Angel

1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5, 6 Summary : Jake's deepening bond with Neytiri triggers jealousy in Reader and rage in Tsu’tey. During Jake's dangerous ikran rite, Reader protects him, forging a fragile trio. This new trust is betrayed when Jake secretly steals sacred site data for the RDA. At a clan festival, simmering tensions—romantic, political, and personal—explode, setting the stage for an unavoidable conflict. notes: i hate the summary for this chapter and this chapter is 9k words long it was 2 chapters but i made it into 1 let me know what you guys think about this chpater

Tsu’tey’s anger in the days following the direhorse lesson was a silent, tectonic pressure. Gone was the hot, public fury of the riverbank confrontation; this was something colder, deeper, building beneath his stoic exterior. It manifested in the rigid tension of his shoulders during the morning hunt, in the clipped silence where his usual low-voiced commands should have been, in the predatory focus of his eyes as they tracked Jake’s every fumbling movement.

Yet, Reader and Neytiri existed as the calm eye of that storm. With them, the pressure subtly eased—a quiet alchemy of presence and understanding.

For Reader, it was a matter of silent solidarity. She did not cajole or plead. She simply was where he was. She would sit beside him during the evening meal, not speaking, sharing a platter of fruit. She would join him on the high lookout, her single eye scanning the same horizon, her silence a companionable one. She was a living testament to a successful integration—a scarred warrior who had earned her place through blood and will, not through spectral signs. Her loyalty was not a question; it was a fact as solid as the bone beads in her songcord. In her presence, his diffuse anger found no target, and banked, redirecting entirely onto its rightful source: the dreamwalker.

For Neytiri, the method was different but the result the same. She did not argue with him about Jake. Instead, she would listen to his terse, simmering complaints with a neutral expression before deftly steering the conversation to clan matters—a border dispute with the Tawkami, the health of the viperwolf packs, the readiness of the new hunters. She pulled him back into his role as future Olo’eyktan, appealing to his duty and his pride in the People. And then, she would touch him. Not a lover’s touch, but one of profound, grounding solidarity: a hand on his forearm when passing a tool, her shoulder brushing his as they walked, her tail briefly twining with his in a gesture of clan unity. Each touch was a silent reassurance: I am here. We are aligned. Our people come first.

These small, powerful gestures acted as a valve, releasing the dangerous steam of his frustration. He could not sustain anger at the two pillars of his world—the fierce, proven huntress who mirrored his own values, and the Tsahìk’s daughter, his intended, the heart of the clan’s spiritual future. So, all that remained, hot and pure and undiluted, was his contempt for the alien interloper. Jake Sully became the sole focus of Tsu’tey’s distrust, a living symbol of every threat to their delicate world.

“Come on back, kid, that’s it.”

Grace Augustine’s face swam into view, her professional concern a thin veneer over sheer shock. Jake gasped, the memory of woven fiber under his back, of shared breath in the dark, clinging to him like mist. 

Reality was a cold, brutal subtraction. The antiseptic smell, the unyielding metal, the hollow ache in his real legs. It was a jarring return to a lesser life.

“Damn, you were dug in like a tick.” Grace helped him sit up. “Is the avatar safe?”

A grin split Jake’s face, wide and disbelieving. It felt like reporting from another planet. “Yeah, Doc—and you are not going to believe where I am.”

The next morning, the commissary buzz orbited Jake like gnats. Norm stewed over his bacon in a cloud of bitter envy, while Grace held court. “—so the kid’s out there,” she narrated, “and he’s not just getting a handshake. He’s being offered a bed. In the family sleeping level. They tucked him in.”

Jake shrugged, the back-pats feeling hollow. “It’s not something you can teach. It’s… a feeling.”

“Deep trust,” Max breathed.

Grace’s expression sobered, her eyes locking onto Jake’s. “For reasons I cannot fathom, the Omaticaya have chosen you. They’re weaving you into the nest. God help us all.”

The congratulations curdled in his stomach. His mind was already back there, tracking two specific presences in the bioluminescent glow: the intense, watchful gold of Neytiri, and the quieter, scarred vigilance of Reader.

The Ops Center felt like a blasphemy. The dream of Hometree was smothered under tactical holos and Parker Selfridge’s impatient sighs.

“Jarhead clan?” Quaritch turned from the viewport, his feral grin stark against the green world beyond. “And they gave you a cot? Unbelievable.”

Jake’s smile was forced. “They’re studying me. Seeing if I can learn.”

“Infiltrating the nursery. Perfect.” Quaritch’s ice-blue eyes gleamed. “I wish I had ten more like you.”

Selfridge cut in, tapping his tablet. “Just find the lever, Sully. What do they want?” He spun the display. A red line of a planned road slithered from Hell’s Gate to a massive deposit, its path a gash directly under the holographic Hometree. “Their village is sitting on the payday. They need to move.”

A cold stone settled in Jake’s gut. He saw the sleeping forms, the children. “Does Augustine know?”

“She’s on thin ice. So, who talks them into moving?” Selfridge asked, though it wasn’t a question.

Quaritch’s gaze was a physical weight. “Guess.”

Jake’s mouth was dry. “What if they won’t go?”

The Colonel’s voice was conversational, deadly calm. “I’m betting they will.”

“Three months,” Selfridge stated. “Find the carrot. Or we use the stick.”

The soldier answered, automatic. “I’m on it.”

The man inside felt the chain pull tight.

For Reader, peace was a series of carefully maintained rituals: the morning flight with Yrrap, the silent weaving in her cave, the evening application of Neytiri’s salve on her old burns—a tactile promise of now against the memory of then.

Today’s ritual was observation. Perched high in a tree overlooking the river bend, she watched Jake’s direhorse lesson unfold like a painful, comic play. He approached the mare, Pa’li, with the tense caution of a man defusing a bomb. Reader remembered her own first bonding after her exile—half-starved, hands shaking from need, not fear. The old stag she’d tether had sensed her desperation and responded with grudging calm.

Jake’s fear was a loud, buzzing thing. But she saw the moment the bond took. His whole body jolted, wonder wiping the fear from his face. It was the same humbling awe she’d seen in her own reflection after bonding with Yrrap.

Then he ruined it by thinking. “Forward,” he said, his voice tight.

Pa’li, receiving a jumble of neural shouts, launched like a spear. Jake became a sack of limbs before being hurled into the mud with a satisfying thump.

A laugh bubbled in Reader’s throat. On her knee, Lì’u chirped in mimicry. He rides like a stone with dreams of being a bird.

But from her vantage, she saw more than comedy. She saw Neytiri’s frustration, and beneath it, a flicker of fascination with the sheer, stubborn will it took for this alien to keep standing up, covered in muck, and try again. A will Reader understood in her bones—the will that had dragged her from a riverbank, half-blind and bleeding.

She tracked Neytiri’s movements: the tail twitching with each fall—not just in irritation, but in coiling readiness; the voice losing its melody, becoming clipped, militaristic. She was teaching him as she’d been taught by the harshest hunters. But Reader knew Neytiri’s hands could be infinitely patient, her voice a soft guide. She was not giving that to Jake. She was giving him survival basics. The distinction was a subtle possession Reader doubted Neytiri even realized.

As if summoned by the thought, Tsu’tey arrived.

He entered like a storm cloud, his direhorse moving with lethal grace. The air changed. Neytiri’s posture sharpened. Jake, hauling himself from the mud, became an intruder under hostile review.

Reader’s amusement died. Tsu’tey’s gaze swept over Jake with disdain, found Neytiri, then climbed to where she sat. Their eyes met through the foliage. A silent question: Why are you here, watching this?

Tsu’tey’s anger in the days following the direhorse lesson was a silent, tectonic pressure. Gone was the hot, public fury of the riverbank confrontation; this was something colder, deeper, building beneath his stoic exterior. It manifested in the rigid tension of his shoulders during the morning hunt, in the clipped silence where his usual low-voiced commands should have been, in the predatory focus of his eyes as they tracked Jake’s every fumbling movement.

Yet, Reader and Neytiri existed as the calm eye of that storm. With them, the pressure subtly eased—a quiet alchemy of presence and understanding.

For Reader, it was a matter of silent solidarity. She did not cajole or plead. She simply *was* where he was. She would sit beside him during the evening meal, not speaking, sharing a platter of fruit. She would join him on the high lookout, her single eye scanning the same horizon, her silence a companionable one. She was a living testament to a successful integration—a scarred warrior who had earned her place through blood and will, not through spectral signs. Her loyalty was not a question; it was a fact as solid as the bone beads in her songcord. In her presence, his diffuse anger found no target, and banked, redirecting entirely onto its rightful source: the dreamwalker.

For Neytiri, the method was different but the result the same. She did not argue with him about Jake. Instead, she would listen to his terse, simmering complaints with a neutral expression before deftly steering the conversation to clan matters—a border dispute with the Tawkami, the health of the viperwolf packs, the readiness of the new hunters. She pulled him back into his role as future Olo’eyktan, appealing to his duty and his pride in the People. And then, she would touch him. Not a lover’s touch, but one of profound, grounding solidarity: a hand on his forearm when passing a tool, her shoulder brushing his as they walked, her tail briefly twining with his in a gesture of clan unity. Each touch was a silent reassurance: *I am here. We are aligned. Our people come first.*

These small, powerful gestures acted as a valve, releasing the dangerous steam of his frustration. He could not sustain anger at the two pillars of his world—the fierce, proven huntress who mirrored his own values, and the Tsahìk’s daughter, his intended, the heart of the clan’s spiritual future. So, all that remained, hot and pure and undiluted, was his contempt for the alien interloper. Jake Sully became the sole focus of Tsu’tey’s distrust, a living symbol of every threat to their delicate world.

“Come on back, kid, that’s it.”

Grace Augustine’s face swam into view, her professional concern a thin veneer over sheer shock. Jake gasped, the memory of woven fiber under his back, of shared breath in the dark, clinging to him like mist. “Wha—? Oh.”

Reality was a cold, brutal subtraction. The antiseptic smell, the unyielding metal, the hollow ache in his real legs. It was a jarring return to a lesser life.

“Damn, you were dug in like a tick.” Grace helped him sit up. “Is the avatar safe?”

A grin split Jake’s face, wide and disbelieving. It felt like reporting from another planet. “Yeah, Doc—and you are not going to believe where I am.”

The next morning, the commissary buzz orbited Jake like gnats. Norm stewed over his bacon in a cloud of bitter envy, while Grace held court. “—so the kid’s out there,” she narrated, “and he’s not just getting a handshake. He’s being offered a bed. In the family sleeping level. They *tucked him in*.”

Jake shrugged, the back-pats feeling hollow. “It’s not something you can teach. It’s… a feeling.”

“Deep trust,” Max breathed.

Grace’s expression sobered, her eyes locking onto Jake’s. “For reasons I cannot fathom, the Omaticaya have chosen you. They’re weaving you into the nest. God help us all.”

The congratulations curdled in his stomach. His mind was already back there, tracking two specific presences in the bioluminescent glow: the intense, watchful gold of Neytiri, and the quieter, scarred vigilance of Reader.

The Ops Center felt like a blasphemy. The dream of Hometree was smothered under tactical holos and Parker Selfridge’s impatient sighs.

“Jarhead clan?” Quaritch turned from the viewport, his feral grin stark against the green world beyond. “And they gave you a cot? Unbelievable.”

Jake’s smile was forced. “They’re studying me. Seeing if I can learn.”

“Infiltrating the nursery. Perfect.” Quaritch’s ice-blue eyes gleamed. “I wish I had ten more like you.”

Selfridge cut in, tapping his tablet. “Just find the lever, Sully. What do they want?” He spun the display. A red line of a planned road slithered from Hell’s Gate to a massive deposit, its path a gash directly under the holographic Hometree. “Their village is sitting on the payday. They need to move.”

A cold stone settled in Jake’s gut. He saw the sleeping forms, the children. “Does Augustine know?”

“She’s on thin ice. So, who talks them into moving?” Selfridge asked, though it wasn’t a question.

Quaritch’s gaze was a physical weight. “Guess.”

Jake’s mouth was dry. “What if they won’t go?”

The Colonel’s voice was conversational, deadly calm. “I’m betting they will.”

“Three months,” Selfridge stated. “Find the carrot. Or we use the stick.”

The soldier answered, automatic. “I’m on it.”

The man inside felt the chain pull tight.

For Reader, peace was a series of carefully maintained rituals: the morning flight with Yrrap, the silent weaving in her cave, the evening application of Neytiri’s salve on her old burns—a tactile promise of now against the memory of then.

Today’s ritual was observation. Perched high in a tree overlooking the river bend, she watched Jake’s direhorse lesson unfold like a painful, comic play. He approached the mare, Pa’li, with the tense caution of a man defusing a bomb. Reader remembered her own first bonding after her exile—half-starved, hands shaking from need, not fear. The old stag she’d tether had sensed her desperation and responded with grudging calm.

Jake’s fear was a loud, buzzing thing. But she saw the moment the bond took. His whole body jolted, wonder wiping the fear from his face. It was the same humbling awe she’d seen in her own reflection after bonding with Yrrap.

Then he ruined it by thinking. “Forward,” he said, his voice tight.

Pa’li, receiving a jumble of neural shouts, launched like a spear. Jake became a sack of limbs before being hurled into the mud with a satisfying thump.

A laugh bubbled in Reader’s throat. On her knee, Lì’u chirped in mimicry. He rides like a stone with dreams of being a bird.

But from her vantage, she saw more than comedy. She saw Neytiri’s frustration, and beneath it, a flicker of fascination with the sheer, stubborn will it took for this alien to keep standing up, covered in muck, and try again. A will Reader understood in her bones—the will that had dragged her from a riverbank, half-blind and bleeding.

She tracked Neytiri’s movements: the tail twitching with each fall—not just in irritation, but in coiling readiness; the voice losing its melody, becoming clipped, militaristic. She was teaching him as she’d been taught by the harshest hunters. But Reader knew Neytiri’s hands could be infinitely patient, her voice a soft guide. She was not giving that to Jake. She was giving him survival basics. The distinction was a subtle possession Reader doubted Neytiri even realized.

As if summoned by the thought, Tsu’tey arrived.

He entered like a storm cloud, his direhorse moving with lethal grace. The air changed. Neytiri’s posture sharpened. Jake, hauling himself from the mud, became an intruder under hostile review.

Reader’s amusement died. Tsu’tey’s gaze swept over Jake with disdain, found Neytiri, then climbed to where she sat. Their eyes met through the foliage. A silent question:Why are you here, watching this?

He spoke to Jake, words meant to belittle. “You look like something the river spit out.”

Neytiri’s sigh was audible—a weary defense. The argument that followed was familiar, but laced with new tension. “You should be teaching those who can actually learn.” His glance toward Reader was a claim, a reminder. She was the worthy student.

Heat flushed Reader’s neck. She stood, deliberately silent, meeting his gaze until he turned away. She was not a trophy to be wielded.

When he left in a spray of anger, the silence was thick. Neytiri, back turned, took a long breath, the weight of her mother’s visions and her future mate’s suspicions bowing her shoulders. She thrust the lead back at Jake, her voice stripped bare. “You are dirt. A rock. A shell. Prove him wrong.”

It was the cruelest thing Reader had ever heard her say to him. And yet, Reader understood with painful clarity: it was twisted encouragement. Neytiri’s way. If he was a rock, he must become unbreakable.

Reader melted back into the forest.

Later, at the stream, she found Neytiri washing away the day’s dust. The fierce teacher was gone, replaced by a pensive woman.

“He is stubborn,” Reader offered, kneeling beside her.

“Stubborn as a root in stone. And just as graceful.”

“He kept standing up.”

Neytiri looked at her, golden eyes searching. “You were watching.”

“Lì’u found it funny.”

A ghost of a smile. “I saw.” It faded. “Tsu’tey is not wrong to be wary. He sees only the danger.”

“And you?”

Neytiri watched the water. “I see what my mother sees. A sign. A puzzle.” She turned her intense gaze on Reader. “And I see what you see, perhaps. Someone… trying. Against everything. It is a familiar song, is it not?”

The understanding was a warmth in Reader’s chest. Neytiri saw the parallel—the outsider trying to belong. A bond that excluded Tsu’tey’s certainties and even Jake’s clumsy efforts.

“His song is still being written,” Reader said.

Neytiri stood, offering a damp hand to pull her up. “Then we must listen carefully. And see which notes are true.” Her grip was firm, her touch lingering—a silent reaffirmation of their alliance, a river that, for now, ran deeper than the one where Jake Sully continued to fall.

Inside the shuttle to Site 26, Grace played den mother. “Jake, take number two. Norm, you’re on link ops.”

Norm’s shoulder connected with Jake’s as he passed. “I trained three years for this. I speak the language. He falls off the turnip truck—”

“It’s not our choice, Norm,” Grace cut him off.

“Yeah, well I didn’t come out here to wash dishes while you’re on some interspecies booty call.” He stalked away.

Grace sighed. “He can’t go far. Get in. Your fan club’s waiting.”

The transition was becoming a homecoming. One moment, sterile white light. The next—the living cathedral of Hometree. Neytiri was already moving. “Come. There is something you must see.”

At the eyrie, the air smelled of musk and leather. A mountain banshee emerged—all sinew and sharp angles, wings that could blot out the sun. “Do not look in her eye,” Neytiri warned.

“Ikran is not horse,” she said, swinging onto Seze. The creature shivered as their queues connected. “Once tsaheylu is made, ikran will fly with only one hunter. To become taronyu, you must choose your own. And he must choose you.”

“When?”

“When you are ready.”

She dropped from the branch, the banshee falling then sweeping up in a power climb that stole Jake’s breath.

From a nearby branch, Reader spoke softly. “She makes it look like breathing.”

Jake jumped. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” Her single eye followed Neytiri’s flight. “My first time seeing that… I thought it was madness. To throw yourself off a branch trusting something that could eat you.”

“What changed?”

She looked at him, the scarred side of her face in shadow. “I did. After my Uniltaron… I stood where you stand. The ikran that chose me—Yrrap—nearly killed me three times before he accepted me. Neytiri watched every attempt. Didn’t interfere. Just watched.” A faint smile. “When the bond finally took… she was the first thing I saw. Smiling like she’d known all along.”

Below, Neytiri landed with impossible grace. Reader stood. “She will teach you the spirit of the bond. I will teach you how to survive the choosing.” She dropped silently beside Neytiri. The two women exchanged a look—an unspoken conversation—before both turned to him.

The lessons began in earnest.

Neytiri taught like every mistake might kill him—because it might. She drilled language, tracking, the lethal dance of the hunt. But she wasn’t his only teacher.

When she drilled him on words, Reader would materialize with practical applications. “The word isn’t just the thing. Paywll isn’t just ‘healing plant.’ It’s the coolness on a burn. The relief. Say it like you feel that.”

When Neytiri taught tracking, Reader would kneel beside him. “She means stop listening for the footstep. Listen for the silence where the footsteps should be.”

They were complementary forces. Neytiri taught the spirit; Reader taught the mechanics. Neytiri showed him how to draw a bow with focus; Reader adjusted his grip so the string wouldn’t shred his fingers. “You learn the why from her,” Reader said, her hands guiding his. “I’ll teach you the how. You need both.”

One afternoon, Neytiri led him to a stream for “fishing with light.” After three failed shots, Reader appeared upstream. Without a word, she chose a different spot. “The fish rest here. They face upstream. Come at them from the side, where they’re blind.” She took his bow, demonstrated the angle. When she handed it back, their fingers brushed. “Neytiri teaches you to be the light. Sometimes, you just need to be in the right shadow.”

He took the shot. The fish shimmered as he pulled it up. Neytiri nodded. “You learn.”

But it was in the quiet moments that Reader’s teaching cut deepest. One evening, frustrated with a botched arrow fletching, he threw the materials down. Reader picked them up silently. She sat beside him and began to weave the feathers with infinite patience.

“My people—my first people—didn’t create,” she said, her fingers moving steadily. “We only destroyed. We took what we needed and burned what was left. When I came here… I didn’t know how to make anything that wasn’t a weapon.”

She finished the perfect fletching. “Neytiri introduced me to the clans weaving . Not just nets or cloth, but meaning. She said the loom is like the forest—every thread connected, every choice affecting the whole.” She handed him the arrow. “Your hands know violence. That’s not a weakness. But they can learn creation too. The bow defends. The arrow takes. But what we weave… what we make with our hands when no one is threatening us… that’s what we truly are.”

Back in the green embrace of Pandora, Jake sought solace in truly seeing the forest. He was practicing tracking when a flash of crimson shot past his face. Lì’u landed on the log he was examining, head cocked.

“Hey there, little spy,” Jake murmured, holding out a finger. The txeptsyal hopped on.

As if summoned, Reader’s voice came from behind him, soft and amused. “She reports to no one. She is a free agent. And currently, a consultant on your tracking skills.”

He turned. She stood a few paces away, arms loosely crossed, the morning light softening her scars. “I could use a consultant,” he admitted, gesturing to the confused prints. “It all looks like mud to me.”

She knelt beside him, and he was acutely aware of her proximity—the smell of sun-warmed wood and dried herbs. Lì’u fluttered to her shoulder. “Here,” Reader said, her hand hovering over a print. Her calloused finger traced the air above it. “See the depth? The splay? This is a viperwolf, moving with purpose.” Her hand moved to another. “This… is just mud. You kicked it.”

Jake laughed. “Tsu’tey was right. A rock sees more.”

Her single eye met his. “Tsu’tey sees what is on the surface. A rock. A shell. He does not look for the fissure where a seed might take root.” She picked up a smooth, water-worn stone. “Even a rock changes, given enough time and a persistent river.” She placed it in his palm, her fingers brushing his. The contact was brief, electric. “Do not be in such a hurry to prove him right.”

Before he could respond, a shadow fell over them. Tsu’tey stood on the path above, his eyes fixed on the scant inch between them, on the stone in Jake’s hand.

“Reader,” Tsu’tey’s voice was a low rumble. “Neytiri is looking for you. At the weaving loft.” The message was clear: Your place is with her, not here in the mud with him.

Reader stood smoothly. “I was just leaving.” She glanced down at Jake, her eye holding a spark of something defiant, shared. “Remember the seed, Jake Sully.” Then she was gone.

Tsu’tey watched her go, then turned his cold focus on Jake. “The forest has many lessons. Mud is for growing plants. Not for dreaming warriors.” He strode away, as if to reassert the connection between him, Reader, and Neytiri.

Jake looked at the stone. It was just a rock. But for a moment, held in her scarred hand, placed in his with a touch that felt like a secret, it had felt like a promise.

Reader’s daily life now bent around Jake’s presence. Her mornings often began with observation from a high perch near Site 26, watching the odd human rituals, mapping the source of his spirit. You must know the root to understand the tree.

Her hunts became lessons. She would return and find Jake and Neytiri. “The yerik,” she’d say, laying it down. “See the angle? It was running uphill. A week ago, you would have aimed for the center mass.”

Jake would study the carcass. Neytiri would stand beside him. “She reads the story in the body. The hunt does not end with the kill. It ends when you understand why the kill was given.”

Reader would demonstrate the butchering, explaining the economy of life, the gratitude that must follow the taking. She was passing on a legacy, repairing a thread severed in her own past.

Her quiet times with Neytiri were now often shared. The evening ritual of the healing salve, once intensely private, now had a witness. At first, Reader was stiff under Jake’s gaze. But Neytiri’s touch never wavered. Gradually, Reader relaxed. Jake’s silence felt respectful, his attention that of a student learning a new history.

One evening, as Neytiri’s fingers traced a terrible burn on her face, Reader spoke, her voice barely above the fire’s crackle. “My first people believed a scar was a wall. Something to make you harder. To keep the world out.” She felt Neytiri’s hand still. “I am learning… here… that a scar can be a bridge. It is a place where the world touched you, and you lived. It connects you to others who carry their own maps.”

She didn’t look at Jake, but felt his understanding like a physical warmth. He was a man covered in invisible scars. In teaching him to read the forest, she was teaching him to read her. And in doing so, re-reading herself.

Her flights with Yrrap were no longer solely for patrol or flights with Neytiri and Tsu’tey. She would time her circuits to coincide with Jake’s lessons on the high cliffs, calling down corrections from a thermal hold. “Your right foot is searching like a blindworm! Six hand-spans to your left, a lip of rock with green moss. Trust it!”

From above, Neytiri would meet her gaze. No words were needed. It was coordination, shared investment. They were weaving a safety net from two sides of the loom.

Lì’u became the unspoken mascot of this new trio, dividing her time with perfect impartiality. Her easy movement was a daily symbol of the bond forming—not a closed circle, but a triangle.

One afternoon, Reader found Jake alone by the stream, struggling with the concept of txe’lan, the heart-mind.

“It’s not… it’s not just emotion, and it’s not just thought,” he grunted.

Reader sat nearby, cleaning her knife. “You are trying to translate a color to a blind man. Do not use your old words. Use your new senses. What does txe’lan feel like when you see Neytiri fly? What does it sound like when the forest is silent, but not empty?”

He closed his eyes. “It… feels like the hum before a thunderstorm. Full of potential. And it sounds like… the space between drumbeats. Where the echo lives.”

Reader nodded, a genuine smile touching her lips. “Srane. Yes. Now you are not speaking Human or Na’vi. You are speaking Jake. That is where true understanding begins.”

The simplicity struck her. Here she was, a woman whose first language was loss and fire, teaching a man from the stars the language of feeling. Her daily life had become an act of translation. And in helping Jake find his place, she was discovering uncharted territories within her own scarred heart. The routine of survival had become a shared journey of becoming.

The shuttle to Site 26 was a severance. For Tsu’tey, watching it vanish felt like a vital part of his world was being carved away. Reports trickled back, each a thorn: They are seen together often. The little spy sleeps on his shoulder.

The image that haunted him was of the three of them as a unit—a closed circle from which he was excluded. Jealousy curdled into betrayal. Reader, you were a blade I trusted at my side. And now you teach our secrets to this hollow shell?

He waited, his anger compressing into a cold stone.

The confrontation happened on the outskirts, where Hometree’s great roots dug into the earth. He stepped from behind a trunk, blocking their path as they returned. “You return,” he rasped, no welcome in his voice.

The trio stopped. Neytiri’s eyes narrowed. Reader went still, her single eye meeting his with cautious focus. Jake tensed between them.

“The mountains were instructive,” Neytiri said, tone neutral.

“I do not doubt it.” His gaze swept over them. “The air up there must be thinner then usual. It seems to make people forget where the ground is.”

Reader took a half-step forward, a shield. “The ground is where Eywa’s roots are deep. We have not forgotten.”

“Have you not?” He stepped closer, ignoring Jake. “I hear stories. Of a sky-person learning from not one, but two of our finest. A new family in the high rocks, while the clan wonders what knowledge is traded for smiles.”

Neytiri’s chin lifted. “My mother gave the task. He learns. That is all.”

“He infests!” Tsu’tey snapped, control cracking. He jabbed a finger at Jake, but spoke to them. “He digs his tendrils into everything! First the home, now your time, your knowledge. What is next? Your loyalty?” His burning eyes locked on Reader. “You. I saw a hunter who earned her place through fire and blood. Now I see a woman playing teacher, weaving a dreamwalker into our patterns. Does your past mean so little?”

Reader flinched. Before she could retort, Jake stepped forward. “Hey. Leave her out of this. It’s me you have a problem with.”

Tsu’tey’s head swiveled slowly. The full force of his contempt was a physical wave. “You,” he sneered. “You are not a ‘problem.’ A problem can be solved. You are a stain. A noise.” He leaned in, voice venomous. “You think because they are patient, you are something? You are a tool. And when you break—and you will break—they will cast you aside. And I will sweep the pieces into the fire where they belong.”

“Tsu’tey!” Neytiri’s cry was sharp with anger. “You speak to clan members with the tongue of a spiteful child! Where is your wisdom?”

“Do not speak to me of wisdom!” he roared. “I see the division he brings! You carve out a piece of our future—my future—and give it to him as a toy!” The raw pain beneath his anger was exposed, ugly. He was terrified of being replaced.

The silence was thick. Reader broke it, her voice diamond-hard. “You speak of my past. It taught me to recognize poison. A heart ruled only by suspicion becomes a fortress with no one inside to defend it.” She looked from his tormented face to Neytiri’s fury, to Jake’s guarded stance. “You see a choice between him and the clan. You are wrong. The choice is between the clan as a wall of thorns, and the clan as a living forest. One keeps everything out. The other… tests what takes root. I have seen what thorns do. I will not help you grow them.”

She turned and walked away, into the deeper forest.

Neytiri stared at Tsu’tey, betrayal and disappointment storming in her expression. “You have shamed yourself. And wounded one who did not deserve it.” She turned to follow Reader, pausing to look back at Jake. A silent command: Come.

Jake met Tsu’tey’s seething gaze a moment longer. There were no words. He turned and followed, leaving Tsu’tey alone, his jealousy now laced with the bitter thread of isolation.

The pinnacle of training came. After a long stalk, Jake’s arrow took a hexapede cleanly. As it fell, he felt only profound responsibility. Kneeling beside it, the words stuck.

From the trees, Reader’s voice came softly, reminding him of the old prayer. “I See you, Brother,” he began haltingly. “And thank you. Your spirit goes with Eywa, your body stays to become part of the People.”

Neytiri’s approval was a warm weight. “A clean kill. You are ready.”

That night at Site 26, Grace confronted him as he emerged, gaunt and shivering. “You’re burning too hard. You look like crap.”

“I made a kill today,” he said. “I know where that meal came from.”

“This body.” She tapped his human chest. “You need—”

“I know what I need!” The anger surprised them. He lowered his voice. “I know, Grace. But out there… that’s where I’m real.”

Over terrible coffee, she told him about the school. About Sylwanin. Her voice was calm, but her hands shook. “It’s a job. Learn what you can. But don’t get attached. It’s not our world, Jake. And we can’t stop what’s coming.”

The next morning, he found Reader at the stream, carving something small.

“Grace told me about the school,” he said.

Her knife stilled. “I know the story. From Neytiri. On the nights the memories are too heavy.” She looked up. “That pain… it’s why she tests you so hard. Why she needs to be sure. Not just for the clan. For Sylwanin.”

“And you? Why do you help?”

She considered the carving. “Because someone helped me. Because when I had nothing, Neytiri saw something worth saving. Not just a warrior. A person.” She met his gaze. “You have good hands, Jake Sully. They want to create, not just destroy. I see that. So does she. We’re just… teaching them how.”

She stood. “Come. Neytiri wants to show you the fan lizards before we leave.”

In the clearing, as Neytiri plunged laughing into the ferns, sending bioluminescent disks swirling, Jake understood. This joy, this beauty—this was what they were fighting for. What Reader had chosen over ashes. What Grace still loved from a distance. What Sylwanin died protecting.

Reader stood beside him, watching. Lì’u chirped on her shoulder.

“Ready?” Reader asked softly.

He wasn’t sure if she meant for the walk back, for Iknimaya, or for whatever came after. But looking at Neytiri’s radiant face, then at Reader’s quiet, scarred certainty, he knew his answer.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.”

“We leave for Iknimaya tomorrow. To choose an ikran. Or die trying. Grace thinks I’m getting in too deep. She’s right. But she’s wrong about one thing—it is my world now. Maybe it always was supposed to be.

Neytiri says the ikran has to choose me too. I keep thinking about what Reader said—about being in the right shadow. Maybe that’s all any of us are doing. Finding where we fit in the pattern.

I’m not the man who came here anymore. I don’t know who I’m becoming. But for the first time, that doesn’t scare me.

End log.

The hunt festival was a wild, breathing thing, its drumbeat echoing in the chest long after the fires had died to embers. For Jake, the euphoria was a tangible force; he’d flown, he’d hunted, he’d been accepted. For Reader, watching from the periphery, the celebration was a mirror held up to a deepening fracture within their new, fragile triad.

In the days that followed, a new, subtle choreography emerged. Neytiri moved with a looser grace when Jake was near, a certain warrior’s tension dissolving into something warmer. And Jake’s gaze followed her like a plant seeking the sun, his human awe transforming into a Na’vi reverence that was both earnest and overwhelming. Reader, the silent guardian, trailed them, a ghost in the dappled light. The lessons continued—the flow of Eywa’s energy, the weaving of baskets, the language of roots—but the space between teacher and student had become charged, intimate. When Neytiri guided Jake’s hands to feel the heartbeat of a root, her own hands lingered. Her tail, once a whip of precise movement, swayed in a gentle, unconscious rhythm beside his.

A sharp, familiar loneliness lanced through Reader, colder and clearer than any jealousy she’d felt towards Tsu’tey. It was the solitude of the riverbank, the understanding that a circle was closing, its perfect line excluding her. She saw the way Neytiri’s laughter, freer and more frequent with Jake, was a different sound than the one they shared in their secret cave. He was filling a space she hadn’t known was empty.

One afternoon by the stream, the tension snapped. Neytiri was teaching Jake to weave, her arms encircling him from behind, her form pressed against his back as she guided his fumbling fingers.

Reader stood abruptly, water sloshing from her bowl. “I will check the southern snares.”

“They were checked at dawn,” Neytiri said, a line of concern between her brows.

“Then I will check them again.”

“Reader.” Neytiri’s voice held a gentle command. “Sit. Your hands are better at this than mine. Show him.”

The request was a peace offering, a reinstatement. But it felt like a consolation prize. Reader sat, taking the messy reeds from Jake. Their fingers brushed, and in his golden eyes, she saw a flicker of understanding—an apology for a trespass he couldn’t name. She worked in furious, perfect silence. “You think too much,” she said, not looking up. “The reed does not care about your thoughts. It only responds to pressure and direction. Feel it. Don’t command it.” She finished the flawless basket and thrust it at him. “There. Now you have something to carry all your confusion in.”

She fled to the sky.

Yrrap felt her turmoil the moment they connected, his great wings beating the air with agitated power. Why does this hurt? she asked the wind. I wanted her to be happy. The ugly truth unfurled in the thin, cold air: it wasn’t just Neytiri’s happiness. It was the erosion of her own unique claim. Neytiri had been her first anchor, her healer, her confessor. Their bond was a private country, and now Jake was drawing maps of it. And him… the dreamwalker with the empty cup. His stubborn will had stirred something perilously close to affection in her own guarded heart. To see that focus fixed so completely elsewhere was a double abandonment.

She returned at dusk to find Tsu’tey on a high platform, sharpening his knives with furious intensity. “You fly like you are chased by toruk,” he grunted.

“Perhaps I am.”

He looked up, his eyes holding a bleak recognition of shared discontent. “He is with her now. In the weaving den. She laughs at his clumsy jokes.”

“She deserves laughter,” Reader said, the words bitter on her tongue.

“Do not speak to me of what she deserves!” Tsu’tey stood, his presence looming. “You feel the wrongness. Yet you helped weave him into the fabric!”

“I helped because Eywa willed it! Because I know what it is to be an outsider!”

“I have not forgotten the outsider!” he growled, stepping closer. “I remember the warrior beneath the scars. Not the one who moons over a sky-person’s infatuation like a lovesick syìl!”

The accusation struck her core. He saw her flinch, the pain in her eye, and his anger bled into a wretched, shared understanding. “You think I am blind? I see the way you watch them. You gave him pieces of yourself, and now you watch him give them to her.” He shook his head, a portrait of weary defeat. “We are both fools, Reader. Guarding treasures that are being stolen by the same thief.”

His words poisoned the air long after he left. He was right. She had been the bridge. Now she stood on the far shore, watching them cross together.

The following days were a silent torment. She hunted farther, patrolled longer, vanished into duties. But the clan was small, and fate was cruel.

Returning from a scouting flight, she saw them below in the fan-lizard meadow. Not learning, not training. Playing. Neytiri dashed through the ferns, laughter pealing as she sent a cloud of glowing disks spinning. Jake followed, a picture of pure, unguarded joy. It was the most beautiful thing Reader had ever seen. It felt like a shard of ice in her heart.

That evening in the waterfall cave, her last sanctuary, she found Neytiri waiting, studying the tapestries—the sunset with Neytiri’s face, and Jake’s clumsy, energetic ikran.

“You have been avoiding me,” Neytiri said softly.

“I have been busy.”

“You are a poor liar. The cave feels cold, tíyawn.”

The old endearment was a blade. Reader kept her back turned, stoking the fire. “Perhaps it is the season.”

“It is not the season.” Neytiri moved before her, forcing her gaze. “It is you. And me. And him. Your spirit retreats. Why?”

The dam broke. “Why? You, who shine like a captured star whenever he is near? You, who have forgotten the taste of silence?” The truth, ugly and raw, tumbled out. “You were my first true thing here. My anchor. And now you have a new anchor. One that fits the shape of your future better than I ever could.”

Neytiri’s eyes widened with painful comprehension. “You have feelings for him.”

“No! I have feelings for you!” The confession was a broken thing at their feet. “And now I am being left behind. Again.”

“Oh, ma tíyawn.” Neytiri cupped Reader’s scarred cheek, her touch infinitely tender. “You are not a replacement. You are a foundation. What I feel for Jake… it is a new vine, reaching for sun. What I have with you… it is the root in the deep earth. One cannot live without the other.” She pulled her into a fierce embrace. “Never. You are woven into me. What grows between Jake and I… it does not cut the old threads. It adds new colors. Stronger patterns.”

She held Reader at arm’s length, her gaze blazing. “You see him. Truly see him. Do you think I do not see the way he watches you when you think no one is looking? The respect is for the warrior. The curiosity… that is for the woman who emerged from the ash.”

Neytiri kissed her forehead, a blessing. “Our hearts can hold many truths. Do not hide from your own just because you fear it mirrors mine.”

Reader was left alone with the fire and the waterfall and the terrifying, liberating echo of those words. The woman who emerged from the ash. She looked at the two tapestries side-by-side—her perfect, painful sunset and Jake’s hopeful, chaotic flight. Two different stories. Two different kinds of beauty. Perhaps the pattern was not being ruined, but expanded in ways she was too close to see.

The ground shook with the heartbeat of a mountain. The Iknimaya was not a test; it was a threshold. As Jake clung to the floating beanstalk, the world a vertical nightmare of stone and sky, a shadow fell over him. Yrrap descended in a controlled spiral, and on his back, Reader sat, a silent, steadying presence. She said nothing, but her eye held a shared memory: I fell here too. I got back up.

When his foot slipped on slick moss, her hand shot out, gripping his wrist, pulling him to safety. “Trust the darker vines,” she instructed, her calm a tether in the dizzying void. She paced his climb, a winged escort, calling out warnings about vine integrity, her presence a quiet counterpoint to Tsu’tey’s challenging lead.

At the rookery grotto, a silent pact was renewed. Neytiri, who would guide him into the arena, met Reader’s gaze. Reader, who would guard from the skies, gave a slight nod. As Tsu’tey ordered Jake to go first, a cruel smirk on his lips, Neytiri squeezed Jake’s hand—a bolt of trust and warmth—before leaving him alone on the ledge with the shrieking monsters.

The battle was brutal. Jake was thrown, slammed, mocked. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard a sharp gasp. High above, on Yrrap’s back, Reader was leaning forward, her face a mask of tense solidarity, one hand outstretched as if to physically pull him from danger. That image of her fierce, silent partnership ignited his final reserve. He scrambled, pinned the beast, and made the bond.

Tsaheylu. The world became full.

His first flight was a spinning, shrieking nightmare that crystallized into sublime control. And there, above it all, Reader kept pace on Yrrap—a witness, a guardian, a subtle guide when he faltered.

The days that followed were a baptism of wind and light, a montage of three, not two. In the grotto, Neytiri explained the spirit of flight with melodic grace while Reader added the practical language of muscle and wind, guiding Jake’s hand to feel the cues in Bob’s wings. In the air, Neytiri led their joyful dances; Reader flew protective perimeter, her sharp gaze and Yrrap’s instinct herding Jake from danger during a mist-shrouded canyon chase.

Soaring one afternoon, Neytiri pointed out the Well of Souls. The sacred arches hummed with energy. Reader brought Yrrap alongside, her voice soft with memory. “I saw it after my Iknimaya. I still felt like smoke and ashes inside. Seeing that place… it was the first time I felt connected to the deep roots, not just the scorched earth.” Her confession, offered in the high, quiet air, bound them in a new way.

Then came Toruk.

The shadow was ancient and utter. Jake’s desperate plummet into the canopy was a green-black tunnel of terror. When he emerged, shaking, Neytiri was there, her face pale. But it was Reader who landed first, leaping from Yrrap to run urgent hands over Bob, checking for injury.

“Is he hurt?” she demanded, her voice tight with a fear that had nothing to do with the leonopteryx.

“Do not ever do that again,” she breathed, trembling. “You do not throw away a bond like that. It is not just your life.”

In her raw fear, Jake saw the echo of all she had lost. Her terror was for the sacredness of the connection itself. Neytiri, understanding, placed a calming hand on her arm. “He faced the Last Shadow and lived.”

The tension shattered into shared, adrenaline-fueled laughter and relieved smiles. In that moment, covered in leaves and sweat, the three of them were bound by something profound—a shared relief, a recognized fragility, and the unspoken knowledge that they were, for better or worse, a triad.

That night, in the sterile shack at Hell’s Gate, the hologram of the Well of Souls felt like a betrayal. Superimposed over the image were Neytiri’s radiant pride and Reader’s reverent profile. As he downloaded the coordinates onto the chip for Quaritch, the stone Reader had given him—the “seed” rock—burned in his pocket. He was gambling the trust of the two women who had taught him to feel alive for the ghost of the man he used to be. The borrowed energy of Pandora was now a debt, and the cost was the very hearts that had loaned it to him.

That night, in the sterile quiet of the Hell’s Gate link shack, the vibrant world of the People felt like a fading dream. The adrenaline from the Toruk encounter had cooled into a dull, metallic dread. Grace Augustine pulled up scientific graphics on her workstation—clinical, dispassionate images of the Great Leonopteryx. The holographic creature lacked the soul-freezing majesty, the ancient, predatory intelligence Jake had felt vibrating in his bones. It was just data.

Then Grace pulled up another file: a 3D aerial shot of a breathtaking geological formation—stone arches like rainbows over a deep caldera, a single, ancient willow at its heart.

“Vitraya Ramunong,” Jake murmured, his voice hollow in the cramped space. “The Well of Souls.”

“That’s it,” Grace said, unaware of the sacrilege she was casually displaying. “Their most sacred place. I’d die to get samples. Outsiders are strictly forbidden.”

Jake stared, but he didn’t see the arches or the tree. Superimposed over the hologram were two other, far more vivid images: Neytiri’s face, radiant with solemn pride as she named the site from Bob’s back, her voice full of a lifetime of reverence. And Reader’s profile, turned away from him in that moment, softened with a painful, reverent memory as she’d whispered, ‘I still felt like smoke and ashes inside. Seeing that place… it was the first time I felt connected to the deep roots.’

He wasn’t just looking at coordinates. He was staring at a betrayal. He was about to hand over the heart of their world, a place that symbolized healing for one woman and sacred history for the other, to men who would see only a strategic obstacle or a mineralogical curiosity.

His hand hovered over the console as he downloaded the data onto a chip. The smooth, water-worn stone in his pocket—the “seed” Reader had given him—felt like a condemned man’s weight. He thought of her fierce, terrified inspection of Bob after the Toruk attack, her trembling command: ‘You do not throw away a bond like that.’ He was about to risk a bond infinitely more complex and precious.

But the chains were real. The ghost of his brother, the memory of a promise, the twisted remains of his own body in the wheelchair, and the cold, pragmatic voice of Colonel Quaritch formed links he couldn’t yet break. Find me a carrot. Or we use the stick. The image of bulldozers grinding towards Hometree flashed behind his eyes.

He pulled the chip and handed it to Trudy Chacón, who had been watching him with worried eyes. The act felt like a surgery, a removal of something vital from his own soul.

“If you don’t give him something, he’s gonna shut us down,” Trudy whispered, her sympathy a small, insufficient balm.

He nodded, unable to speak. He was becoming someone new—Jakesully, rider of Bob, student of Neytiri, witness to Reader’s strength. But Jake the Marine, the twin, the man chasing a ghostly legacy, still held the reins. He was a man split, risking the only real home he’d ever known for the faint, fading hope of buying back a life that no longer existed. The borrowed energy of Pandora was a fire in his veins, but with this act, he was piling a debt upon it that threatened to burn down the very people who had taught him how to feel its heat.

The psychic wound of that betrayal festered in him, a quiet counterpoint to the growing joy of his life with the Omatikaya. It made the celebration of the hunt festival feel both more poignant and more like a lie.

The festival was a wild, breathing entity. The drumbeat pulsed through the very roots of Hometree, a vibration felt in the chest. Firelight painted the great commons in dancing gold, illuminating faces flushed with kava and triumph. The feast of the sturmbeest they had taken—a hunt where Jake had finally felt like a true part of the flowing, dusty chaos—had filled every belly. Now, the energy turned outward, into a riot of movement and sound.

Reader watched from the periphery, a still point in the swirling storm. Leaning against a smooth bark column, she turned the “seed” stone over and over in her palm. Its smoothness was a comfort. The drums mirrored the rhythm of her own heart, a primal call that resonated in the marrow of her being—a call her first people, the Ash Clan, had answered with a different, darker fervor.

Their celebrations had been sharp, frantic things. Fueled by stolen drink and the bitter joy of surviving at another’s expense, their dances were displays of power and pain, of fresh scars brandished like trophies. There was no flow, only conquest. No unity, only the shared, gnawing hunger of the pack.

Here, the dance was a story. It was the wind in the high leaves, the coiling strike of the viperwolf, the graceful arc of the syaksyuk in flight. And at the center of the swirling circle was Neytiri, the living heart of it all. Dressed as the Banshee Spirit in flowing silks and feathers, she was a vision of untamed, explosive beauty. Her movements were liquid grace and fierce power, her eyes shining with an unguarded joy that made Reader’s breath catch. This was Neytiri unchained, as Eywa meant her to be.

And then there was Jake.

By any traditional measure, he was a terrible dancer. His movements were too direct, too human, lacking the innate, sinuous flow of the Na’vi. But what he lacked in grace, he made up for in pure, unfiltered passion. He threw himself into the rhythm with the same fearless abandon he showed on Bob’s back. His laughter—a full-throated, wonderfully human sound—cut through the chanting as he pulled a protesting, yet secretly delighted Grace Augustine into the circle. He moved with a marine’s spatial awareness, adapting, learning, feeling the music in his bones.

A strange warmth unfurled in Reader’s chest as she watched. She saw the echo of her own journey in his clumsy enthusiasm. He was an outsider, drowning in alien custom, and instead of shrinking back, he was learning to swim with joyful, splashy strokes. He was choosing to belong. The stone in her hand grew warm.

Her gaze drifted to Tsu’tey, seated with the senior hunters, a kava bowl having softened his usual scowl into a bleary, contemplative frown. He was watching Jake regale a group of young hunters with a wildly gestured tale of the Toruk attack. For a moment, Reader saw not the future Olo’eyktan, but the young warrior who had lost his betrothed, who carried the clan’s safety on shoulders still learning their full strength. When Tsu’tey offered the bowl to Jake, and Jake took it, locking eyes as he drank, Reader saw a bridge—fragile, smoke-wreathed, but real—being built over the chasm of their mistrust.

Then Neytiri was there, a flash of blue and feathers, grabbing Jake’s hand. “You must dance! It is the way!”

The moment between the men shattered. Tsu’tey’s face darkened as he watched Neytiri pull Jake into the denser crush of bodies, their laughter blending. Reader understood. A shared drink was one thing. Watching the woman who was his destined future, the heart of his political and spiritual life, choose the outsider’s hand was another.

Pushed by a sudden impulse, Reader stepped away from the column. The music was a current, and she let it pull her in. She didn’t join the central maelstrom where Neytiri and Jake now moved together, their bodies learning a new language. Instead, she found space at the edge where the rhythm was a softer pulse. She closed her eye, let the drums travel up through the soles of her feet, and began to move. This was not Neytiri’s exquisite precision. This was the slow, deliberate uncoiling of a survivor. Her dance spoke of riverbank climbs, of silent watches in high trees, of the first tentative bond with a storm-colored ikran. It was a dance of scars and quiet strength.

When she opened her eye, she found Jake looking directly at her across the crowd.

He was still dancing with Neytiri, but his gaze was anchored to Reader. There was no leer, no simple admiration. It was a look of profound recognition. He saw her. He saw the story in her movements, the history in her stillness amidst the frenzy. In that suspended moment, the noise of the celebration faded. It was just the two of them, separated by firelight and bodies, connected by the shared, unspoken knowledge of what it meant to be reborn. A faint, knowing smile touched his lips, and he gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

Then Neytiri spun him away, and the connection broke, leaving a phantom heat on Reader’s skin.

Later, as the feast died to embers and murmured conversations, Mo’at found her daughter. The Tsahik’s eyes were weary with ancient wisdom. She had seen the look that passed between Neytiri and Jake as they danced, a look that spoke of a connection deepening beyond teacher and student.

“We cannot let this seed grow,” Mo’at said softly in their native tongue, her voice barely a whisper over the crackling fire. Her eyes flicked toward Tsu’tey, now speaking with Eytukan, his expression once more a mask of stern duty. “Her path is chosen. It lies with Tsu’tey. For the unity of the clan.”

The warning hung in the air, a cold counterpoint to the evening’s warmth. Above them, the great Toruk skull totem watched from the shadows, its hollow eyes seeming to hold the memory of all such impossible, world-altering bonds. The threads of loyalty, desire, duty, and betrayal were now hopelessly tangled. Jake carried the secret of his treason like a stone in his gut. Reader carried the ache of a changing heart. Neytiri stood at the center, pulled by the will of her people and the call of a new, wild song. And the sky, beyond the woven walls of Hometree, held the silent, looming threat of the world they could not stop from coming.

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