when he held on to her neural whip like reins, but his presence was accepted.
It shocked him. An ikran would never allow him near without tsaheylu. He could ride on the back of one with someone else, observe iknimaya when the time came for his siblings (so long as he stayed out of the way), but the battle in the Hallelujah Mountains when he was a baby had soured them to the shape of humans. An illu, though? They seemed a lot better natured than most every other animal he'd encountered, chilled out and uncaring about who was on them so long as they got their reward. No reason to learn to fear anyone or anything that didn't want to kill them, he guessed.
"Even she doesn't know you're human!" she beamed. Hopping a few paces to the basket, she hurled a couple of fish into the ilu's mouth as a reward. "Maybe we can find you your own ilu. Tsaheylu might not be needed for them. They'll learn to trust."
"Yeah, but this is your one. She's special," he attempted to brush the idea off, certain that it would be a waste to get him involved in learning to ride. Her ilu seemed to agree, making a two-toned noise. Gesturing to the creature, he said, "You told her about me."
"All I suggested was that you're a friend visiting, and she could see for herself," Kiri bobbled her head back and forth, sly. "They are more intelligent than you or I know. Lo'ak's ilu could have told the others about you when you were with him."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right." Like it cared enough to bother saying anything about the other, wrong coloured body on its back, rather than the whole mess surrounding the Sea Dragon that day.
"Don't be so sure." she warned, then paused. "...You're getting attached~ ."
"What? I'm just holding her!" He hadn't realised that he had set his free hand at the side of her neck, idly scratching there. She leaned into his hold, tilting them sideways and trilling softly.
Perhaps there was actually no point in pushing the obvious away, Maybe the ilu liked him. Maybe he liked the ilu. Maybe they could figure something out together, between themselves and Kiri. He'd be the first human rider of ilu in Pandoran history, and that sounded pretty cool. Nobody else could take that title from him.
So if just one ilu was going to give him a leg up on staying in the village, then he'd take it.