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That summer felt like it would never end.
Spider tiptoed down onto the scorching grass. He winced and quickly lifted his foot again, setting it down somewhere else as he held his breath and moved as quietly as possible. Heat rose from the ground, burning the soles of his feet. But if he wasted even a second going downstairs to grab his sandals, his dad would wake up and haul him right back inside. So Spider gave up on the idea.
He lowered his body and dashed forward a few quick steps before stopping at the low wooden fence that separated the two yards. Planting his hands on the top rail, he swung himself over with an easy motion and landed softly in the Sullys’ backyard. The moment his feet touched the ground, the burning heat beneath his heels seemed to disappear.
Spider let out a quiet breath, then wandered deeper into the garden. Sunlight slipped through the leaves overhead, scattering patches of gold across the ground. The scent of dry grass, tree sap, and heated earth hung thick in the air, so heavy it made the whole afternoon feel slow and endless.
He knew Neteyam had to be somewhere nearby.
Neteyam was sitting on the porch, leaning back against one of the wooden pillars with his legs stretched comfortably across the steps. A ridiculous novel rested in his hands, his long fingers lightly holding the thin pages in place.
The moment Spider spotted him, a mischievous grin crept across his face.
He crouched low and crept across the lawn. If he could just get close enough, he would shout right in Neteyam’s face. That would definitely make him jump.
Then, in the very next moment, Spider tripped over something.
A small flower bush blocked his path, newly planted and very much not there before. Spider only had a split second to register that fact before his foot caught on one of the thin branches and he went crashing face first into the grass.
Dry grass and warm dirt clung to his palms as he caught himself. An involuntary yelp slipped out of his throat before he could swallow it back.
Jake seemed to plant something new every time he had a day off, which meant the garden changed a little more each week. Yesterday this had been empty ground. Today it had turned into an entire patch of flowers.
Spider pushed himself up, about to brush the dirt off his knees.
When he lifted his head, a tall shadow was already standing right in front of him.
Neteyam was looking down at him, the familiar faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looked perfectly relaxed, as if he had been sitting there watching the entire performance from start to finish.
“What were you trying to do just now?” Neteyam asked, his voice threaded with amusement.
Before Spider could even respond, something soft dropped onto his head. Neteyam had placed a wide-brimmed hat over it, tugging the brim down slightly to block the sunlight pouring straight into Spider’s face.
“It’s this hot and you’re still running around barefoot. What are you, five?”
No matter how much Spider hated the way his same-aged friend acted like some old man, he never actually argued when Neteyam scolded him like that.
“Hurry up before my dad wakes up and grounds me for another month,” Spider said, sticking his tongue out and making a face.
That earned a louder laugh from Neteyam.
Neteyam opened the back door and led him through the kitchen, which felt wonderfully cool after the heat outside. The scent of fresh wood and ripe fruit lingered in the quiet midday air. He quickly pulled out a pair of sandals, a whole size bigger than Spider’s feet, and made him put them on.
Spider shot him a glare.
“You act exactly like Neytiri.”
Neteyam only laughed, as if it were the most childish complaint in the world.
A little while later, an old bicycle appeared in front of the Sully house. Flowering vines around the gate were in full bloom beneath the sun, red and yellow blossoms swaying lazily in the hot wind. Neteyam wheeled the bike out of the yard and checked the brakes. Spider leaned against the gate, the wide-brimmed hat still slightly crooked on his head, watching him with clear anticipation.
“You’re driving?” Spider asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hope you remember the way this time.”
Neteyam shot him a look.
“Wasn’t it you who gave the wrong directions last time?”
Spider only grinned and shrugged in mock surrender before quickly climbing onto the back of the bicycle, his legs swinging over the metal bars on either side of the wheel. Neteyam pushed down on the pedal and the bike rolled out through the gate, gliding onto the road that led toward the distant forest.
The concrete path radiated brutal heat with every turn of the wheels. Tall trees lined both sides of the road, their thick canopies breaking the sunlight into scattered, shimmering patches across the ground. There was a shorter way they could have taken, but Spider had insisted on this longer route because it had more downhill stretches. He spread his arms out behind Neteyam’s back, letting the wind rush through his hair and shirt.
“Go a little faster!”
“You trying to die?” Neteyam shouted back, though he pedaled harder anyway. The bike rattled as it rolled over a rough patch of road. The wide-brimmed hat Neteyam had put on Spider’s head still sat crooked, the brim slanted low enough to cover one eye. The wind tugged at the strap beneath his chin, making it tremble lightly against his skin.
The wind grew stronger as they sped down a slope. Spider stretched his arms out behind Neteyam like he was flying, his head tipped back, laughter ringing through the trees. In that careless moment, the hat on his head tilted even further from the gust. Neteyam immediately reached behind him with one hand and tugged the brim back into place without even turning around.
At the edge of the forest stood a small bus stop, old and almost always empty. The metal roof had faded from years of sunlight, and the wooden bench beneath it was scratched and warm after baking under the afternoon sun. Their bicycle leaned against the signpost, the wheel still spinning lazily for a few seconds before finally coming to rest.
Across the road sat a shabby little convenience store. The glass door hung half open, and the bell above it chimed softly when Neteyam stepped inside. A moment later, he came back out with two ice cream bars in his hands, the wrappers already damp with cold.
Spider was sitting on the bus stop bench, his legs stretched out in front of him, the hat sliding down to cover most of his eyes. The moment he saw Neteyam returning, he straightened up.
Neteyam handed him one of the ice creams.
Spider didn’t wait a second. He took a huge bite and the soft ice cream immediately melted over the back of his hand. The thin tank top he wore hung a little loose on his frame, the collar dipping low enough to reveal pale skin that hadn’t yet darkened under the summer sun. A small streak of ice cream clung to his cheek, already flushed red from the heat and from eating too fast.
Neteyam watched him for a moment longer, his throat moving slightly.
Before Spider had even finished his ice cream, Neteyam leaned down and pressed his lips against Spider’s, still cool from the melting sweetness. Spider froze for a brief second before kissing him back, the hand still sticky with ice cream clutching unconsciously at the hem of Neteyam’s shirt.
The kiss was short, sweet, and faintly cold with the taste of ice cream still lingering on Spider’s lips. When they pulled apart, the streak on his cheek had disappeared as well.
The first time they kissed had been during a summer like this.
Spider remembered that day clearly. He had only wanted to run somewhere far away, to sit at this bus stop with his swollen face, split lip, and one cheek bruised red. His dad had just beaten him for talking back to his stepmother. Spider had been fifteen then, thinking bitterly that it might have been better if his dad had never come back from the war to take him out of the orphanage.
Neteyam was the one who found him.
Worry was written plainly across his face, but when Neteyam saw Spider’s swollen face, he couldn’t seem to find the words. In the end, he only lifted Spider’s chin gently and pressed a kiss against those torn lips.
Spider still remembered the shock of it, the strange feeling as if the whole world had tilted slightly to one side. Neteyam kissed awkwardly, his rough lips gentle against Spider’s, the faint sweetness of the soda he had just been drinking still lingering on his tongue.
Afterward, they sat down beside each other in silence. Then Spider suddenly spoke. “Don’t you think this face of mine looks pretty ridiculous right now?”
Neteyam glanced at him like he just wanted to grab Spider and shake some sense into him.
They wandered beneath the trees for the rest of the afternoon. The sunlight softened as the sun sank lower, and the red marks on Spider’s face slowly darkened into a faint purple. It wasn’t until evening was nearly falling that Neteyam finally rode him home.
The bicycle rolled slowly along the dirt road as sunset fell through the trees, and Spider rested his head against Neteyam’s back the entire way without saying a word.
Now they were used to kisses like that.
On the empty road, they drifted close again, kissing clumsily, their lips and interlaced fingers damp with the warm sheen of sweat. The heavy air seemed to soften a little.
Spider finished the rest of his ice cream, spinning the wooden stick between his fingers before casually tossing it into the trash can beside the bus stop. Neteyam wheeled the bicycle over to a tree and locked it with little effort. From there the path narrowed, tree roots pushing up through the ground and thick ferns growing so densely that a bicycle could hardly pass. They always left the bike here whenever they went into the forest.
Spider had already walked a few steps ahead, kicking dry leaves along the path as he went. Neteyam followed behind him. Sunlight filtered through the canopy and fell across Spider’s shoulders in pale patches of light. When Spider raised a hand to adjust the wide-brimmed hat, his wrist turned just enough to reveal an ugly bruise.
Neteyam frowned slightly.
“Does it still hurt?”
Spider paused for a moment and followed his gaze down to his wrist.
“I don’t even remember when I got that,” Spider said with a shrug. “It used to be way worse. My dad’s not very good at communicating without using violence.”
No one knew that better than Neteyam. Spider’s father had once nearly landed Jake in jail during a fight that started from nothing more than a petty argument between the two families. There had been one summer when Spider and Neteyam barely spoke to each other at all.
Not because they wanted it that way. It was just that when things at home began to grow tense, Neteyam had been busy trying to become the “perfect eldest son” to the point that nothing else seemed to fit in his life. Lo’ak was always getting into trouble at school, Tuk was still too young, and Kiri often seemed like she was living in a world entirely her own. Whenever something went wrong, Jake’s eyes instinctively went to Neteyam first. And Neteyam could not stand the exhausted look in his mother’s eyes whenever she saw Spider sneaking over the fence to find them.
That tension only broke the day Spider’s father came knocking on their door for the first time, his face tight with worry as he said his son had been missing all day.
“Sorry.”
“You’re not the one who hit me. Why are you apologizing?”
“From now on I won’t let anyone hit you again.” Neteyam smiled gently and lifted Spider’s bruised wrist to press a light kiss against it. Spider didn’t pull away. He only made a teasing face at him.
“You’re talking like you’re actually good at fighting.”
“I’m not,” Neteyam admitted. “But I’m taller than your dad. At least I could hold him off long enough for you to slip away.”
“Skxawng.”
The path through the forest began to slope downward. The soil grew softer, and tree roots twisted out of the ground in crooked lines. They had to slow their steps to avoid tripping.
Spider walked a few steps ahead, hopping over a fallen trunk that lay across the path before turning back to look at Neteyam behind him. Sunlight slipped through the leaves and scattered across Neteyam’s hair in broken patches of light, making his delicate features seem slightly blurred.
Spider blinked, deciding the heat must be messing with his eyesight.
Ahead of them lay a lake resting quietly in a clearing, wide and smooth like a giant mirror. Spider ran down first, skidding a little before stopping on the strip of grass right by the water’s edge.
The clearing around the lake was far wider than the forest behind them. Tall trees stood like an enormous green wall, their branches woven together overhead, leaving only a wide open patch of sky above the water. Afternoon sunlight slanted down and turned the lake into a sheet of shimmering silver.
Spider stepped closer to the edge and crouched to pick up a flat stone. He threw it.
The stone skimmed across the surface a few times before sinking, leaving small ripples spreading slowly across the water. Neteyam walked down after him, watching the boy in front of him with a gentle fondness as Spider amused himself at the shore.
Spider had taken off the hat and tossed it onto the grass. His hair had been ruffled by the wind, a few strands sticking to his forehead with sweat. The loose tank top fluttered lightly as he walked along the edge of the lake, his foot nudging the small ripples in the water.
Here, summer seemed endless.
Spider stepped into the water first. He rolled his pant legs up carelessly and walked straight into the shallow part near the shore. The lake was crystal clear, and the sudden temperature difference made him shiver. Ripples spread around his ankles, slow and perfectly round like rings across glass.
“It’s cold,” he said, glancing back at Neteyam though his voice sounded more like a challenge than a warning.
Neteyam stayed on the shore for a moment, hands resting on his hips as he watched Spider splashing through the water like a duck. Sunlight reflected off the lake and rose softly around them, as if the water itself were breathing out light.
Spider bent down, scooped up a handful of water, and flung it toward Neteyam. The splash didn’t travel very far, only landing in the grass near his feet, but it was enough to make Spider laugh with open provocation.
“If you’re scared of deep water,” Spider called, “I can come carry you out here, mighty warrior.”
Neteyam only shook his head with a quiet laugh before rolling up his jeans and stepping into the water. The moment his foot touched the lake, Spider immediately backed away two steps, water splashing around his knees.
He scooped up another handful and threw it straight at Neteyam before he could react. Droplets burst apart in the air, glittering in the sunlight like tiny shards of glass.
Neteyam wiped the water from his face and let out a familiar sigh of helplessness. That alone made Spider laugh so hard he nearly slipped.
He spun around and ran a little farther out, where the water rose to his calves. Every step sent stronger ripples across the surface, rings of water spreading toward the shore. Neteyam moved forward a few more steps. The water reached his knees now, the denim of his jeans darkening as it soaked through.
That only encouraged Spider further. He bent down to scoop up more water again, but this time Neteyam was faster. With one long stride, he caught Spider’s wrist before the splash could fly.
“Having fun, are we?” Neteyam said. “Let’s see how you like it when I get my revenge.”
Neteyam pulled him a little closer, then flicked his foot through the water. A sheet of water splashed straight onto Spider.
Spider yelped at the cold and stumbled back a step, nearly slipping for real this time. He grabbed Neteyam’s shoulders to steady himself, and the two of them swayed for a few seconds before finding their balance again. Their faces ended up close, breath warm against cheeks still chilled from the lake.
Just as Neteyam leaned in to kiss him, Spider quickly scooped up a handful of water and poured it straight over the top of Neteyam’s head. The taller boy shivered from the cold and immediately let go.
When he opened his eyes again, Spider was laughing, wet blond hair falling messily across his forehead. Behind him, the wide lake stretched under the sunlight, the sky reflected so clearly on the surface that the line between water and heaven almost disappeared as if the whole world had sunk beneath the lake.
Spider waded a little farther out until the water reached his thighs. Out here, the lake darkened, the bottom no longer visible the way it was near the shore. Ripples spread slowly from his steps, drifting back toward Neteyam before dissolving again. Even though he looked resigned, Neteyam still moved forward, trying to grab him.
The water here was deeper. Each step sank slightly into the soft mud beneath the lakebed. Neteyam kept walking toward him until his foot suddenly slipped and his whole body pitched forward. Everything happened in a split second. The surface of the lake burst apart as Neteyam lost his balance and fell hard into the water.
Spider was still laughing when he suddenly stopped. “Neteyam?”
There was no answer at first. Neteyam struggled under the water, one arm flinging upward before he sank again, as if his foot had caught on something below.
A sharp chill ran down Spider’s spine. The pleasant coolness of the lake suddenly turned into a thousand needles against his skin. He stared at Neteyam sinking in front of him, panic rising so fast he didn’t even know what to do.
“Neteyam!”
Spider lunged forward. When he reached him, Neteyam was trying to push himself up from the bottom, only to slip again. Spider grabbed his arm and pulled hard.
“Stand up!”
Neteyam coughed violently, choking on water as he clutched Spider’s shoulder. The two of them staggered several steps before Spider half dragged him toward the shore. Behind them, the water still churned, ripples spreading wide before slowly fading back into the lake’s silence.
Only when Neteyam’s feet found the firmer ground near the bank did Spider stop. He hauled him out of the water and almost shoved him down onto the grass.
Neteyam bent forward, breathing hard for a few moments before wiping the water from his face.
“Damn,” he muttered hoarsely. “Just slipped.”
Spider remained standing there, staring at him as if trying to make sure he was truly standing in front of him. The cold feeling along his spine hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it had grown sharper. And even though Neteyam was right there, his face somehow looked blurred, as if Spider couldn’t quite focus on it.
“Spider?”
Neteyam had already stood up again, water still dripping from his hair and clothes. At his feet, the puddle gathering on the ground slowly turned pink, then deepened into a red that looked disturbingly like blood.
The sky above the lake had changed without them noticing. Heavy gray clouds rolled in quickly, swallowing the blue sky from before. The soft afternoon light was smothered, replaced by a cold gray spreading across the water.
Wind rose suddenly. The trees around the lake shook violently, leaves scraping together with a dry whispering sound. The lake was no longer calm. Small waves began to form, water lapping against the shore in quick, uneven beats.
Neteyam stepped closer and grabbed the front of Spider’s shirt.
“We should go.”
Spider didn’t move. His gaze remained fixed on the vivid red water running down Neteyam’s body and soaking into the ground like scattered petals.
Neteyam tugged lightly at him. “Spider, listen—”
Spider looked up.
Neteyam’s face suddenly became hard to make out. Every time Spider tried to focus on him, the image slipped away like water disturbed by a ripple.
“Spider.”
Neteyam called his name again, but the wind was rising, swallowing his voice almost immediately.
Spider blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the front of Neteyam’s shirt had changed color. At first, it was only a small dark stain, easy to mistake for a patch of water that hadn’t dried yet. But within seconds, the red spread outward, soaking through the fabric, deepening into a dark bloom of blood. It kept seeping from the wound, staining the ground beneath Neteyam’s feet.
“That’s not possible…”
A drop of water suddenly landed in Spider’s hair. He looked up instinctively. Another drop struck his shoulder, cold and sharp, sliding down the back of his neck like a needle.
It began to rain.
At first, the drops were scattered, falling across the lake like silver specks. But within seconds, the rain came down in sheets. Water tore through the sky and slammed against the lake, the ground, their shoulders, sending overlapping rings racing across the surface.
In moments, their hair and clothes were soaked through.
But the blood on Neteyam’s chest didn’t wash away.
Rain streamed down his shoulders, along his neck, over the front of his shirt and into the wound that burned dark red beneath it. The blood spread with the water, yet the more it flowed, the darker it seemed to grow.
Spider took a step back. Something else was pouring into his mind along with the rain. It felt like a surge of foreign information, forcing its way into his head. Fragments of images flashed and vanished too quickly for him to understand.
“What is this, Neteyam…?”
Neteyam stepped forward, reaching out as if to steady him, but Spider recoiled at once, his foot slipping on the wet mud.
“Don’t touch me!”
The rain continued to crash between them, thick enough that Neteyam’s figure began to tremble in Spider’s vision. The familiar lines of his face blurred behind the curtain of water, yet the blood on his chest stood out more clearly than anything else.
And under that relentless rain, the world around them seemed to begin changing too.
“Come home with me first, okay?” Neteyam tried again, pushing through the downpour to reach for his hand. “Get some sleep… when you wake up, there’s something I want to tell you.”
Every drop of rain seemed to drag another shard of unfamiliar memory into Spider’s mind. The pain in his head intensified until his vision began to pulse and tremble.
In that moment, Spider suddenly understood.
The blood running down Neteyam’s chest did not belong to this rain. It did not belong to this summer.
“You died, didn’t you?” Spider burst out, his voice breaking as grief folded his body in on itself.
Slowly, piece by piece, everything came back.
A massive iron ship rising from the dark water, its hull tilting as metal groaned and thick columns of smoke curled into the sky. Spider could hear gunfire echoing through narrow corridors, mixed with the smell of burning oil and seawater flooding into the lower decks. The memories returned with a clarity so brutal it squeezed the air from his lungs.
He remembered being taken onto that ship. The cold metal hallways. The red emergency lights flickered along the ceiling as the vessel trembled with explosions.
And in the middle of that chaos, he remembered hearing Neteyam call his name. Neteyam and Lo’ak had come back onto the sinking ship to find him.
The next memory struck like a wave of freezing water. Spider remembered the moment they found each other inside the ship’s flooded compartments. Neteyam stood in front of him, his wet hair stuck to his forehead. But when he saw Spider, he still managed that same familiar smile.
Then the moment they dove into the water together.
The clear seawater slowly clouded with the dark red of Neteyam’s blood. He had been dying then too, struggling and gasping beneath the surface just like this. And in the end, he drew his last breath right in front of Spider.
No miracle had happened.
Spider hadn’t saved him.
Spider lifted his head, breathing unevenly and heavily. Neteyam was still standing there before him, his figure trembling faintly behind the curtain of rain. Yet his eyes were as gentle as they had always been, and his hand was still held out, as if the only thing he had been doing all this time was waiting for Spider to step forward.
This time, Spider didn’t step back. He rushed forward instead, burying his face against Neteyam’s blood-soaked chest. The faint salt of the ocean still seemed to linger at the tip of his nose.
“I’m sorry… Neteyam… I’m sorry…”
The apologies tumbled out between broken sobs, tangled and repeated so many times that Spider himself no longer knew how often he had said them. All he knew was that he could never forget the moment Neteyam turned back to the ship to save him, nor the helplessness of watching him collapse as the water kept rising.
Neteyam only wrapped his arms around him gently, just the way he always had whenever Spider came to him on his worst days. The rain kept pouring down, heavier with every second. Water ran through their hair and over their shoulders, mixing with the blood on Neteyam’s chest before sliding down into the earth in streaks of red.
“Why are you apologizing to me?” Neteyam asked softly, lifting Spider’s face with gentle fingers. “You’re not the one who shot me.”
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the relentless drumming of rain against the ground and the shattered lake behind them.
“I’m not him,” Neteyam continued, his hand still resting lightly on Spider’s back. “I only exist in the world you created.”
Spider tightened his grip on his shirt.
“But if I were him…” Neteyam brushed away the warm tears mingling with rain on Spider’s cheek. “I probably wouldn’t hate you either.”
Of course he wasn’t that Neteyam. That Neteyam had already drawn his last breath before he could even finish whatever final words he might have wanted to say.
The rain was falling so thickly now that Neteyam’s face was almost impossible to see. The familiar lines of it dissolved behind the curtain of water until only a blurred silhouette remained. Even the blood on his chest began to fade within Spider’s trembling vision.
“Spider,” Neteyam called gently, like someone soothing a child. “Don’t be sad anymore.”
The rain was so dense that they could barely see each other now. The hand resting against Spider’s cheek slowly loosened.
“It’s time for you to go back.”
Spider knew perfectly well that the person standing before him wasn’t the real Neteyam.
The real Neteyam had died in the cold ocean water, surrounded by the groaning metal of the sinking SeaDragon. Everything had happened too fast, too chaotically. Spider hadn’t even managed to say a single word to him before he was gone.
The one standing here was only a Neteyam that existed inside the world Spider had unconsciously created to escape that pain.
Spider remained standing there, staring into the empty space in front of him until the rain finally swallowed the figure completely, leaving nothing but a blurred void in the forest that seemed to be breaking apart around him.
When Spider opened his eyes again, the first thing he heard was rain.
His body ached as if he had just come through a long fever. When he shifted slightly, the hammock beneath him swayed. Spider realized he was lying in a familiar hammock.
Neteyam’s hammock.
Before he could think any further, a hand rested gently on his forehead.
“Spider?”
Kiri’s voice came first, soft but edged with lingering tension. When Spider turned his head, he saw the entire Sully family there. Neytiri stood near the entrance of the marui, her eyes still watching him with the usual guarded caution, though there was relief in them she couldn’t quite hide. Jake sat lower near the end of the hammock, his elbows resting on his knees as if he had been sitting there for a long time. Lo’ak was gripping Spider’s hand tightly, while Tuk stayed close beside Kiri.
“You’re awake.”
It took Spider a moment before he could speak. His throat was so dry that every word came out slowly.
“How long… was I asleep?”
“Quite a while, kid. You scared the hell out of us.” Jake sighed and patted his shoulder. “Norm says the RDA used some kind of torture device on you. It messed with your brain pretty badly. Probably a concussion, which might explain why you keep blacking out like this.”
Spider didn’t ask anything else. What Jake said didn’t surprise him. He remembered the ship, the cold metal corridors, the long days of interrogation and being dragged through narrow rooms flooded with white light. But those memories now seemed to drift farther away, as if veiled behind a thin layer of mist. The thing that remained most vivid in his mind was the rain.
Spider turned his head and looked outside. Through the open space of the marui, the sky was slowly darkening beneath thick gray clouds. Heavy rain was beginning to fall over the sea, splashing against the surface and sending bubbles bursting upward from the water. The last image left in his memory was the feeling of arms wrapped around him in that rain, and a gentle voice telling him that he had to go back.
For a species like humans, who could not connect with the dead the way the Na’vi did, who could not touch the memories of their ancestors through Eywa or hear the voices of spirits that had already passed on, how did they keep living after losing someone that important? How did they walk through the long days that followed, when all that remained were scattered fragments of memory and a hollow space that could never be filled?
Spider didn’t have an answer.
He only knew that somewhere within that rain, he had at least been given the chance to say the apology he never had the chance to speak before. Maybe it hadn’t been the real Neteyam, only a figure shaped by memory and longing, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Because if memories were all humans could keep of the people they had lost, then perhaps that alone was enough for them to keep going.
Outside, the rain continued to fall endlessly over the sea. And Spider watched it in silence until the curtain of water blurred the horizon into a dull gray haze, as if that endless summer had finally come to an end somewhere far away.