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My dad told me about angels when I was little once. Around the time when he used to keep everything about his life as a Sky Person a secret, locked away even from my mother. He told me that Earth was a wasteland, and that “nothing good came out of it.” I remember thinking to myself that something good must’ve existed on Earth, because my dad came from there. And if I didn’t have my dad, then I didn’t know what I would do. He told me that angels were beautiful, winged creatures that came from God and would return to him when they died. I didn’t know what God was, but Dad told me that He was something like Eywa. If angels came from God, then they must be good. Angels must be benevolent and beautiful, but maybe their benevolence is what painted a blood red target on their backs. I see Kiri as an angel. She carries Eywa in her soul–just like how an angel would carry God in their hearts–and she breathed that pristine divinity into Spider’s lungs. Tuk is definitely one too, in the childlike innocence I wish I could’ve protected better, shielded it somehow with my body from the funerary flames of war.
I didn’t think this much about angels when Neteyam was here, because when he was with me, I wouldn’t have to. I didn’t need to concern myself with what would make someone an angel and what wouldn’t. It should have always been like that. But I can never erase the sickening feeling of his blood still thrumming with life, trickling between the gaps in my fingers faster than I would keep up with, and the life that was pooling out of his body and onto the rocky outcropping underneath. I felt the weight of his life in my palms, and the weight of his death when it was seated upon my shoulders the moment his tanhi went dark. Only then did Neteyam become an angel.
But when do I become an angel? When was it going to happen to me? I thought it would be when I met Payakan. When I met him, when he saw me as his brother just as much as I did, when I learned his story and I was going to change the minds of all the Na’vi who had looked upon him with fear in their eyes instead of empathy, even if it meant challenging olo’eytkan. But it wasn’t. I only made things worse, and the only opposite of an angel was a demon. It’s in my blood, impure and leaden and it shows in my fingers, on my face, in the way I can never seem to keep myself away from making mistakes. My mother finally sees it now, just as my dad does. And I don’t think there’s anything I can do to repair it.