It was hard to tell which was spinning more as Ash linked out: her mind or the slowly decelerating rings around the head of her cradle. She'd left her Avatar - Seze, she reminded herself - at Hometree; she'd link back in tomorrow and ride a Pa'li back to the shack complex. So for tonight she had her mind to herself...a mind and spirit that had been both blown wide open and brutally humbled by her day with the Tompa'tanhi.
Today she had ( ~ kinda, sorta, ~ she thought) communed with a hot spring. She had glimpsed for herself at least a little of what Enya felt about "floating blue." She'd been given a startling new vision of what it was to be a Clan, and permission to try the thing for herself ( ~ right here, right now, with people who can throw me quite a bit farther than they can trust me, ~ she sighed). She had sat with the Tsahiks, and this time really listened - even when what they said stripped away her pretenses, her notions of her own expertise ( ~ or even competence! ~ she inwardly griped), the inherent superiority of science, or that of the culture in which she was raised. It'd hurt, but it was a healthy pain; as Ni'ka had said, more or less, it was like reopening an infected wound to let out the pus.
~ But so much pus... ~ She'd come to know the depth of the wound in her spirit, one formed in her childhood by conditions she couldn't help. Could she have helped the ugliness it'd made inside of her? Her pride, her self-importance, her pessimism, her need to play the savior - all a cover for a deep sense of inadequacy and the fear that she wasn't earning her keep? Was that the crack in her armor that the Red had gotten through?
She'd been excused from the mission. The world was still in danger, but she was to be no part of the solution... No, that wasn't right. She had brought the mission (not even her own!) as far as she could - even with her disadvantages, even with the shard in her body or its influence still in her spirit - and delivered it to the Tsahiks who, much better-qualified for the task, would carry it the rest of the way. She was actually rather relieved about that; the fate of Pandora would no longer be up to her bumbling. Her only task now: to be a child at play, in a way she'd never been able to while she was actually a child.
The Tsahiks had taken her suggestion that they go together to the Heart of Eywa, the better to strengthen the World-spirit. That felt good. She actually had been useful, had come up with something new that could help the situation. ~ Yay me? ~
But...she hadn't gotten to go along. Her need to heal inside would just have to wait until the Tsahiks had taken care of business. That left her here, in this place, at this time, with these people who had all been waiting ( ~ albeit without much hope ~, she was certain) for Na'vie or Eywa to straighten her out, and it hadn't happened, and it wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and how could she face them in the morning? And that felt bottom-of-the-sludge-heap awful.
So many conflicting emotions, and she'd seldom opened herself up to her feelings; so of course it always got messy when she did, because she'd never really learned how to manage them. But she had a more immediate dilemma:
How was she going to explain this day to Rick? And how was she going to explain it to the others, when she could barely explain it to herself?
She sat up slowly as the link unit's canopy opened: ~ Venus on the half-shell, ~ she smirked. Swinging her legs over the edge, she felt something tickling her face - a tear, surprising perhaps, yet emblematic of the world's condition and her own. Was it the sorrows or the beauties of the day that had brought it out?
She caught the scent of pan-fried egg substitute and cinnamon-tinctured coffee, decided for "beauties", and made her unsteady way to the habmod.