::: [ Crossroads ] :::
In all the time she'd spent at Hometree, Ash had actually really come to know only a few areas: the Commons; the sparring grounds; the upstairs and downstairs healers' wards; Enya's alcove (sad, diminished little place that it was now); the Council's meeting area; the Olo'eyktan's meditation spot. That still left almost a third of the ground floor that she'd never seen except when she'd been led through it, and countless sleeping, working, and social spaces in the upper levels, all woven together by the great Tree's inner struts and branches. She knew that a Hometree was actually not just one tree, but up to a dozen giants that had grown together, leaning on each other like the poles of a teepee; this was how there could be branches within it for travelling along and hanging hammocks. The Tompa'tanhi Clan was smallish, so its Hometree was small for its kind--just five trees intertwined, supporting each other and the people who lived within them. And of those five trees, she had perhaps explored two of them if you counted the spaces between them that formed the outermost rooms and niches...like Enya's alcove, which was only a few levels below the healers' aerie, which opened out onto the branches, including the one that had held her swing.
Now the young weaver guided them through the ever-denser thicket of roots that led away from the larger ground-level spaces and formed most of the smaller ones. It took quite a while before they passed beneath the 'center' of that particular sister- or brother-tree, and there were more dense root-clusters to negotiate before they began to thin out enough to see daylight again.
It was here that the party emerged into the lush fern 'valley' between a pair of massive external roots. Ash had only seen it in passing the last time she'd come and, eyes-front person that she was, she had taken no note of what was around her, only of the back of the Olo'eyktan in front of her. But now it occurred to her to question how such a healthy growth of such a fragile plant could even exist with the world the way it was. The first time she'd seen it, there had only been frost on the ground...everywhere except here; and since then they'd had freezing rain and ice. How did this place escape the touch of the rainforest's first real winter?
But the humidity told a story, the basalt outcrops told a story, the rich black soil under their feet told a story--a story of long-ago volcanic activity and a cluster of young sibling trees growing out of the fertile ashes. She was no geologist; perhaps Solanda, Enya's former driver, could have told her the particulars--or, come to think of it, so (probably) could Enya herself. But now that she was paying attention, she recognised the landscape around a geothermal hot spring that had long since stopped belching out colorful but caustic minerals and yielded to the plant growth that lapped around its borders. This thing happened on Earth in places as far north as Armenia and Iceland. And these Na'vi had settled here over an underground channel of very warm water. Probably deep underground; even the Commons wasn't low enough to benefit from its heat. She wondered if the subterranean ceremonial chambers, the ones initiates descended into for their Dreamhunts, were warm; if so, she would suggest that the most fragile of the remaining Clan members be housed there, if doing so would not violate some taboo.
Now the roots that arched over their heads gave way to a rock ledge that partially overhung the valley. Already Ash could smell the sulfur springs that emerged at the other end of this half-tunnel, and she smiled. And then they came to the place...a chain of round, wide pools with bubbling vents underneath; with the basalt overhang on one side, dripping so much with the steam that it looked like a thin waterfall, and the bottom of which had eroded out into a smooth, gentle slope that made a good place to sit; and on the other side, opposite the rock ledge, a strip of black-sand beach backed by yet more ferns and cycad-like trees. A Jurassic landscape, she thought, and she remembered a friend back home who'd liked dinosaurs... What was he up to now?
She eyeballed the overhang again, which was just tall enough; imagined a certain childlike Avatar diving off of it; and couldn't help a huge grin.
"After you," she said to Ni'ka, eyes shining. "But Enya's gonna love this place...!"