Not quite sure yet

She had ruined too many clumps of moss already. A whine of frustration escapes her, irritated she couldn’t fix everything, irritated she couldn’t help. She tries again, one last go at gathering the moss. This time she attempts to still the trembling by focusing hard on the ridge on the outside of her arm, rather than the plant before her. Focuses on how the stripes wrap around it, how they warp slightly, moving a little bit towards her shoulder at the point where the ridge begins.

It doesn’t work. When her attention returns to the moss her hand seems to waver almost worse than before. She falls back onto the grass, lying on her back, almost screaming in frustration at how useless she felt. Couldn’t gather, couldn’t hunt, couldn’t… she was useless. She felt useless. She hated it. And she hated how she could feel tears pooling at her eyes, how everything shook, how the forest seemed to flinch with her when she heard Palulukan roar far below. 

What she doesn’t hate is how the earth and the moss press up against her back. How the grass sways soft over her arms and the soil almost rises to meet her, to hold her, the forest itself cradling her like Eywa herself was trying to comfort her.

Maybe she was.

As her mind calms down, so does the forest. The wind is less buffeting, the trees don’t hold their same tenseness, even Palulukan is quieter. She feels everything, here, like this, now. Feels the roots of the trees and plants stretching and winding their way through the soil. Feels mushrooms grow and fruit like they were her fingertips, feels trees sway in the wind like they were her hair. She sneezes and a flurry of atokirina’ is brought into the world; she moves her fingers and vines tangle the metal shell of a place long abandoned. She moves her toes and her roots dig into the ground, strong, stable. The next rain would not shake her, would not loosen her grip. She feels, no, Sees the pain of those cut from her, she can hear them hunting syil, too much, too much death, so she pushes and she creates, maybe by accident and maybe on purpose, stitching together life out of something physical and something else she didn’t know.

She drifts further.

She sees through the eyes of animals. A small herd of yerik investigating a metal tunnel in a far away rainforest. A huge beast she does not yet know, but calls himself Pasuk. The strength of palulukan and the swiftness of the winzaw and somewhere, somewhere so far away she is almost lost on the roots that carry her, a tug of familiarity. Of something like the forest seeing herself, except this tug was not her, this tug was alien, and her curiosity whispers through the leaves- but someone calls her and she disappears, and with her goes the pull.

Kiri.

That was what they had called her.

She sits up, rubbing her eyes, thin roots pulling and snapping on her arms. Mushrooms flowered just where her hands had been. An atokirina’ floats lazily out of her hair. Had she fallen asleep? How long had she slept, for roots to have grown over her like this? How long had Eywa held her for this to happen?

“Kiri.”

The name feels strange and familiar on her tongue, like she had known it before, always known it, for more seasons than she had hands to count. The forest seems to bend to respond, like the trees, the grass, the ground, Eywa herself knew that name.

And now she knew it too.

That felt comforting, almost.

“Kiri.”

Every time she repeats it, the forest whispers it back to her, and Eywa echoes her words. It feels powerful, the voice of the trees, powerful and ancient and it is not one voice but many and it is not really a voice, as a voice is, spoken out loud to call to someone or maybe to consider what to make with the horn of a syil. This voice drove deep into her bones and perhaps it was her voice too, because she could certainly hear herself in the echo, in a way that felt so ancient and new and many and few and loud and quiet and rough and gentle and here and not-here that it made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Who is Kiri?”

Eywa does not quite reply, but the forest whispers familiarity and something like you and something like other and something like we and her skin prickles with something like sister.

Her ears flutter back to pin against her head. 

She had a sister?

If she had a sister, why had she not met her?

Was her sister dead? Had her family been killed with the other Sarentu? She was not stupid- she had not told her mother yet, not told her about how if she dug her toes into the soil, how if she focused and listened to the forest she could feel all the old sites no-one touched. All the places no-one had spoken to Eywa in a long, long time. If her sister was dead, was that why she could hear her in Eywa? 

The forest stood quiet. 

She huffs.

She did not want to have to wait for an unspoken answer from this forest that kept all its secrets from her.

The next strange thing that happens, happens when she is asleep.

Naranawm sits high in the sky, almost nestled among the clouds. Zamhil's ikran is out on a hunt, as it usually is. 

And Mo'tsey is curled up in her hammock, bundled up around her palulukan toy, dreaming of another life. 

She dreams of having five fingers, taller, older, strange brown clothes and a classroom full of laughing children.

Students.

She was a teacher and they were her students.

The words are a different language, not the words she spoke to Anufi, harsher and with sounds she’d never heard before. There’s a slab of something on the wall behind her- blackboard, her mind says- and it is covered with symbols and drawings in something white she remembers as chalk.

Maybe remembers is not the right word. It was not her memory- she had never been here before, with dappled light streaming into the classroom. She does not know the name of whoever she is. She understands Avatar and Na’vi- Na’vi was her but Avatar was also her, her, her, her, a million versions of her because Kiri was her and this person was her and all her mothers were her and

And she wakes up with a slam to the back of her head. 

Her legs and arms twitch loosely, muscles moving in half-remembered spasms as Anufi sits next to her, watching carefully, an array of herbalist’s instruments around her, some tried, some discarded. 

“You wake.” 

Anufi’s voice is level. She must have been watching for a while. 

Mo’tsey winces. What had happened? What was that dream? Why did the forest feel as though it feared her, knew her, loved her, hated her? 

“Mama, I…”

Her mother’s ear twitches gently. 

“I had… A dream… I… I dreamed I was an Avatar, mama, a- a-” she sees Anufi’s confusion. “A dreamwalker, and I had a school, I was a teacher and I had students and I-” The alien words spill out of her mouth, words that make Anufi’s face harden and make her ears pin back and make her tail coil tight with anger. 

“Do not talk of that woman.”

She looks up. 

Anufi does not continue. 

When Mo’tsey turns six seasons old, things only start to change more. She begins to recover from the fear of Palulukan. Eywa speaks to her more, words and voices that she doesn't understand. Maybe it was because she wanted to tell her about Kiri, this strange other that none of them understood. Anufi had never heard of a Kiri. Not in the Kame’tire, not in the Sarentu, not in any of the clans she had visited on this side of Eywa’eveng. There were more clans, yes, but she did not know those, nor did she know their children. 

Mo’tsey had not told her about Pasuk, nor the other things she had seen months ago. That was her secret. 

Some days were strange. 

Some days, she felt helpless. Felt frustrated. Didn't know why, didn't know what for. The dreams did not stop, but she knew now that she couldn't tell them to Anufi. Couldn't tell her all these names she knew, Lo'ak and Teyam and Tuktuk, names the Kiri-person had told her. And maybe the Kiri-person knew names of hers, too. Knew them from when they spoke without words, when they dug themselves into the roots and found each other, their own secret that they kept from their parents. Both knowing their voices and the other's company. Neither knowing what the other looked like. 

She stands guard on the cliff now, watching palulukan, or maybe palulukan was watching her. The river crashed down nearby, swollen with rain and fast with its own weight. Eight blue toes push into the soil, finding the roots, chasing the hum of the signal, chasing  growth, chasing anything. Following Eywa like a lost child. 

Maybe she was. 

Her roots dig deep into the ground, finding, seeking, maybe looking at Naranawm high in the night sky but not seeing it, for her eyes were not her eyes in the way eyes were, just sensory organs as her roots sought out Kiri. Eywa was her eyes and her eyes were Eywa’s and the roots burrowed deeper, deeper, until-

A new star glitters in the sky.

She doesn’t notice it.

Maybe she should have.

Maybe if she had disconnected sooner it wouldn’t have happened.

The star gets bigger, bigger. Disappears over the horizon. She loses sight of it of course, her roots deep, gentle, holding the land together, breathing, feeling-

Pain rips through her.

She feels her roots break, snap, batter, soil upturned, and then burning burning burning, so vicious and so raw and so hot hot hot and she can’t stop the guttural scream that tears her throat, the night suddenly bright white with fire and panic. It’s not filtered, not numb- this deep into the root system the pain is hers to bear, and she feels Kiri’s pain, Eywa’s pain, or maybe it’s just all hers but it’s not pain like when she lost the tip of her tail, no, this pain drives deep into her, spearing and stabbing and pounding into her head, her guts, her lungs, her soul, it is her and isn’t her and all she can feel is the pain and the panic panic panic of animals running, of trees burnt and uprooted, the deep rumble of something she doesn’t understand over her body. Part of her mind helpfully offers dozer, that was right, a bulldozer, she remembered bulldozers and gunfire and fear, fear, fear, men in masks and screaming children and maybe she screams too, as her roots blacken and burn, because surely the forest was screaming and she could feel how the fire ate it.

Strong arms holding her, lifting her, and the connection is severed but she still feels it, the aching and burning deep in her heart and as tears soak her face she wishes for rains to come, rains to soak the burnt forest and soothe her children as they died from the human blaze.

It hurts.

That feels like almost the only thing she knows, after the fire. 

That was comforting, in a way. 

Pain meant it had been real.

Anufi had not spoken about what had happened. But she had woken up with her throat raw and her legs hurting and moss growing on her ankles, moss she had carefully pulled off before Anufi saw. It now rested under the stuffed palulukan, at the bottom of a basket, hidden from view. She wasn't sure why she had kept it. She wasn't sure what to do with it. Anufi had forbidden her from going into the roots- well, she had forbidden Mo'tsey from going outside. She wasn't sure her mother knew about the roots. 

Everything felt numb, in that way of not focusing on anything, but also like the fires had torched her inside and out. Like her body no longer worked. One hand picks listlessly at her blanket. She didn't want to eat. Didn't want to drink water. Didn't want to do anything, really, except bury herself into the roots until she had grown over the whole metal village they had made, until all the ikran and the nantang and even palulukan had destroyed the horrible place and driven these stupid humans out, out, out, back to their planet, back to their dying world before they killed hers. 

She rubs one hand over the wood of her home. It was soft, carefully shaped, by hands that knew age and knew the forest. And it felt calm, almost, calm in a way she hadn't felt before. Not since the fires. 

Her fingers trace it like she traces the roots, remembering every conversation with Kiri- how she had called her Mo'tsi by accident and she had loved that, loved her new name, for how it sounded like the word she was named for. 

“The forest knows you.”

“It knows you too.” 

That first time, that first dive, Kiri had guided her through the roots, shown her how to push plants up through the soil, spin together life out of the voices that whispered through them both. What would Anufi have to say about this, if she knew? About how badly she wanted to bury herself in the ground again, go into the roots and never come back? Could she even return to Kiri now the roots were so damaged? They hadn't grown back. She could feel it. And that makes sadness tug at her, tug at her spine, her brain, tug and tug until all she can do is sleep. 

The next weeks come dull and quiet. 

Anufi speaks to her sometimes. Mo'tsey doesn't reply. Her voice feels almost useless, too small and too quiet to do anything in this world that hate hate hates her. So she doesn't use it. She doesn't need to. Anufi understands her well enough. She knows when she is hungry and she knows when she is tired and when she picks at her food and cannot eat she just sits outside and braids grass with her mother. 

Mo'tsey doesn't mind too much. 

During the times she wants comfort, she crawls into her mother's arms and curls up there. She doesn't cry, or scream, or make any sort of noise at all really. She just… Sits. 

And, Anufi doesn't really have a problem with that. Zamhil tends to watch them both, tends to keep her distance. When Mo’tsey climbs into Anufi’s lap, she rubs her back, she holds her close. There wasn't really anything to it- she knew what Mo'tsey couldn't say. Her voice was gone, maybe for the moment or maybe for a longer time. Maybe it would come and go. But she did not only love Mo'tsey for her voice. True, it had been what she was named for- but it was not her sole trait. 

She is content to watch her, to comfort her daughter as Mo'tsey traces shapes into Anufi’s leg with her tail, or draws things into the soil. The little wooden prosthetic, so carefully designed, was not worn when she wanted to do that, wanted to feel the shapes she was making. And that was fine too. 

They spoke without words. Anufi wondered, sometimes, what had happened that night. She had seen the new star, heard her daughter's screaming, and she hadn't hesitated. The Clouded Forest was far from everything, walled off by hills and mountains, and the main Kame'tire group sheltered themselves deep into a ravine, hidden even further from the other clans who blamed them so quickly. So if something had happened on the other side of Eywa'eveng… How would they know? 

How could she heal this, when Eywa worked in ways so far from her control? 

One hand pushes a few braids out of Mo'tsey's face. She sighs. She would still love her daughter, no matter what. No matter what happened, what path she walked. No matter how deeply tangled within Eywa's threads she became, or how much the edges between reality and the Oma blurred her form, in the way they had that night, in the way that shifted her body like a thousand phantom illusions. She would always love this child that was brought to her so many years ago. 

Maybe she says it out loud, because Mo'tsey lifts her head slightly.

And something, something soft in the depths of the world, murmurs a whisper of thanks.