Ngatapa nodded, his smile leaving him for a moment. "Yes, that was a sad day when Atreyu's pongu broke up...at the time, we thought it was for good. But he, Renu and Meuia are with those families in the village, and you and Kenten are minding our Dreamwalker friends and those who matter most to them; I suppose that's better than being scattered to the Four Winds. All the same, it'd be good for Kenten to rejoin Atreyu's party. His affection for your group knows no bounds; but his service to you was a sacrifice, no mistake, and even on my last visit I could tell it was weighing on him."
By now Ngatapa and Ni'ka were speaking of things which Ash hadn't known about at all. Kenten's morale had been faltering? Kenten, who'd refused to leave her even when she thought she was Changing, and who before that had kept her from taking her own life? All right, she'd mostly been in the healers' ward since then, but...how had she missed that?
More and more she was coming to the conclusion that she was just not a "people person". Somehow she always seemed to demand so much from her allies, while giving them the worst sides of her personality if she bothered acknowledging them at all. Yes, yes...finding the crystals, saving the world, as she'd kept reminding them ad nauseam... But when it came to relating to them as people--not "the Na'vi" in the aggregate, but as weary 'Iheyu, frustrated Tangek, heartsick Brenda, quietly selfless Kenten, overworked Tiye, and two children who'd had their worlds yanked out from under them--she'd been an abject failure. She'd heard Kenten's peals of laughter as the love of Eywa rained down upon him; seen the radiance in his face, the way he'd turned slowly with his arms uplifted as if he were being showered with gold...and she had no idea what it meant, what dark space he'd been in when that pulse of energy found him.
"For what it's worth," she finally said, biting her lip, "Kenten was with us when the All-mother stopped by to say She hadn't forgotten about us...and he laughed like a little boy riding behind his mother for the first time. I never asked myself what it was about, but I was happy for him..."
Ngatapa, reading the look behind the words, palmed her shoulder again gently and smiled. "That is all he ever needed from you; all any of them need," he said gently. "Know them. Rejoice with them. Mourn with them. If they wish to share their reasons, they will; but if they do not, at least you will still have been a companion on their journeys."