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Aha’ri is her world, for as long as she dares remember. For many years, there is no mother who holds her, who cradles her, who trades her life for Tamtey’s; there is only Aha’ri, her sister, her sun and moon and all of her stars. In the cold and grey, surrounded by poisonous metal and death a mere gunshot away, there is Aha’ri, the light of her world.
Aha’ri turns eleven, and Tamtey turns nine. When she was younger, when she’d retained a little more of her joy, Tamtey, not quite understanding how ages worked, swore to her sister she would surpass her in age, one day. It is a comment she means without harm, one Aha’ri throws her head back and laughs at, hand reaching out to ruffle Tamtey’s hair.
Later, she will wonder if it was an omen she had written into the world.
Aha’ri reaches eleven and doesn’t reach anymore, even as Tamtey’s tenth passes, then her eleventh and suddenly she is older than her sister ever got to be. Suddenly, she is the big sister and it is wrong, it is so so wrong.
She cannot change it, so she buries it as deep as she can, keeps her head on straight and tries to stay alive.
Tamtey loses fourteen years. She is still older than Aha’ri.
Death on Wings is a strange name, but one she wears with pride. Let the humans fear her, tremble at the sight of her, as she once did them. She has more reason to hate them, than they do her.
She fights and she kills, takes down as many bases as she can, pushing her body to its limits and then pushing it just that one step further. Everything hurts, these days, but she is Sarentu, one of the last daughters of a long-dead clan, of a long-murdered clan. Pain is more her sister than Aha’ri, these days.
So’lek calls her Sarentu, and she loves and hates it in equal measure. There is respect there, belonging - it feels wrong, sometimes, attributed to a Na’vi who speaks as she does, her tongue curling easier around the syllables of English than her own mother tongue. So’lek doesn’t blame her for this, no one does, really. It doesn’t stop her from thinking they should.
But even So’lek, as determined and fierce as she is, her best friend and mentor, is worried by her relentless ways.
“Tamtey,” He says, after a particularly gruelling mission that has sent an adrenaline so potent through her bloodstream, she swears she can taste it on her tongue. His hand lands on her shoulder and she drags her head to look at him.
“Thought you forgot my name.” She says, trying to smile with her bloodied teeth. A Mangkwan warrior had gotten her good. She wishes they were rid of them, but the war doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon even with Toruk Makto returned.
“Tamtey,” he stresses, but cannot seem to get the rest of the words out. Eventually he comes out with. “You are hurting yourself.”
She shrugs him off and stands, walking away from his worried eyes that make the shame inside her curdle. “I’m fine.”
“Tamtey-“
An explosion on the horizon cuts him off.
Tamtey’s head snaps towards it, a moth drawn to flame. Unbidden an old lesson, a human story, comes to the forefront of her mind: a boy, reckless with his newfound freedom, drowning as his wings burnt from the heat of the sun. Unable to find normalcy and steadiness after a lifetime trapped away, unable to resist the urge to soar wings that has been so long denied.
She swings her leg over Amay’s back and takes flight before So’lek can stop her.
My wings are not wax, she thinks in response to the old story. Still, she cannot help but feel as though she is burning anyway.
“You cannot keep doing this.” Ri’nela says, brow creased with worry as she smears healing paste across yet another new wound across Tamtey’s back. “You will be more scar than Na’vi soon.”
She rolls her eyes. “I am fine, Ri’nela.”
Ri’nela’s hand comes firmer next time and Tamtey winces.
“Ow.” She deadpans, looking up to the mirror in the corner of their swaynivi to meet Ri’nela’s eyes. “I thought the tsahìk’s duty was to heal, not maim further.”
But Ri’nela doesn’t seem to be in the mood for her teasing.
“And I thought,” She spits, and Tamtey feels her heart squeeze at the tremble in Ri’nela’s voice, “That my mate would not see me widowed young.”
Tamtey swivels around immediately, cups her wife’s face in her hands. Ri’nela’s tear-filled eyes overfill and spill down her cheeks, staining her beautiful face with fear. Fear of Tamtey’s making.
“Ri’nela, my love, my heart,” She murmurs, brushing her thumbs across her wife’s cheeks. “I am here, I am still here. I have not left you yet.”
“And yet,” Ri’nela sobs, “I feel like I will lose you soon.”
Tamtey doesn’t know what she can do with that. She cannot stop fighting the RDA. Ri’nela would never ask that of her, would never want more people to suffer under their hands as the Sarentu did.
“It is only until I stop them,” Tamtey says. “I am their Death on Wings-“
Ri’nela’s face contorts into a scowl and she tears her face from Tamtey’s hands. “Do not call yourself that.” She says. “You are Tamtey. You are Sarentu. These are the names you bear, not that-that curse.”
“Of course, I know that.” Tamtey says, frowning.
“But do you?” Ri’nela stresses. “Sometimes I see such grief in you, my love. Such pain.”
She takes Tamtey’s face in her hands, cradles her like she’s something immeasurably precious. Her wide gold eyes search Tamtey’s face, lingering on her many scars and the deep shadows growing under her eyes.
“You are hurting.” She murmurs. “And I cannot bear it.”
Tamtey is no stranger to pain. It hovers around the ankle she broke when she got cocky on one of her first missions, and blooms with the cold around her shoulder where it had been dislocated in So’lek’ desperate attempt to save her from Wukula’s grasp. It is imprinted like ink in her skin with every scar that cuts through her stripes and creates mottled patterns in remembrance of the fires that once tore at the soles of her feet.
There are days when she does not notice it much, when time protects her well from the mistakes of her past.
There are some days when time fails, and agony threatens to split her in half.
Ri’nela curls up with her on days like that, and people respect their tsahìk enough to realise that there are days where her mate takes priority for a few hours. She spreads sweet-smelling oils and poultices into Tamtey’s skin, murmurs her love and praise into her ears and does everything she can to ease Tamtey’s pain. As much as she detests the bad days, she adores the hours she gets with her mate, Ri’nela safe and warm in her arms, or wrapped around her waist.
When their courting period finished and they decided to become mates, Tamtey declared Olo’eytkan, Tamtey had thought herself the luckiest Na’vi in Eywa’eveng.
But as she watches her mate’s eyes fill and spill with pain that Tamtey has put there, she wonders if she is worthy of it after all.
“I…” Tamtey’s words fade as quickly as they arrive. “I do not understand, Ri’nela.
Ri’nela places a hand over Tamtey’s chest, over the heart that has somehow managed to keep her alive all these years despite having its core torn out at nine years of age when Aha’ri died.
“Here.” She says, and she looks like a tsahìk now, with the set of her shoulders and the wisdoms brimming in her eyes. “You are hurting here, my love.”
Though Ri’nela takes care not to tread on Tamtey’s old scars, and the many wounds that remain unhealed, Tamtey still flinches and looks away from her beloved’s gaze.
Ri’nela bows her head, meets Tamtey’s eyes and, with fingers gentle at her chin, tilts her face up.
“Aha’ri would love to see you.” She says softly. “She misses you as much as you do her.”
“I am afraid.” Tamtey confesses and shame makes itself known like a critter that has made its nest in her stomach. “I am hardly the sister she loved.”
Aha’ri had loved a sweet little girl with such hope in her heart and even more joy in her eyes. Aha’ri had once told her, on a lonely night in the TAP facility, that she loved how optimistic Tamtey was. How she brought so much love and peace into Aha’ri’s life.
“Just like Sa’nu,” She would say, fond. She’d then poke Tamtey on the nose and add, “No wonder. You look just like her.”
That little girl was long dead, killed alongside her murdered sister and then buried further when the remaining Sarentu needed a warrior to keep them safe. There is so much blood on her hands, deserved as it may be, and Tamtey is so terrified of staining her perfect sister with the colour. She cannot forget the crimson that had stained her sister’s skin when she’d died. She cannot add to it.
“Oh, dear heart.” Ri’nela whispers, pressing their foreheads together and wrapping her arms around Tamtey’s waist. “Oh, dearest. Of course, she loves you still. How could anyone not love you?”
“But I-“
“Are kind and strong and brave.” Ri’nela cuts in, determined. “With a heart as vast as the skies and shoulders stronger than the tallest of mountains. An Olo’eyktan who will lead us to a brighter future, a sister beloved and cherished, a mate that I would choose in any version of life.”
She presses a kiss to Tamtey’s lips, light and gentle, but it sends a lightning bolt of affection down Tamtey’s spine regardless.
“Go see her.” Ri’nela murmurs. Then, smiling playfully, she adds, “If you are so hesitant, then take it as an order from your mate.”
Tamtey chuckles, holding her mate closer. “Not from my tsahìk?”
“You should put the words of your mate equal to that of your tsahìk’s.” Ri’nela says.
“That is very high.” Tamtey laughs. “I do not think there is enough atmosphere for that to work.”
“You will figure it out.” Ri’nela smiles. She looks radiant, in the glow of the firelight. Tamtey’s heart skips a beat just looking at her. “You always do.”
“Hello?” She calls, when she connects to the Great Mother the next morning. She is surprised by the youth in her voice, looking down to find her hands smaller and softer, without the scars she’d accumulated after years at war.
A girl’s laughter rings in the distance. Tamtey runs towards it on her young legs, tears in her eyes that fly in the wind.
Aha’ri is just as she remembers her. Tamtey’s heart seizes as she nears, and her body is her own now, older and stronger and filled with more grief that most dare to imagine. Aha’ri is so young, her cheeks still rounded with youth and her limbs short, not even having reached the awkward length of adolescence.
“Tamtey?” Aha’ri’s eyes light up like a thousand stars in a tapestry of night. “Tamtey!”
Aha’ri runs into her arms and Tamtey is on her knees and she is sobbing, she is crying and she is babbling something unintelligible into her sister’s shoulder even as Aha’ri holds her tight and close.
“It is okay, baby sister.” She says, patting Tamtey’s shoulder as the words make her sob more. “It is okay.”
Eventually, her tears fade in their intensity and she can look her sister in the face.
“Sorry,” she says, sniffling. “For not visiting sooner.”
“You’re here now,” her sister says easily. “That’s what matters.”
Her eyes glow with mischief. “Now come on, tell me everything! I heard you and Ri’nela have gotten closer, hmm?”
Tamtey laughs, feels her chest lighten at the lighthearted teasing.
“She’s my mate.” She tells her sister. “I hope we’re close.”
“Well,” Aha’ri sniffs, “Ri’nela always had weird taste.”
“Take that back!” Tamtey grins, playfully swiping at Aha’ri’s head, a child of nine once more. “Come back here, Aha’ri!”
“Come at get me then, little sister!” Aha’ri laughs.
Tamtey will have to return to the living, eventually and she will find her heart lighter. There are days when it won’t be, when it weighs like a stone she cannot remove and will choke her of her breath. But there will also come days where she can think of Aha’ri without remembering the blood and the death. Where she can think of her sister and smile, remembering the warmth of her love.
But for now, she doesn’t need to worry about the future. She can live in the peace of the now.
And so, for the first time in years, Kataru’s girls play in the forest of their people with nothing but joy in their hearts.