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As the light settled on this particular evening, the smoke from the nearby RDA site had faded into a thin stain above the trees, far enough from So’lek’s camp that the forest had begun to sound like itself again, calm and gentle.
Their fight, only hours before, had been quick. Messy in places, surely, but it was quick to start and quick to finish. A small fuel depot had begun construction within the forest that would have become another wound in the land if it had been left alone for even a few more days. Tamtey had dropped from above before the RDA had understood where the attack was coming from, and So’lek had moved through the lower metal wars with his bow in hand, cutting off anyone who tried to reach the alarm.
By the time they left, the base was burning behind them.
And now, there was warm food between them, the low glow of the fire, and the quiet that came only after a successful strike. Tamtey sat across from him with one leg folded beneath her and the other stretched out toward the heat. She had washed most of the soot from her arms, though a dark smear still marked the side of her neck, close to her jaw. So’lek had noticed it twice already and had said nothing. If he mentioned it, she would ask why he had been looking that closely.
She was definitely in a good mood, he could tell from the way she ate, unhurried and comfortable, tearing pieces from the roasted root with her fingers while her tail swayed lazily behind her. After so much grief and war, there were finally times when her happiness came bright and loud, spilling out of her in laughter and quick words. Today it was a quieter kind that settled into her shoulders after a day when nothing had been lost.
So’lek preferred it, though he would not have said so.
“The Resistance camp was loud this morning,” Tamtey said, glancing up at him over her bowl.
He huffed softly. “It is always loud.”
"Louder than usual." And her grin is brighter than ever. "I think everyone was pretending not to talk about Nor and Ri’nela."
That caught his attention, though he did not show it too quickly. He had heard enough scraps of conversation to understand what she meant. Nor and Ri’nela had been seen together more often, and not in the usual and known way of shared survival. There was a new care and warmth between them, cautious but visible. Ri’nela’s voice was now changed when she said his name and Nor would stand nearer to her than he did to others, as if some part of him had decided distance was no longer useful.
“They have begun courting?” So’lek asked.
Tamtey’s mouth curved. “I think so.. Ri’nela has not said it plainly just yet, but I've seen her grinning too quickly when Priya asks about him.”
“And Nor?”
“I think Nor would rather fight a thanator than answer questions about it.”
“That sounds like Nor.”
Tamtey laughed quietly and looked back at the fire. The light caught in her eyes, and for a brief moment So’lek found himself watching too long again. He made himself reach for another piece of meat.
Courting was not a subject he often spoke of. It had belonged once to a life that felt distant now, to clan gatherings and teasing from elders, to songs shared in half-private places, to young hunters pretending not to care who watched them dance in celebration. Among the Resistance, these things existed in fragments. He could see that people still loved, still chose one another. But everything happened under the weight of war, grief, and waiting. Even joy had to find places to hide in these recent years.
He looked at Tamtey again. She was licking broth from the side of her thumb, unaware of the sudden direction of his thoughts.
The question came before he had fully thought through the decision to ask it.
“Were you taught about courting in TAP?”
Her hand paused and So’lek felt the mistake at once. He had meant the question practically, or close enough to practical that he could defend it at least. The Sarentu children had been taken young. Much of what should have been given by clan and kin had been withheld from them. It was reasonable to wonder what the humans had told them about bonds, choosing, and family. But the moment the words left his mouth, he heard how personal they were.
Tamtey did not answer immediately. Her gaze lowered to the bowl in her lap, and the fire made the silence between them feel smaller.
“Not really,” she said at last. “They taught us a little, mostly explanations that had only been spoken from their files. Alma tried to soften those lessons when she could, but Mercer did not want us thinking too much about clan life. Or anything that might make us want what had been taken from us, I suppose.”
So’lek’s jaw tightened.
Tamtey must have seen it, because her voice gentled before he could speak. “It was not all like that with her. Alma would sometimes tell us stories. They were not lessons exactly. Stories about Earth, about people who loved each other, lost each other, ruined everything for each other. Sky people stories are very full of that.”
His ears shifted. “Ruined everything?”
“Yes.”
So'lek could already feel the confusion. “And these were stories about love?”
“Some of them.”
He considered this with immediate suspicion. “That seems like a poor way to teach it.”
Tamtey smiled a little. “I did not say they were good instructions. Alma never told them like that. She would tell them when Mercer was away, or when one of us asked what humans believed before they came here with machines and guns. I think she missed having beautiful things to give us.”
He looked down at his hands. Beautiful things, given inside a cage, were still inside a cage. So’lek did not know what to do with Alma, even now. He knew she had protected the children when Mercer would have killed them and also knew she had stood inside the walls that held them, spoken lessons in the language of their captors, and believed herself loving while she helped shape a cage. Tamtey’s voice changed when she spoke of Alma. It carried warmth, grief, anger, and a loyalty So’lek did not always understand but had learned not to challenge carelessly.
“What kind of story?” he asked.
Tamtey shifted, setting her bowl aside. “There was one I remembered today.”
“A courting story?”
“Not exactly." She shook her head. "A love story. A tragedy, though.”
He said nothing, which was answer enough for her to continue.
Tamtey leaned back against the broad root behind her, her posture loosening as she searched her own memory. “Alma said it was an old Greek myth. Greek means it came from a place on Earth called Greece, or from the people who lived there long ago. It was from before humans had ships, before they knew how to cross the sky. Back then, they told stories about gods who ruled over parts of the world.”
“Gods," So'lek recalled the word he was sure he had heard before. "They are like spirits?”
“Something like that. More like powerful beings with sky people tempers. They argued, loved, punished people, made bargains. Alma said humans gave faces to things they feared or did not understand.”
So’lek frowned. “That is a strange way to speak with the world.”
“I suppose it was their way.”
He accepted that for the moment, though only because he wanted her to continue. Tamtey noticed and her smile returned, softer this time.
She leaned back against the root behind her, stretching one leg toward the fire. “There was a man named Orpheus. He was a singer. Alma said he played an instrument called a lyre, strings stretched over a wooden frame, and when he played it, every living thing wanted to listen. The animals came close and the trees bent toward him. Stones and rivers were moved by him, at least in the story.”
“So he was a healer?”
“No. A musician.”
So’lek blinked. “And this gave him power?”
“In the story, yes.”
He considered this. Music could carry memory, even their songcords held their lives through beads and song. The Anurai had once taught him the patience of breath through a bone flute, though he would not call that power in the way Tamtey described. It was more like skill and discipline. More like a way to quiet what might otherwise devour a troubled mind. But stones moving because a man played strings sounded like human exaggeration.
So’lek gave her a flat look and she laughed under her breath, then continued.
“Eurydice was the woman he loved. In some versions, they had just been married when she died. A snake bit her, and she was taken to the underworld.”
“The underworld is beneath the ground?”
“That is how humans imagined it. A place below the living world where the dead went. The spirit world, in their story. It is not like Eywa, not really, but that was how Alma explained it to us. When people died, they crossed into the realm of Hades.”
“Hades is the place?”
“The place and the name of the one who ruled it. Or one of the names, I think. He was a god of the dead. His wife was Persephone, who also belonged partly to the world below and partly to the world above.”
So’lek stared at her as her face warmed with amusement. “I know.”
He began questioning once more “This Hades ruled the dead, and his name was also the place of the dead.”
She hummed, and he continued. “And he had a mate who lived both with the dead and with the living.”
“For part of the year, yes. It explained the seasons on Earth, Alma said. When Persephone was below, the world grew cold. When she returned, green things came back.”
So’lek’s eyes narrowed. “Their Great Mother let a god take the green away because his mate was absent?”
Tamtey laughed into her bowl. “That is another story.”
So’lek shifted, resting his forearms over his aching knees. The night around them deepened and above Tamtey’s shoulder, a cluster of insects pulsed faint blue between the leaves, their light brightening and dimming like a slow breath. She watched them for a heartbeat before she continued, and So’lek watched her watch them.
“Orpheus loved Eurydice so much that he could not accept her death. He grieved, and his songs became so sorrowful that the whole world pitied him. So he did something no living person was meant to do: he travelled into the underworld to ask Hades and Persephone to give Eurydice back.”
So’lek’s ears flicked back against his hair before he could stop them. “That is not possible.”
“In the story, it is.”
“No living body follows the dead into Eywa and returns carrying them out again. Death is not simply a territory.”
Tamtey’s expression softened. “I know. Alma said humans do not truly believe it is possible either, at least not in the way the story says. I suppose they are altered to tell whatever they wish had happened.”
What someone wishes could happen. That he understood more than he wanted to. He had stood beneath trees that remembered voices he would never hear again except through Eywa. He had pressed his hands to bark and root and living fibre and he had watched Txuratrri’s breath leave her body and had known there was no bargain to strike, no door to break open, no enemy he could cut down to make the loss undo itself. There had only the terrible mercy of knowing she would not be alone beyond him.
A story where a man could walk after the dead and demand their return felt less like wonder to So’lek and more like cruelty. He questioned, but not aloud, why Alma would tell children such a story.
“Did he find her?” he asked.
Tamtey’s voice then lowered a little, as if she had reached the part of the story that had stayed with her longest. “Orpheus went down into the underworld alive. He played his music for Hades and Persephone, and his music moved them. Alma said even the dead wept for him. He begged for Eurydice to be returned, and Hades agreed, but only under one condition.”
So’lek looked up. “A condition?”
“Yes. Eurydice would follow him back to the living world, but Orpheus had to walk in front of her. He was not allowed to turn and look at her until they had both reached the upper world. If he looked back too soon, she would be taken from him forever.”
The condition sat between them as So’lek waited for Tamtey to add something. A second trial, perhaps. Some trick hidden in the path or even some monster waiting by the gate. But she only watched him, as if expecting his reaction.
“That is all?” he asked.
She hummed, as if it was so obvious.
“He had only to walk without looking behind him? And he agreed?”
“Yes.” Tamtey nodded, and when her expression changed, he recalled how she had called the story a tragedy. “They walked for a long time. Orpheus could not hear her behind him and he did not know if Hades had lied, or if Eurydice was truly there, or if she had fallen behind somewhere in the dark. So he kept walking, but the silence frightened him. When he was almost out, almost back in the living world, he turned.”
So’lek went still.
“She was there,” Tamtey said. “Right behind him, but he had looked too soon, and she was pulled back into the underworld, and this time he could not follow. So he lost her forever.”
The fire cracked once, sharp in the quiet.
So’lek looked at Tamtey, waiting despite himself. The story could surely not end like that. There had to be another bargain, or another attempt, some correction to the mistake he had made, but Tamtey did not offer one. She sat with her hands folded loosely in her lap, her gaze lowered now, and let the ending stand.
“That is foolish,” he said, almost scoffing.
Her eyes lifted. “The whole story?”
“The choice he made.”
Tamtey looked perplexed. “I am not sure it was a choice by then.”
“He turned his head. That is a choice. If he loved her, he should have kept walking.”
Tamtey tilted her head. “You think his love for her would have made it easier?”
“Yes.”
She simply shrugged, and the warmth of the fire seemed to reach her cheeks. “I think it made it harder.”
So’lek did not answer at once. He disliked that response because it was not careless. Tamtey had not said it to argue for the sake of arguing. She truly, wholeheartedly, believed it, and belief in her voice always made him listen far longer than he meant to.
She shifted closer to the fire, speaking with more care now. “Alma said Hades may have known Orpheus would fail. He loved Persephone. He knew what it meant to need the one you loved beside you, and he made a rule that forced Orpheus to do the opposite of what brought him there. Orpheus went into death because he could not let Eurydice be beyond him. Then he was told to lead her out without touching her, without hearing her, without knowing if she was truly there. Maybe it was cruel because it looked simple from the outside.”
So’lek’s gaze dropped to the flames. Simple from the outside. He had no patience for that kind of excuse, yet he knew there was truth in it. A clean order could become something else when pure fear entered the blood. Still, Orpheus had been nearly out and still it was not enough, it had meant that she was lost.
“He doomed her,” So’lek said.
Tamtey’s face softened in a way that made him feel too seen. “He did. But I do not think he meant to.”
So’lek looked away from her. The trees beyond the camp were dark now, full of movement too small to name. He listened to them because it was easier than listening to the anger the story had unsettled in him.
He thought of a man walking out of death with the one he loved behind him. He thought of the silence on that path, of the mind filling it with every possible fear. Had she fallen? Had she been tricked? Was she calling for him and he could not hear? Had he already lost her and simply not known it yet?
It did not change the answer. If So’lek had been given such a bargain, he would have fixed his eyes ahead and walked until the world ended or opened. He would not have turned for fear. He would have made fear walk with him, because that is what discipline was.
For a moment he regretted asking about TAP. The conversation had begun with Nor and Ri’nela, with the awkward tenderness of new courting and the careful curiosity he had not known how to hide. Now there was a conversation of death between them, and a human singer who had failed the only person he meant to save.
But Tamtey did not seem sorry she had told it. She looked a little thoughtful, perhaps, maybe a little sad? The story had settled over her too, though not in the same way. Where So’lek found judgment, she seemed to find grief.
“She must have been afraid too,” Tamtey said after a while.
“Eurydice?” The name sounded strange to him.
“She was behind him the whole time. Maybe she could see him. Maybe she could not speak. Maybe she knew he was fighting the urge to turn and could do nothing to help him. I used to think only about Orpheus, because he was the one with the choice. But now I think about her more.”
So’lek had not considered that. And once again, it irritated him that he had not. His stomach tightened.
“That is why the story is foolish,” he said, quieter now. “It leaves her fate in the hands of his weakness.”
Tamtey did not argue this time, instead looking back toward the dark beyond camp. “I think Alma liked the story because it was about how love can make people brave and foolish at the same time.”
So’lek considered that. Brave and foolish. It was closer to truth than he wanted to admit.
He thought of Nor standing too near Ri’nela. Of Ri’nela smiling before she could stop herself. Of Tamtey speaking about love that had been taught through fragments, stories passed in secret under sterile facility lights. He thought of the question he had asked her and the reason he had asked it, hidden even from himself until it was already spoken.
“Courting should be taught by the People,” he said eventually. “Not by human stories.”
“I know.” There was no bitterness in her voice, which made it worse. So’lek looked down at the ground between them, at all the scattered ash and leaf litter, and felt the familiar anger rise without anywhere useful to go.
Tamtey let him sit with it for a moment. Then she said, lighter, “Besides, I learned some things after leaving TAP. I know enough to understand why everyone keeps pretending not to stare at Nor and Ri’nela.”
His ears flicked despite himself. “And what have you learned?”
Her yellow eyes brightened. “That when people are beginning to court, they become very bad at hiding it.”
The fire snapped between them and he became aware, with great irritation, that he did not know what his face was doing. Turning his attention to the coals, he picked up his bowl again even though it was empty.
“Then perhaps they should learn discipline,” he said.
Tamtey laughed softly. “Yes. That is exactly what love needs, So'lek. More discipline.”
A quiet settled after that, as Tamtey finished the last of her food. So’lek banked the fire with slow movements, the story still lingering, and he quickly decided he did not like the story at all. It wasn't because it was called a tragedy, many things, especially on Pandora, could be named as such. Instead, he disliked it because it asked the listener to understand a failure that should not have happened. It asked him to pity the man who turned instead of the woman who vanished.
And yet, somewhere beneath his judgment, a new, unwelcome thought waited. If the silence behind him held Tamtey, if the path was dark and if every step away from her felt like abandonment, would certainty be so easy?
But So'lek did not let the thought go further, simply didn't have time to, as an interruption came swiftly. The comm at So’lek’s shoulder crackled so suddenly that Tamtey’s ears flicked back, and his hand moved toward his knife before the voice came through.
“So’lek? Tamtey? Are you both still near camp?”
Teylan sounded breathless, it didn't sound from fear exactly, but rather from having too many things to say and not enough time to explain calmly. So’lek straightened at once, the strange irritation left behind by the story setting itself aside with the ease of an old habit. Thought could wait, the RDA would not.
“We are here,” he answered, reaching for the small device clipped near his collar. “What is it?”
“There’s movement south of your position,” Teylan said, and behind his voice came the faint clatter of a keyboard and someone else speaking too far from the transmitter to understand. “RDA trucks, at least three that I can see. One is carrying drilling equipment, I think. Maybe more than one. Priya says the route matches one of the old survey paths, and if they unload before we get there, they could have a new site started before morning.”
Tamtey had already set her bowl aside and risen from the root, all softness gone from her posture. Only a moment ago she had been teasing at him over a human story; now she was reaching for her bow with the clean, practised readiness that always struck something profound in So’lek, pride and worry too close together to separate.
“How far south?” she asked.
“Not far from you. If you take your ikran, you can reach them before they finish unloading. I am sending the location now.” There was a small pause, then Teylan added, with a nervous little rush, “Please be careful. I know you are both good at this, but there are a lot of soldiers around the trucks, and they have one of those heavy turrets mounted on the lead vehicle. I do not think they know you are nearby.”
Tamtey glanced at So’lek, and her eyes were bright in the low firelight. “Then we should keep it that way until we are close.”
So’lek did not like the eagerness in her voice, though he understood it. There was a particular anger in stopping harm before it could take root, an entirely different satisfaction than destroying something already built. If the drilling equipment had not yet touched the earth, then the land still had a chance to remain whole and gentle.
“We will go,” So’lek said into the comm. “Watch their route. Tell us if they change direction.”
“Yes. Yes, I can do that.” Teylan exhaled, and So’lek could almost picture him hunched over the Resistance monitors, fingers moving too quickly, worry written plainly across his face. “I will stay with you as long as the signal holds.”
The comm clicked softer but did not go silent. Tamtey had already begun to smother out the last open tongues of flame, leaving the coals low enough to be hidden by ash. So’lek gathered what they needed without speaking. When he looked up, already prepared, Tamtey was watching him.
“What?” he asked.
Her grin flashed, quick and pleased, and it was like she had confirmed something, before she turned toward the dark path that led to where the ikran rested. “Come on.”
He followed her before he could decide whether to question her on her expression, and the forest opened around them: broad leaves brushing their arms, the soft give of moss beneath their feet, night insects flaring and dimming in the air. Above, their ikran stirred at the sound of approach. Tamtey’s lifted its head first, clicking low in greeting, and she went to it with one hand already outstretched, her face softening in the way it always did.
So’lek mounted quickly, but Tamtey was in the air before him because of course she was.
She rose through the trees in a sweep of deep blue, Telisi beating her wings hard enough to scatter loose leaves from the canopy. So’lek followed close behind, the night wind catching against his chest as the forest dropped away beneath them. For a moment the camp vanished behind clouds and shadow, and ahead, the south opened into ridges broken by mist and the faint, ugly glow of RDA lamps.
Teylan’s voice came through again, broken slightly by distance. “They have stopped. They are unloading now.”
“We see them,” Tamtey said, into her own device.
So’lek did too. The convoy sat in a narrow clearing made by an old scar in the trees, it wasn't fresh destruction but land that had not fully healed from some previous passage of machines. Floodlights cut hard white lines through the dark. The lead vehicle was angled outward with the mounted turret turning lazily as if the soldiers expected animals to attack, if that, not Na’vi. Two fuel trucks were positioned near the centre, and beyond them, a flatbed carried folded metal supports and drilling parts still strapped down. They had arrived just in time.
Tamtey shifted ahead of him, lowering toward the left side of the clearing.
“Tamtey,” he warned, though he already knew she had chosen her path of victory.
“I know.” Her voice came back through the comm, steady now. “Fuel first. Turret after.”
“The turret first,” So’lek said.
As always, there was pushback; he should have expected it. “If we take the fuel, they scatter.”
“If we take the turret, we live.”
There was the faintest pause, and then she said, “Then keep their eyes on you.”
Before he could answer, she dipped sharply, using the ridge and a drift of low cloud as cover. So’lek cursed under his breath, though there was no real heat in it, and drove Iley downward toward the opposite side.
The first alarm rang when his arrow struck the turret gunner through the shoulder and knocked him from the platform. The second came with Tamtey’s opening shot, an explosive arrow that hit the rear axle of the nearest fuel truck and turned the whole clearing bright.
The blast rolled outward in a wave of heat and startled shouting. Soldiers dove away from the flames whilst the turret swung toward So’lek as a second armed soldier climbed into place, but he was already moving, leaning low against his ikran’s neck as bullets tore through the space where he had been. He heard Tamtey shout somewhere below, fierce and exhilarated, and then another explosion lit the trees from beneath.
She is too bold, he thought again, and this time the thought had teeth.
So'lek circled hard, drawing fire away from the flatbed while Tamtey used the confusion he'd created to strike from the ground. He caught glimpses of her between smoke and metal: the curve of her bow, the flash of her teeth as she snarled at a soldier too close to the drilling equipment, the strong line of her body as she pulled him down and sent him sprawling into the mud. Then smoke swallowed her, and his fingers tightened around his bow.
In all honesty, So'lek did not like losing sight of her.
It happened in battle, of course it did, and he knew that. They had fought long enough as a pair to understand that watching one person too closely could get them both killed. Still, when Tamtey disappeared behind the second truck and did not reappear at once, his mind supplied the old human story with cruel swiftness.
Her behind him. Silence where her voice should be. Doubt creeping in.
So’lek pushed the thought away and fired into the turret housing. The arrow struck the ammo feed, and a burst of sparks spat from the side. The gun jammed halfway through its turn. A soldier shouted up at him, raising a rifle, and So’lek’s next arrow cut the sound from his mouth.
“Teylan,” he said sharply. “How many remain?”
“I cannot see clearly. Smoke is blocking the feed. Maybe six? No, wait, four near the drilling equipment. Tamtey is close to them.”
“Tamtey,” So’lek called, into his own device, and for a breath, there was no answer. Then her voice came through, strained by effort but alive. “Busy.”
The relief that moved through him was too quick to hide from himself. He folded it into anger and sent his ikran diving.
By the time he reached the ground, Tamtey had already destroyed the drilling rig’s power unit. The machine sat half-unloaded from the flatbed, its metal frame twisted, cables spilling from its side like torn vines. Two soldiers were down near the wheels. Another ran for the treeline, only to stop when So’lek landed in front of him with his bow drawn. The man dropped his weapon immediately, eyes wide behind his mask.
So’lek gestured sharply toward the others. “Run.” And so the solider did.
Behind him, Tamtey gave a short laugh. “You are so generous.”
“Practical,” So’lek said, slipping back into his own language, watching the man vanish into the dark. “He will carry fear faster than a corpse.”
Tamtey stepped into the light then, and for one clean moment he saw only that she was standing, breathing, whole enough to smile at him with soot across her cheek and victory in her eyes. And then he saw the blood.
It ran from high on her shoulder, bright against her skin before disappearing under a rough strip of bright white gauze pressed crookedly over the wound. The dressing was certainly human, torn from one of the RDA emergency kits. She had likely tied it herself in haste, badly enough that the edge had already darkened red.
So’lek’s thoughts emptied, noticeably enough that Tamtey followed his gaze and glanced down as if only now remembering it. “It is nothing.”
He crossed the distance between them before she had finished speaking. “That is not nothing.”
“It is a graze.”
“A bullet graze?”
Her ears tipped back, and So'lek was struck with the slight irritation that perhaps she found this amusing. “A small one.”
Reaching for her shoulder, he stopped before touching her, his hand hovering close enough that he could feel the heat of her skin. The wound was not deep enough to slow her, at least not yet, but it was deeper than she was pretending. The bullet had cut across the upper curve of her shoulder, ugly and red beneath the gauze, and if it had struck only a little lower, if she had moved a breath slower, if the soldier had aimed with steadier hands—
“So’lek,” Tamtey said softly. When he looked up, her expression had gentled, the bright edge of battle fading into something careful. “I am alright. Truly, it looks worse than it is.”
So'lek did not believe her. Or perhaps he believed that she believed it, which was not the same thing.
Teylan’s voice crackled faintly through the comm. “Is someone hurt? I heard something about a bullet.”
Tamtey, still looking at So’lek, reached up with her uninjured hand and tapped her comm. “Only grazed. The drilling equipment is destroyed, and the fuel is burning. No spread into the forest yet.”
“Oh, good. Good. I mean, not good that you are hurt, but good that the drilling stopped. Priya says wind is moving east, so the smoke should stay away from the denser growth. You should get back before RDA reinforcements arrive.”
“We will,” So’lek said, and it came out a little too controlled.
Tamtey noticed as always. “We should go, then.”
He looked once more at the ruined trucks, the broken rig, the soldiers fleeing into the dark. They had done what they came to do. The land here would likely still have scorch marks by the morning, but no drill would bite into it, and certainly no fuel would seep into the roots if the fire burned clean. They had arrived in time.
He should have felt satisfaction.
Instead, all he could see was the blood at Tamtey’s shoulder and the careless way she had wrapped it; if only she knew how frustrating it was to see her act as if her own body were another tool that could be used hard and checked later.
“Back to camp,” he said.
Tamtey gave him a small smile, almost teasing but too tired to fully become one. “Yes, sir.”
He narrowed his eyes at her and her smile widened just enough to prove she had meant to irritate him. She then turned toward her ikran, moving easily despite the wound.
So’lek watched her climb, watched her injured shoulder shift beneath the pressure, and definitely watched her hide the wince that followed.
There it was again, the old anger soaring in, without a place to land.
He mounted after her, his jaw tight as the flames from the destroyed convoy burned low behind them. Above, the night waited open and dark, full of cloud and distance and fresh air. Tamtey lifted into the night first, and So’lek followed her into the sky with the taste of smoke still sharp on his tongue.
Their destruction would draw attention soon, either from patrols already circling nearby or from whatever scouts the RDA sent to investigate when their vehicles failed to report back. Teylan had said nothing larger was moving in their direction, but So’lek had learnt long ago that the sky people’s reach could never be measured only by what appeared on a screen.
Tamtey flew ahead of him, Telisi’s wings cutting cleanly through the low mist gathered above the ridges. She kept a strong pace. Too strong, perhaps, for someone who had just been shot, though the easy movement of her ikran would have been enough to convince anyone else that the wound was minor.
So’lek was harder to convince.
He watched the line of her shoulder whenever the clouds thinned enough for him to see her clearly. She held herself well, as she always did, but he had seen the way her jaw tightened when she climbed onto Telisi’s back. The moment of care that entered a movement she usually performed with almost thoughtless grace. A graze, she had called it, as if the word could make the blood less red or the bullet less real or the gauze less haphazardly wrapped.
The forest moved beneath them in dark, breathing waves, the canopy rising over old stone and dipping into valleys where moonlight gathered faintly through the mist. It should have brought some relief to see it whole, especially after it could have been so easily disrupted this evening.
Tamtey would be glad for that. He knew she was already. Even ahead of him, half veiled by cloud, there was something bright in the way she flew. Victory sat vastly different on her than it did on him. So’lek felt it as a thing collected and set aside, one threat ended, one wound prevented, one more stretch of land kept safe for another day. Tamtey let herself feel the joy of it, even with blood drying beneath stolen gauze.
So'lek urged Iley a little faster.
It was intended to be practical. The sooner they reached camp, the sooner he could clean her shoulder properly. He could make sure she rested, if she could be convinced to treat her own body as something worth preserving for longer than the time it took to win a fight.
The thought sharpened the unease in him, and he pressed forward again, and slowly, without meaning to, he overtook her.
Iley moved ahead through a bank of low cloud, wings beating hard against the damp night air. For a short while, So’lek could still hear Telisi behind him, the familiar rush of her wings following close enough to settle him. Tamtey was there. Injured, stubborn, likely smiling at the back of his head because she knew he was worried and found some private, irritating amusement in it, but there.
Then the sound vanished.
It happened so quickly that his body reacted before his mind had time to understand it. One moment there was the rhythm of wings behind him, and then there was only wind and the soft, swallowing silence of the clouds around him. So’lek turned his head sharply, searching over his shoulder into the grey nothing behind him.
There was no sign of her.
His breath caught, hard and sudden.
“Tamtey!”
The name left him without measure or restraint. Iley checked his own flight at the shift of his weight, shrieking low as he banked, his wings cutting a tight and uneasy arc through the mist. So’lek scanned the clouds below and above, every possibility arriving in his mind with a brutal speed. Her communication devise could have cut out. Maybe Telisi could have dipped too low? Perhaps he wound was greater than she'd let on? Perhaps she'd even slipped off her ikran?
For one terrible instant, the story they'd spoken of earlier returned with perfect cruelty.
Her behind him. Silence where her voice should be.
So'lek had judged the musician from the myth with such certainty beside the fire, had decided that any man who turned when told to keep walking was foolish beyond forgiveness. Love should have made him steadier, So’lek had thought. Love should have given him discipline. It had seemed so clear when the woman behind him had only been a name from an old sky people story.
Then, Telisi burst from the cloud to his left, close enough that Iley snapped his head toward the movement. Tamtey leaned low along her ikran’s neck, her eyes bright and far too pleased with herself, the pale bandage at her shoulder still stark against her skin.
“You looked worried,” she called out.
It was a light teasing, a small piece of mischief after a clean victory. Tamtey was smiling as if the moment had been nothing more than a few well-placed clouds and timing, as if she had only meant to pull him from the grim silence he had carried since the clearing.
So’lek could not answer; he simply stared at her for a moment too long while the mist unravelled around them, and this time her grin softened before she looked ahead again.
She did not tease him further.
So’lek turned Iley back toward camp, and Tamtey kept beside him for the rest of the flight.
He was aware of her constantly after that. The far edge of his vision held the shadow of her presence. The rhythm of Telisi’s wings kept time beside Iley’s. She stayed close enough that he had no need to look back, and somehow that made the unsettled thing in him worse. The danger had passed and even though he was sure she was there, alive and near, the thoughts still lingered.
Of course, it was not the same at all. There had been no bargain, no rule given by a god of the dead, no path where one glance could pull Tamtey from the living world. The sky over Pandora was not the underworld of a human myth, and she had not been lost to anything except a stretch of thick cloud. All of that was true. So’lek knew it, and still his aching body did not care for the exact truth of a story once fear had found a place to live in it.
The camp came into view slowly, high amongst the floating mountains, dim under the eclipse. The coals from their earlier fire were still hidden beneath ash, and the remains of their meal sat where they had left them. Returning to the same place should have made the evening feel whole again, like a perfect loop. Instead, it felt strange, as if the camp had kept the ghost of their earlier conversation and had eagerly waited for them to come back changed by it.
Tamtey landed first, though with less ease than before. Her feet met the ground softly, but her injured shoulder drew tight as she slid down from Telisi’s back. This time the wince crossed her face clearly before she smoothed it away. So'lek saw it regardless.
But victory still clung to her even then. She turned briefly toward the exit of the camp, toward the expanse of the forest, and there was relief in the lift of her chin. They had stopped the RDA in time. No drill or site had damaged their home. For Tamtey, that seemed to matter more than anything.
Once the ikran were settled, he went to storage units beside his own hammock and gathered what he needed. Water, clean cloth, salve, fresh bandages. His fingers found each item easily, though there was a force to his movements he could not quite soften. He set everything near the area by the fire and gestured for her to sit.
Tamtey obeyed, another sign that the wound hurt more than she wanted him to know.
The fire had almost died, but there was enough light in the coals to work by, and enough glow from the plants around camp to see the damage clearly when he knelt beside her. The stolen gauze looked worse up close. White at the edges, dark red where it pressed against the wound. It was clumsy and crooked, stuck to drying blood and pulled too tight in the wrong place.
Even though he pulled at it carefully, it caught near the centre, and her breath drew in through her teeth. So’lek stilled at once, but she did not pull away, so after a moment he continued. The last of the gauze came free, revealing the graze in full.
It would heal easily, he knew that from its appearance but it still had done little to settle his anxieties. The bullet had cut across the upper curve of her shoulder, deeper than the word graze deserved. The skin around it was angry from the heat, movement, and the careless pressure of the field dressing. A little lower and it could have torn the muscle badly. A slight change in angle and it might have made drawing a bow painful for weeks. A little more force, and the night could have ended with a very different kind of silence.
So’lek dipped the cloth into clean water and began to wipe the blood from her skin.
Tamtey stayed still beneath his hands, and that stillness pulled at his focus more than any complaint would have. Usually, she filled any discomfort in their shared space with some kind of movement or sound, a small laugh, a shift of her foot, a remark meant to keep concern from settling too heavily. Now she only sat there, shoulders lowered, eyes turned toward the firepit while he worked. Perhaps she was thinking of the need to rekindle the dying fire; he hoped at least.
But the silence allowed his mind to drift back to the story she'd recounted earlier, unwelcome.
Orpheus turning at the edge of the living world with Eurydice behind him. The failure So’lek had condemned because it had seemed so simple. To simply walk and trust and keep you eyes forward.
Only now, could he understand, even with the reluctance that sat like stone in his stomach, that the simplicity was the cruelty. The mind could know what must be done and still the body might move before thought could stop it. The heart, worse still, could make that movement feel necessary.
He had turned to find her in the air because Tamtey was injured, because the sky was full of cloud, because she had disappeared after pretending her injury was nothing to care for. Any warrior would check behind him if his companion vanished.
All of that was true and none of it erased how quickly he had done it.
He applied the salve next. Tamtey’s fingers curled briefly against her own knee, but she stayed quiet. So’lek kept his touch as light as he could as thee scent of the medicine rose between them, bitter and green, familiar enough that it should have soothed him. The leaves they used for medicine was different from the forest he was raised in, but it should've soothed him nonetheless.
Everything around them was alive and continuing.
Still, he kept seeing empty cloud.
When the wound was clean, he wrapped the fresh bandage around her shoulder, firm enough to hold and loose enough not to restrict her movement too badly. Tamtey shifted when he needed her to, silent and cooperative in a way that made him suspect she was simply just studying him rather than simply enduring the treatment. He tied the bandage with care, checked the knot twice, then pressed the edge down with his thumb until he was certain it would not loosen while she slept.
If his hands lingered a moment too long, she didn't say anything. The high spirits she had carried back from the victory had softened under the weight of his silence. So'lek could feel her looking at him now and then, feel the question forming each time before she chose to leave it alone.
The fire gave a soft crackle beneath the ash and she shifted slightly, and his gaze returned to her despite himself. She looked tired now. Still glad, still carrying the relief of what they had prevented, but still tired regardless. The new bandage sat clean and pale against her skin. No more red to seep out and display her wound.
That should have been enough, really, to settle him. But So’lek looked at it and thought of what could have been. He thought of turning in the sky and thought of the certainty with which he had condemned a man for needing to know the one he loved was still there. The one he loved.
Tamtey’s voice, quiet but clear, broke the long silence between them. “Why are you so quiet?”
So’lek’s hands stilled over the supplies he had begun to pack away.
For a moment, he only looked at the fresh bandage across her shoulder. A small thing, in the end, compared to the wounds he had seen before. He had seen worse injuries on her, but this had been so striking. He could not stop seeing the blood beneath the old gauze, or the clouds where she had vanished from him for only a few breaths.
He had turned so quickly.
That was the part he could not set aside. Earlier, beside the fire, he had made the. choice of Orpheus into something simple. A foolish man with a foolish choice. A man who failed because he looked back when he should have trusted.
But in the sky, there had been no thought of trust. There had only been the sudden absence of her.
So’lek lowered his gaze to the cloth in his hand. “I was thinking of your story.”
Tamtey did not answer, waiting for him to continue.
He folded the cloth once, though it did not need folding. “I thought he was weak.”
“Orpheus?”
“Yes.” His voice was quiet. “I thought love should have made him keep walking.”
The words settled between them, soft and difficult.
So’lek looked toward the dying fire. He did not know how to explain the rest without giving away too much of himself, and perhaps there was no way to explain it that did not already do so. Tamtey was too close, too new. Her blood had been on his fingers. Her shoulder was beneath the bandage he had tied. The outline of her absence was still fresh in his chest.
“When you disappeared in the clouds,” he said at last, “I did not think to continue on; I only turned.”
Tamtey’s face softened as she looked down at his hands. “Alma said it was human nature,” she said softly. “To look back. To need to know.”
So’lek’s brow lowered slightly, though there was no anger in it now.
“No,” he said. “That instinct is not only human.”
So’lek swallowed once. “He still lost her. I know that. But I think…” His voice slowed, careful. “I think he turned because he loved her before he knew how to obey anything else.”
Tamtey watched him for a long moment.
Then, softly, she asked, “Would you do such a thing?”
His eyes lifted to hers. “To travel into death for someone?”
Her mouth curved faintly, though there was no teasing in it now. “To bring someone back.”
So’lek looked down at her arm, wiping away the last faint trace of dried blood near her wrist. His touch was light, almost reverent.
Then he looked back at her.
“I would.” Tamtey’s expression changed as he spoke, surprise moving through her before settling into something quieter.
So’lek held her gaze, and then spoke once more, softer. “To bring you back.”
In the glow of the dying fire, neither of them moved.
Then Tamtey leaned in slowly, almost as if she was giving him time to pull away. He did not. Her head came to rest against his shoulder, warm and careful, her injured arm tucked close between them. So’lek went still beneath the contact, his breath catching somewhere deep in his chest.
A moment later, she pressed a feather-light kiss to the edge of his jaw.
“Thank you,” she mumbled. Whether it was for her shoulder or for his words, he wasn’t quite certain.