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[Kiyevanie]

*** Pure Spirits (Gracie) ***


The Tree of Souls had stood silent since the time of the First Songs, Sacred Tree to the Na’vi, heart of their connection to Eywa, a place for prayer, for meditation. But it also was a place to take refuge in a time of need. And this was one of those times. 

Even though the Sky War was over and the tawtute sent home there were still people camping in the deepening that was shadowed by the Tree. Old ones, too tired to travel back to their homes yet. Injured ones, too weak to leave their sleeping mats; some of them would never leave this place again but send their spirit to the ancestors right here. The grieving ones too, trying to find comfort. And in between there were healers, caretakers, warriors, and of course what was left of the Omaticaya Clan after the loss of Hometree.

And still there was one little space, close to the trunk between the mighty roots that was silent even now, with a slender blue shape lying there, curled up like a baby in its mother’s womb. There were silver roots, fine tendrils, caressing and nurturing the body and the spirit, embracing the body like a caring cocoon.

It hadn’t always been that way. At first, when the tsahiks had put Grace Augustine’s Avatar there it had been after the futile try to send her spirit into this body. And when Grace had been too weak already to make it and her human body had been buried, the tsahiks and healers hadn’t been sure what to do with the dreamwalker. Although Grace’s spirit wasn’t there anymore the body still kind of felt alive. It breathed – although shallow – and the tanhi were glowing softly. And – there still was a war to be fought. This place would see enough death and destruction in the near future, nobody wanted to add the dead of an innocent dreamwalker to that heavy load. So they decided to just leave it up to Eywa what was to happen, finding a comfortable place for the lost Avatar on the soft moss, covering the body with a soft blanket and sending a young apprentice of one of the healers to look after the dreamwalker – give her water, feed her if possible.

How surprised was that boy when he found out – after the war, shaken to the core himself by what he had seen – that something had changed when he came back to the one of his patients that at least wouldn’t be bleeding or have shattered bones. A thin, fragile looking string of silvery filaments reaching out to the tip of her tswin, wrapping around, having contact with the sensitive tendrils within. And a second string, quite as thin… and this one making its way to the navel, just where an umbilical cord would have been. There couldn’t have been a clearer sign that Eywa wasn’t done with this one yet.

From that moment on the sleeping dreamwalker never was alone, there was always someone sitting beside her. Sometimes just keeping her company by being there, holding a hand, touching the skin where it was bare, but also singing softly, chanting, praying or just telling stories, wondering what was happening inside that head behind the closed eyes.

***

There was peace, finally peace. And the warmth of the unconditional love of a parent, a mother, filling the neuronal network of a brain that had been through so much already. 

In the beginning, when brain and body had grown together, things had been different. There had been a spark, slowly growing during the long travel between the stars, not conscious, not by far, but still more than just the mere life force that was there now, and it had been basking in the soft blue light of the amnio tank. But before something could come out of that spark, the soft blue had been replaced by something sharp and bright and white and then the Other had filled the space, leaving no room for what had been there before. 

At first the spark had been open and welcoming – the Other coming in was so much more than the spark itself. Full of life, lighting up the neuronal pathways in a way the spark itself never had and could. And if given a chance, that initial spark and the Other could have merged, working together and become something new and beautiful, something that was more than just the sum of its pieces. That was how it was supposed to be after all. What the spark was made for, the reason and sense of its existence: being there when the Other came, being the key to the lock that would open up a world full of wonders and a life lived in completion. The moment the Other came in something in the little spark just knew, the same way a flower knows it needs the sun and the rain, the same way a river knows how to run towards the sea.

But the Other didn’t listen, it just took up all the space available, taking full control of the brain and the body belonging to it, not realizing the chance it was given, ignoring the key, not realizing there was a lock at all. Not that that the Other was there all the time – but often, very often, and it always came back. And finally the spark gave in, dissolving itself into smaller and smaller pieces. Until there were nothing more than little sprinkles of a life force that could have been. 

The shine of a tanhi, glowing softly in the dark.

The glimmer of the tuft of the tail, wrapped gently around a sleeping body.

The twitch of an ear that couldn’t be controlled by the Other during a conversation.

And it was also in the way the body just knew what to do while walking through the forests of what should have been her home, taking in the smell, the colours, the feel of rain on her skin, the taste of a ripe fruit out of the garden. 

It also was there in the long days when the Other didn’t appear at all for a good while. Left alone for a bit those hidden sprinkles started to gather, trying to rebuild that initial spark - just to feel sharp pain and darkness and loss and grief. And they scattered again in fear and pain, hiding even deeper into where they had been before, so when the Other came back it never knew there had been anything different.

That’s how it had been for many years. It wasn’t that the Other was evil – it just didn’t listen, cause with all its intelligence and brightness it couldn’t imagine that things like the spark existed at all. The Other was pure rationality, reason and logic – and the spark, the sprinkles, the life force, they were anything but that.

But now – now things had changed. The Other was gone, and this time for good. There had been the pain again, but also light and warmth and peace and a presence. Other too, but so unlike the Other that had been there before. This new one didn’t intrude. It just was and embraced the almost empty body and the tiny, teeny, little sprinkles as they were, welcoming them and sending healing understanding, and peace. Finally peace.

And slowly, very slowly, the sprinkles, the slivers of something long gone, they started to come back from where they were hiding, like a flock of shy birds being attracted by a few spread seeds.

[Random the Navigator]

  -:-  - Enya -  -:-

Enya was normally a very heavy sleeper.  Brenda liked to tweak her about it, saying that in this respect, at least, she was as standard-issue as an Avatar gets; or, to put it another way, Enya waking up went pretty much like the rest of them: Stem Boot, Cortical Boot, Premotor, Motor, Memory/Consciousness...  But both Enya and her guardian knew that Enya's basic functions geared up just fine on their own.  It was on the borders of sensorimotor function that she needed a little help--the strokes, the whispers, the gentle cradling, and most of all the time it took to help her 'link in', so to speak; to make her way back from Wee-Small Inside; to, as she put it, "find arms and legs and seeing" again.

But on the road it was a different story.  On their sometimes days-long excursions from the Outpost, something about being away from every man-made thing struck a deep chord in her Being.  She was a man-made thing herself, true.  But she was also a child of Pandora--born on and made to function in this world better than any other.  She did what Avatars do, taking in sense-impressions of every kind, absorbing the world by sight, sound, scent, taste, touch, and a peculiarly Pandoran feel for the interconnectedness of all things.

She also did what very, very few Avatars ever had or ever could: She experienced these things for herself.  Determining how to respond to them was hard work, certainly, and as often as not left her flustered, one ear up and one ear back as she sorted through the invisible cloud of comic-book "qweshun-marks" one could imagine sprouting over her head.  But given the needed information and a clear presentation of her options, she was indeed capable of deciding for herself, of making her own way with a sometimes-surprising wisdom...a child's wisdom; an intuitive wisdom that went straight to the heart of the matter and reduced it to its essence.

So today she arose with the Suns and crept out from under the little shelter, pausing to fetch her canteen with the intention of filling it from the anemonoid pool.  Her thought was that she'd boil it and add a little this-and-that so she and Brenda could have warm breakfast.  Dried fruits, herbs, honey and jerky--all were eligible to be simmered in this "sweet-broth", which, as divine as it tasted and as nourishing as it was, was still just a Na'vi hunter's way of doing something worthwhile with leftover field rations.

But as she sat breathing the cool air of early morning and listened to the first stirrings of daylife all around her, saw the forest-glow fade to lush greens and watched the mist rise from the surface of the pond, she found herself alone with her thoughts.

It occurred to her that this didn't happen very often.  All her conscious life she had had guidance from within or without, whether from the mind her driver Solanda had shared with her or from the other bemused Avatars who had found themselves serving as her guardians.  Brenda almost always accompanied her even now, whether on Pa'li rides or foraging expeditions or extended campouts, and for the most part she found this comforting.  The only real exception was when Brenda made her rare resupply trips to Hell's Gate.  But then Enya had enough crafts and chores to do around the Outpost to keep her hands and mind busy, and Brenda always left her with enough food so that she didn't need to go gathering.  And the Clan, of course, hadn't let her out of their sight in the entirety of her stay.  She'd been a traumatised child; she hadn't known the customs or the language; and anyway, as crippled as she'd been, where on Eywa's bosom could she possibly have gone?

Maybe to a place like this...a 'still-quiet' place with no sound louder than a ripple, no disturbance greater than her own gentlest movements; a place of warmth and soft ambient light; a place her body remembered even better with her eyes closed.  A place of 'floating blue', which from her earliest glimmer of awareness had always meant safety...tranquillity...peace.

She wondered why that was.  It somehow went deeper than the pleasure she took in swimming.  For one thing, it didn't require water; only the sensation of being suspended in blue light, be it in the depths of an anemonoid pool or the embrace of her hammock.  At Hometree after Solanda's death, she'd been given a sleeping mat hung close enough to the ground that she wouldn't be hurt any worse if she fell out of it.  With the gently swaying mat and the soft glow of the bladder-lanterns in their alcove, her Clan-mother 'Iheyu had unwittingly given her a "blue floating place"; and that was the best thing anyone could have done at the time for her ruptured soul, her shattered sense of self.

She now had an honest-to-goodness Na'vi hammock, one that 'Iheyu had toiled over for the months it'd taken to weave Enya's personal colors and symbols, dreams and songs into it.  It hung in the little four-person Avatar cabin at Brenda's outpost, which she called the "short wood place", to distinguish it from the longhouse at Hell's Gate.  And while she knew the "long wood place" had cots with thin mattresses, Army blankets and mosquito netting, she'd slept on both by now...and she vastly preferred her hammock.

She wondered if Camille had hung onto her blue night-light.  Maybe not; as Brenda kept telling her, a lot of things had changed in the last five years, probably including the amenities.  Well, if her pals had seen fit to modify their dwelling, so could she; the Avatar compound didn't lack for cargo straps to make a hammock out of or rope to hang one with, and Enya was clever with her hands...

Floating blue.  It wasn't a place, was it?  No; she'd experienced it in several places and by various means.  It was more of an echo of something, a primordial state of being, something that ran deeper than feeling.  But it was some kind of memory too--not head-memory but body-memory, soul-memory; and she'd asked herself enough times what it was a memory of.

"Sharp white", however, she didn't have to guess about at all.  It was an actual place.  One that held its own terrors and that, even after she'd awakened and become independently mobile, she could not be gotten into except by being driven.

She'd been aware enough to experience the Ambient Room.  It was the sensation of helplessness, of sudden brightness, of being handled, of sound-smell-taste-touch assaulting her all at once before she'd even had a chance to get used to being dry, and breathing air, and having weight.  It was the pain that had tugged at her belly and cut off her nutrient supply, and the smaller pains which had attached themselves to her temples and the crook of her arm.  It was the gurney she'd been on and the crisp fabric she'd been draped with; and even if she'd known to struggle, tried to struggle, she'd been fastened to something by the minor pains.

The people who had done this had to use words like 'it' and 'decanted' and 'initialised', because they could not have brought themselves to treat her that way if she'd been regarded as someone who had just been born.

She'd visited that room many a time since then for exams and such--almost always having to be brought in by two or more other Avatars, because by now she knew damn well how to kick and squirm, and she wasn't above biting.   Even with Solanda along, who she'd somehow never associated with the first Invasion of her Being.  And even with Granma Camille waiting for her with hot chocolate and a platter of cookies.

Had the original "blue floating place" been an actual place then, too?  Or had it been an extraordinarily peaceful experience?  Maybe a little bit of both?

She wondered if any of that was going to be covered in The Talk...but she was half-afraid to ask, and Brenda wasn't saying.

[Random the Navigator]

Enya was still deep in thought when a small blue-striped fish, evidently enjoying the quiet of the morning just as much as she was, leapt out of the still faintly-glowing pool, waggled its tail, and fell back in with a plop.  Of course Enya put her head up; and when she did, she saw something that, for the rest of her days, she would remember as the single most stately and beautiful thing she'd encountered in the first almost-a-decade of her conscious life.

On the farther shore of the pool were two Na'vi gentlemen, one astride a Pa'li like hers, the other crouched at the margin and filling his waterskin the same way she'd been about to fill hers.  Where had they come from, and how long had they been there?  She didn't know; for all she did know, they might have grown there with the marsh-grasses.  The one by the water was a young adult, maybe her body's age; he was small for a Na'vi, and had a dreamy, gentle air about him.  The mounted one was quite a bit older, yet strong, watchful, dignified; he wore a colorful pectoral and a headdress of some kind that incorporated a gemstone.  And the ordinary things a Na'vi wore, he did also; but his armband (decorated with the feathers of some unknown bird), loincloth, belt-pouches and riding leggings were more ornate and had the look of heirlooms.  And the tail-wrap...a sign of rank, surely; and the bead-strings and bundles of knotted cord that hung from his belt gave him an almost festive look.  The whole impression was breathtaking, and she wondered if he'd seen her and if he minded her being here.  And yet there was something about his face that bespoke wisdom, humor and kindness; something that, if she'd ever had a grandfather, she might have recognised as a young grandfather's smile...

"Ooooo..." she said in tones of awe.

[Random the Navigator]

  ~*~*~*~

Tsanten of the Eastern Sea was many things: historian and storyteller; educator, entertainer and child-minder; world traveller and diplomat; counsellor and councilor; according to some, an investigative journalist, and to others, a professional gossip; a student of many cultures, and, by some accounts, that rarest of things: a visionary.  But if you asked him which of his deeds best defined him, he would have answered "None of them."  These things were not something he did; they were who he was.  He was a Lorekeeper, and all the rest just came with the territory.

No, what he was most proud of was the young man crouched next to him dipping water.  Tayasu'mawey of the Eastern Sea was every bit as remarkable in his way as Tsanten was in his.  His name ("Tayu" for short) meant "the stillness that comes over one who has been struck with awe"; and the parents who had given him that name, almost before his mother's belly began to swell with him, were surely possessed of a deep inSight otherwise only shared by the mystics.  Maybe Tayu was an incipient mystic--a Dream-walker, as his Clan called them.  His name fit him, at any rate; fit his gentle, childlike, somewhat otherworldly nature, the calm that surrounded him and the odd things he sometimes said, enigmatic at the outset but well worth puzzling through.  Indeed, though Tsanten had been Tayu's mentor ever since the young crafter's horrific accident, Tayu had more than returned the favor.  They were less teacher and student now than they were intellectual Bondmates and kindred spirits.

But word had come to them both about a different sort of Dream-walker, one that was not a mystic as far as anyone knew, but an accomplished warrior.  And the word of him was very soon followed by the man himself, kiting in on the vast orange wings of Toruk, who, with no liking for open country, did not otherwise visit the seashore.  A speech had been made, a call to arms, and the Ikran Peoples of the Eastern Sea had sent all the flyers they could spare...which was almost all of them.  From the beaches they'd flown, and the cliff-houses, and the vast canyon they called home, and even the Islands scattered over thousands of square miles of the open ocean--Eywa's Breast, the one place where a person could actually see, hear, and feel Her breathe.

And now Tsanten meant to follow up on them, because what was even the grandest story without some kind of conclusion?  And it would have been inconceivable not to bring Tayu along, because the lad had no one else to care for him now and because someone had to hear the tale first.

By now the pair had travelled for many days, stopping frequently in consideration of the limits of Tayu's body.  They had stayed sometimes with other Clans in their tent-villages, Hometrees and timber settlements, and other times in the various waystations and hunting camps Tsanten knew of, which were open to any traveller who needed them.  Permission was not an issue.  The Lorekeepers were what knit the People together, travelling from one territory to the next to bring each Clan's news and stories to all the rest.  It was thanks to them that, after 800,000 years, the Na'vi were still one People of one history and one language.  A Lorekeeper always had the right of free passage.

Thus it was that this morning they happened upon Brenda's little lean-to.  Not that they knew it as such; only as one of the newer waystations, one that even Tsanten had only visited once.  But they saw almost immediately that it was already in use.  Curious as to who else had come this way, they waited...although Tayu couldn't resist dipping at least his hands in the water.  Indeed they were a long way from Tayu's beloved shallows and the sand between the tides, and something in the young Na'vi withered a little if he couldn't splash and paddle and wade.

Their patience was rewarded by the emergence of a girl who looked Na'vi but was dressed in an extraordinary manner.  They noted her broader shoulders, shorter waist, dark-brown hair, and the extra finger like the sixth Toruk Makto's.  But he was the only Dream-walker of his kind they'd ever seen before then, and he'd been in native dress.  This one's whole chest, torso and upper legs were covered.  Was she sensitive to the Suns, they wondered?  That must be hard for a warrior...

But they very soon concluded that there was nothing of the warrior about her.  She had the manner of a school-aged child.  And in that, she was very much like Tayu; so of course when she noticed them, Tayu smiled shyly...and his eyes lit up delightedly when she did the same.  "Ma'karyu, is she a Dream-walker?" he asked his mentor.

Of this, Enya recognised the word Uniltiranyu; you couldn't be an Avatar living even temporarily with a Na'vi Clan without picking up that one.  So she answered for herself: "Na, I be Uniltiran-txen; I be Dreamwalker-Awake--Ni'ka say so!"

The two Na'vi exchanged a look.  Indeed, thought Tsanten, these were remarkable times, and an old world could still produce new wonders...

[Random the Navigator]

"Enya-babe?  Who've you got out there?" came Brenda's voice from the lean-to.  In contrast to her ward, Brenda didn't sleep heavily at all; with her history, with the life she'd lived, and in her current situation, she couldn't afford to.

Enya looked back over her shoulder.  "Is two Na'vi - one real fancy, the other one like to splash," she replied...for indeed that was all she knew so far about either of them.

"One fancy?" Brenda repeated.  "Guess I'd better crawl out and meet the gentleman; it's probably important..."  She emerged on her hands and knees, making sure to peace-tie her Bowie knife before exiting.  She knew the courtesies, but not much of the language or the culture; only what she'd gotten from the little hunter, Kenten, who'd brought Enya to the Outpost.  He'd taught her the names of the animals and plants and tools and activities she encountered in daily life; she could tell someone what an object was and/or what she was doing with it if they asked, but that was a long way from being able to carry on a conversation.

Enya, on the other hand, had lived with the Tompa'tanhi for several months after losing Solanda; and as she had no other home or family, 'Iheyu and her mate Tangek had adopted her into the Clan.  In any encounter with the Na'vi, therefore, it usually fell to Enya to do most of the talking.

Tsanten dismounted and looked Brenda over.  ~ Now, this one just might be the real thing, ~ he thought with regards to whether either Dreamwalker was a warrior.  Brenda looked hard, fit, and fierce as a Palulukan, and he could only imagine what might become of anyone who messed with her 'cub', as Enya obviously was, now that he'd seen both of them and sensed the protectiveness of the one towards the other.

Brenda made her way to the edge of the pool and nudged Enya to her feet.  "Do these guys have names?" she murmured.

"Mmmmm...I not know?  Is to say, I sure they got names; I just not have asked, and they not have said.  Maybe we s'posed to say ours first?"

But Tsanten had already considered the same thing, and as he was visiting their camp, he introduced himself without prompting.  "Oel ngati kameie, Uniltiranyu," he began, addressing Brenda.  "I am Tsanten, a Lorekeeper of the Eastern Sea - that's a storyteller, you know."  He smiled and gave Enya a wink.  "And this one is Tayu, a crafter, also of my Clan and wise beyond his years."  He bade Tayu to stand, allowing him to rise without assistance even though this was difficult for him sometimes; it was more important to spare him the embarrassment of being helped up in front of strangers. It was early morning, however, and Tayu had not tired yet; he got to his feet with only a little bit of unsteadiness - enough, however, to show Enya that they had more in common than a liking for water.

Enya ran this by her guardian as well as she could: "These two be from big water where Suns come up...and fancy one be Tsanten, he...say stories? --Tell stories, yes.  Shy one be Tayu; he think good and make things."

Then she offered her own party's names: "I Enya," she said in her simplified Na'vi, smiling proudly.  "This one be Brenda; she Uniltiran-txen too, and watches stars; and since my Sky Person gone, she closest thing I got to a Sa'nok besides 'Iheyu."

Tsanten's ears pricked.  "You know 'Iheyu of the Tompa'tanhi?"

Enya blinked.  "You know her too?"

"I do," said Tsanten.  "I'm actually on my way to visit her Hometree, among others; I think they might have some new stories for me."

"Thought you tell stories," Enya replied, her brow creased.

"Aaahh, but first I must collect them," said Tsanten.

Enya and Tayu couldn't help it; they both giggled behind their hands.

Brenda scowled, feeling left out.  Untranslated formalities, fine; she didn't pride herself on her social skills and would just as soon skip the Hellos entirely.  But untranslated humor?  What were they laughing at from opposite ends of the pond...and at whose expense?  "All right, girl, what lies are you two swapping about me?" she demanded - but despite the situation, a wry grin was tugging at the corners of her mouth, too.

"None 'bout you - but we maybe make some if you not invite them for breakfast!" Enya sassed.

"And if I don't?" Brenda pretended to bristle.

"Then...I swim across and let them feed me!!" Enya retorted, her nose wrinkled playfully.

After that, it was a foregone conclusion that the Lorekeeper and his companion would be spending the morning at "BrEnya's" camp...so they did.

[Kiyevanie]

*** Pure Spirits: Gracie ***

Left alone those little sprinkles might have taken weeks, maybe months and years to gather. Between being scared away and having almost burnt out there wasn’t much left inside that could gather. But the sleeping Avatar wasn’t left alone, there was a loving All-Mother who showered it with warmth and acceptance. It was a cleaning as well as a healing, soft and gentle, just enough to feed the sprinkles and not let them drown, like warm sunshine on a spring evening – the last rays, not too hot to burn your skin, but warm enough to make body and soul smile. 

The healing would and could never erase what had happened before, it couldn’t take away all the scars or the lines around the mouth; they would be there, signs of a life lived – but it could soften them, mellow them, make them less harsh and painful. And so the sprinkles kept on gathering, slowly, oh so slowly, but they came.

It was three days after the battle when there was finally something like that little spark again. Not the same that had been there before, cause all the life force inside and this Avatar body were inseparably bonded, and the experiences the body had made somehow had shaped the little bit of something that had been there. Someone with neurophysiological equipment might have noticed some faint flickering in the third hemisphere, just a spark here and there, just a bit more than the mere basic activities keeping a body up and running, so short that a watcher might have missed it if they had blinked the wrong moment. But there wasn’t someone with neurophysiological equipment around, just the same young healer’s helper that had discovered the first signs that Little Gracie’s song might not have been sung completely. It was an Atokirina, the little seeds being in the air all the time here at the Tree of Souls, softly gliding through the air, landing on the ear of a sleeping Avatar.

And the ear – almost unnoticeable - twitched.

 

[Random the Navigator]

-:-  - Enya -  -:-

Breakfast at Brenda's lean-to was a simple affair, even with a diplomat present...which was fine with Tsanten and his companion, as he held his rank without pretention and only carried what anyone would on a forest expedition.  The edge of a marsh in the cool of the morning wasn't the most promising place for making hot water; you couldn't very well build a fire here.  But Brenda introduced her guest to that clever invention, the chemical water-heater, a strip of cardboard coated with a substance that reacted rather vigorously to being immersed.  Once they had their little pot of boiling water, everyone chipped in on ingredients - Yerik and Tapirus jerky, dried fruits, herbs; some honey Brenda had made at the Outpost; some tubers Tayu had dug up on the plains.  Not too much of anything; after all, this was from their field rations and they still had a long way to go, not to mention a whole forest's worth of plants to snack from as they travelled.  Tsanten sat there merrily cracking nuts while the meat softened, and offered to share a handful even though they were his favorites.  "Take them now," Tayu laughed, "for he'll never leave you so many of them again!"

They made small talk, speaking to each other through Enya.  But it didn't take long for the Lorekeeper to make out Enya's speech-patterns; they were those of a child, perhaps old enough to run around Hometree unattended or begin learning a craft or skill.  Mentally she was, of course, closer to eleven, but her Na'vi vocabulary was that of a six-year-old...except for the words she had for things that were not part of the Na'vis' world.  Well, he'd spent enough time around children; he made the adjustment to his own speech like a second singer joining in with the harmony.  And thus it was that the foursome soon enough arrived at a kind of Enyan Na'vi, full of simple words but capable of transmitting big ideas; even Brenda could keep up with it if she was patient, and she had Enya herself to help out when she was not.

The soup was delicious.

"So..." said Brenda, once the pot was empty, "what brings you out this way?  The sea...I've never been there, but I know it ain't close..."

Tsanten considered.  These two might or might not be aware of the crisis that had caused the All-Mother to appoint a Toruk Makto in the first place.  If the fighting wasn't over yet, they might run into it, and he needed to warn them.  But if it had ended...well, Enya was a child, and maybe she oughtn't to be exposed to these things?

And then there was the fact that he didn't know very much about these events himself - only what Toruk Makto had said when he'd addressed the Clan.  It was too soon for any of the Eastern Sea's riders or flyers to have made their way back home.

~ Well, if you don't know, you don't know, ~ he thought to himself.  ~ And there's nothing wrong with saying so. ~

"We had...a visitor who brought us bad news," he began, keeping it simple for the Avatars.  "Something that threatened Eywa'eveng--"

"He mean Pandora," Enya supplied for Brenda's benefit...but Tsanten and Tayu filed it away too.

The Lorekeeper smiled a little. "Ahh, so that's what the tawtute, the Sky People, are calling our world...  Yes.  Bad news for Her, and the sort of thing that takes many hunters, many flyers, many warriors, and many horsemen to fix.  Our Clan sent the flyers.  We were not the only ones; but our Ikran soar on the same winds that whip the ocean, so they are the strongest fliers and the ones who can stay aloft the longest.  And they haven't come home yet.  Perhaps they are still carrying their riders into the fighting, though I haven't seen or heard signs since I set out...but this took or is taking place in the Omaticaya Lands, and they 'ain't close' either."  He'd used Brenda's phrase; now his eyes met hers and twinkled.

"And news takes time to travel," Brenda guessed.

"More than that," said Tsanten gravely.  "I am travelling to learn just how much more there is to the story...for I must be the bearer."  And now his eyes were not merry at all.

[Random the Navigator]

The small hairs on the back of Brenda's neck had long since raised themselves in response to her deepening suspicions as to what the Lorekeeper actually meant.  The message was clear to her, at least; Tsanten's Clan, and many others, had been at war and possibly still were.  Brenda knew war.  Her own homeland of Armenia, a landlocked country, had been destroyed by the RDA in service of an oil pipeline between the Black and the Caspian Seas.  For them, Armenia had just been something to trip over on their way to better things.  She'd lost her home, her family, and really her whole world at the age of eleven...everything except the land itself, which, on the run as she was, she came to know intimately.

She'd also come to know evasion, ambush, hiding in plain sight, and seeing without being seen.  She'd made herself quite troublesome to the RDA forces and the pipeline builders who'd followed them, striking, then vanishing into some cave or grotto or ruin.  She had skill with the bow; she was small and stealthy; she could always find a tree fit for climbing or perching.  Sometimes she'd find a particularly good hideaway, take out enough possible threats to convince people to keep their distance, stay until it was rediscovered, then move on...always alert; always prepared for violence; always moving.  She slept like a wild animal, able to go from light slumber to battle-ready in much less time than it took her opponents to even register surprise - by which time they would be wounded and incapacitated if not actually dying, and nobody ever got a good look at her, and she'd be thirty miles away by morning.

She knew what it was to love a land, one that had always seemed to hold a hand over her and to provide.  She also knew what it was to have everything she cared about destroyed.  And she most certainly knew how vicious other human beings could be if you had something they wanted and you dared to stand in their way.  Even now she was playing the long game; she'd come to the United States (there'd been a bit of a holdup while Immigration tried to decide whether she was a "freedom fighter" or a "terrorist"), studied astronomy in Hawaii and Iran, and joined the Avatar program precisely so she could really screw over the RDA from the inside.  So they wanted Unobtanium?  So they'd driven hard bargains for it with the Na'vi?  Ones that had, often as not, resulted in razed forests and displaced natives?  She'd been on Pandora for almost fourteen years.  She knew how things had been and were going, and that as of the year Camille had helped her go bush again, they had only gotten worse.

All this she knew.  She couldn't say for sure that that was what Tsanten's war was about, or that the "Sky People" were who it was with.  But she needed intel, even as little as he had, before deciding whether she was going to confirm everyone's impression that she was "some sort of ninja"...and she needed it spoken plainly, because she hadn't counted on having Enya in tow the next time she had to be ruthless.

"Tsanten," she began, "who was your visitor?"

"Why, he was a Dreamwalker," the Lorekeeper answered.  "A Dreamwalker warrior.  Is that typical for them?  He was only somewhat like you, and he wasn't a bit like our mystics - what we, the Eastern Sea Peoples, call 'Dream-walkers'."  He made the distinction, as surely as he would have between the words "see" and "See".  "And he warned us against the tawtute," he continued, "and he said they had already destroyed the Omaticaya Hometree."

~ Cha-ching, ~ thought Brenda.  ~Suspicions confirmed. ~

"So," she surmised, "all these Clans sent their fighters against the Sky People."

"They did," Tsanten responded.  And, because he needed intel too, he asked his own questions: "Brenda...what can you tell me about these Dreamwalkers?  I've only seen the one; are they any relation to the Dreamwalkers-Awake such as yourselves?"

"Now that," said Brenda, "is gonna take a lot of explaining..."

[Random the Navigator]

Enya had dutifully translated all of this, which was challenging enough that she couldn't stop to work out what it meant.  But now that there was a lull, now that her den-mother was gathering her thoughts, she needed a little help thinking about the situation and what exactly it was she'd just helped the grown-ups say.

"Sa'nu," she began, addressing Brenda as "small mother" because her "big mother", her "real mom", was 'Iheyu but Brenda had been raising her just as much and for quite a bit longer...  Ohh, it was complicated, and it made a tangle in her brain; but she knew who she meant and why.  If she'd known the word and concept of "foster-mom", she would have used that for Brenda instead...but wasn't she just using a different word to mean the same thing?

"Yes, babe?" Brenda responded, knowing this moment could have come at any time during her and Tsanten's exchange, and grateful that at least she'd saved it until now.  "Lemme guess - that whole conversation just flew right over your head and pooped on you in passing, amirite?"

Enya giggled.  "Ya, got big 'Huh??' 'bout what he say, what you say...  'Skyfolk mess up other-Clan's Hometree' - do understand words, but how you gonna mess up a Hometree?  'f you need all-Clans' fighters and flyers, is not gonna be 'cause Enya spill the soup!"

"Nope, Enya did not spill the soup," Brenda agreed.  "Or play with matches in the weavers' alcove; or ride Kilvanä up the stairs; or call the Olo'eyktan 'Old-Bones'.  Or maybe you did, but 'Iheyu can straighten you out all by herself!

"But, babe...you know a Hometree is just made of wood, right?  Well, if I don't miss my guess, when the Sky People 'messed it up', it means they probably broke it and made it fall down.  And the Clan that lived there sent that Dreamwalker to warn the other Clans--"

"Where they get a Dreamwalker?" Enya demanded.  "He show up there all hurt like me?  Na'vi Sa'nok take him in?  Just him, or his Sky Person too?  And how his Sky Person gonna share if there be no special beds in Hometree?  And why--"

"Easy, girl, easy!!" Brenda laughed.  "I don't know where they got a Dreamwalker, but he must have become part of the Clan like you or they wouldn't have sent him to warn everyone else.  They'd've sent one of their own people.  So, pretend he's a Na'vi or that his Sky Person was somewhere safe where he could share..."

It was right about then that they noticed Tsanten's ears had gone all wayward; indeed, he looked like he had a tangle in his brain.  Tayu, for his part, had been sitting cross-legged the whole time, his chin on his palms and listening intently.

"So, tell ya what," said Brenda.  "As long as we're all sitting here looking 'all-mixed-up', how 'bout you tell Tsanten over here about Dreamwalkers?  Reckon you'd know as much about 'em as anyone, bein' as you used to be one..."

"Is so!" Enya stated emphatically.  "Anybody wanna call me Dreamwalker now, I tell 'em 'Was one, but woke up!!'"

Brenda smirked.  "Now, see, Tsanten and Tayu have no idea what you just said.  They know the words you used, but they have no idea what the heck you're talking about.  So I'm gonna let you teach them, 'cause it's kinda important for their story."

Enya nodded, smiling, her mind now occupied with the new task and not obsessing about Hometrees at all.

~ For now, ~ Brenda thought to herself.  ~ I'm not gonna be able to dodge that bullet forever...  Sometime today or tomorrow, the kiddo's gonna learn what war is.  Shit... ~

[Random the Navigator]

Enya pondered.  The fact was, she didn't know everything there was to know about Dreamwalkers; that was the whole reason Brenda was taking her to Hell's Gate.  Her not-knowing wasn't limited to 'where do Avatars come from?' or why she'd only ever seen grown-up ones.  It extended further than that, to questions of why their Sky People (except Solanda!) never visited them in the long wood place, why you never saw Avatar and Sky Person together, or why their Sky People never showed them off to their friends.  Why couldn't she wake them up after they fell asleep?  How could they and their Sky People have different birthdays but be the same age?  Did Avatars get old, like the Olo'eyktan?  And what happened to the regular ones after their Sky People went away?

In turn, questions like these struck at the heart of a certain anxiety about life in general and about her particular condition:  If no one but Solanda (and Small Brenda) (and Angelo) cared to be seen with their Avatars, there must be something terribly wrong with being one.  In the bad times right after Solanda died, when she thought she'd been abandoned and blamed herself the way children do, she had raged inwardly at the 'Mother-god' who had awoken her and made her the only Avatar in the cosmos who was actually aware of her situation, aware of her fundamental helplessness.

These were 'qweshuns' even the Na'vi couldn't answer, not really.  Only another Avatar; and not just any one, but a Dreamwalker-Awake.  Right now, that meant Brenda.  And Brenda was asking her  to explain Dreamwalkers to a Na'vi.

Well, as Sa'nu often said, a lot of times there was no way out of a situation except straight forward...

"Dreamwalkers, 'k," she began awkwardly.  "Dreamwalker - regular kind - be person like me who have Sky Person for Soul-friend.  We so close that Sky Person can even come inside head and heart, share our body, borrow our arms and legs and voice and seeing.  Sound weird, huh?  But for us, is like Bonding, and we need it bad.  All Dreamwalkers need sharing.  Sky People sleep in special bed to share; bed sends them to us, to be us long as they need to, 'cause we bigger and stronger and can walk in trees and Na'vi maybe like us better 'cause we look like them.  Is why we be called Dreamwalkers; our Soul-friends dream, we walk."

Brenda smiled.  "Yeah, that sounds like us; spend half our lives in bed and the other half working our asses off!  And no in-between unless your name is BrEnya."

That made Enya smile a little; and for Brenda it was a chance to gauge just how much Enya did already know...and more importantly, understand.

Now Enya's eyebrows knitted.  "But, see, is something not-fair 'bout that," she went on.  "Sharing is only time we get to walk - regular Dreamwalkers, anyway.  When Sky Person not sharing, Dreamwalker curl-up-go-sleep; become wee-small inside; not move much, not speak; not throw pillows; not want cookies.  Even Na'vi can hardly tell if they got spirits, 'cept 'Iheyu 'cause she real good at that."

Tsanten's brows lofted upwards; then he smiled.  "Ah...so that  is how you know 'Iheyu.  You were hurt and she took you in, and she Saw you for who you were and not merely what you were.  Is that how she became your Sa'nok?"

"Uh-huh!" said Enya much more lightly.  "Only you say it prettier."

"Actually," the Lorekeeper replied, bowing his head in respect, "if it were not for you I wouldn't be able to say it at all.  You've just added to the story - perhaps the one I'm seeking, or perhaps a new one about your own People, the Dreamwalkers.  But you said you only used  to be a Dreamwalker, and now you are a Dreamwalker-Awake.  What does that mean?"

Oooo, how was Enya going to explain this one?  Not neatly, at any rate; she hardly remembered when she'd achieved true self-awareness, and until she'd learned how to run her own body and her driver had learned how to let Enya be the "boss" sometimes, she'd hated it.  But maybe that wasn't what Tsanten wanted to know.  Maybe he just wanted to know the difference between the two.  She could give him that, anyway...but the only way she saw to do that was by comparison and contrast.

"Most Skyfolk who not have Dreamwalkers not do think we have spirits," she began.  "Call us bad names like 'it' and ' 'quipment' and 'not-real body'.  Toktors come check that we working right.  Like machines.  And Skyfolk with Dreamwalkers, their Dreamwalkers not can know how they feel, 'cause they not come see us when they quit being us and wake up again.  'Cept Solanda, but she gone now; do wonder 'f she go to Heaven like Skyfolk or if she be with Eywa like Na'vi.  And Angelo, he got HUUUUUUUUGE Dreamwalker, and he treat him like people no matter when!  And Small Brenda treat Tall Brenda real good even after Tall Brenda become Brenda all-the-time and Small Brenda's body just be where her spirit went to rest; Eywa did that.  And Camille, her Dreamwalker sleep like regular ones, but this make her very sad.  She only one who feel sad 'bout that.  And she been there the longest, so maybe was not always like that for us?  I not knew to ask when did live at Sky-camp, and I not have been there since Solanda gone.

"But Dreamwalker-Awake...we not wee-small inside, ever.  Everyone can tell we got own spirits.  Our Sky Person leave us, we maybe go 'sleep or we maybe watch Star Wars or we do like I do and sneak out of long wood place - is our house at Sky-camp - and find a big tall tree and sleep there, 'cause friends all be wee-small, so long wood place be no fun anyway and a little bit scary.  Solanda haaaaaate it when I do that, 'cause then when she come to share she wake up as me in big tall tree and she not know how to get down!"  She giggled.  "Happen way-'long time ago, when we new at sharing and she not was used to me being in me same-same time as she was.  Not sure who taught who the most back then...

"So Dreamwalker-Awake is one who have big-enough spirit that we can be awake same-same time as our Sky Person.  Thing I still have that I like the most is picture of me-Solanda standing together.  I only Dreamwalker in the world who have one like that.  And Solanda show me off on TV to her Sa'nok and Sempul.  Call them and brag 'bout La Avatara - is my name in Solanda-talk, which be same as Angelo-talk but different from Brenda-talk, but Brenda and Angelo got two talks and the other one be what most people in Sky-camp say...  Aaaagh!!" she sputtered as she realised what a mess she'd made out of that last sentence.

Now the shy Tayu grinned.  "People at the Sky-camp mostly say 'Aaaagh'?  I made a noise like that when I fell once..."

"No-no-no!" said Enya, exasperated.  "People at Sky-camp mostly say one kind of talk --"

"She means 'language'," Brenda explained.

" -- anyway, is called Inglisi," Enya finished.  "'Aaaagh!' was me messing up - do sometimes sound so upside-down I get me all-mixed-up!"  Everyone shared a laugh.

Tsanten still had questions, especially about Brenda, whose circumstances seem to have been rather different; but Enya had done a bang-up good job for a school-age child, and he didn't think it'd be right to ask for more than she'd given him.  "Irayo, little one," he said, again bowing his head; then, on an impulse, he reached into his belt-pouch and retrieved a lentil-shaped bead made out of the same stone as the cabachon in his headdress.  "This is yours," he explained, "because I like you and because you have given me another story to chase.  A Lorekeeper is nothing but someone who is very good at show-and-tell.  You have told, and now I think you should have something to show for it."

Enya took the lapis disc and gazed at it for quite some time.  "Is...is blue like Sea, huh?" she asked.

"Like the deep sea, yes," the Lorekeeper replied.  "And these golden bits that look like a river? --The foam on the waves looks like that.  You can do what you like with it - put it in your hair; put it in your pocket; use it to play a pebble-game...  But it says that we've met, and that we're both richer for it."

"Ooooo..." Enya marvelled; then "Irayo," she said softly.

[Kiyevanie]

***Little Gracie***

In that little niche close to the Tree of Souls time wasn’t an issue. The Tree just was. And so were body and whatever of a life force there was hidden in the orphaned Dreamwalker. No matter how much time was needed to find out what could be, what she could become – the Dreamwalker would get it. 

Meari, one of the younger Omaticaya healers, gently poured some water from a sponge-like fungus into the Dreamwalkers lips. The umbilical cord of fine filaments provided nurturing of body and spirit, but still the healers had decided that additional water wouldn’t hurt. The young healer studied the face before her and bit her lip. She knew the features, had known them for several years already. She knew Toktor Grace’s face since she had been an ‘evi at her school. And then, later, during the events that had led to the destruction of the only home Meari had ever known and then to the war. During all those times she had seen Grace in different moods. Focused, curious, laughing, stern, desperate, even mad now and then, but always strong and somehow in control. Now, all of this was gone and the sleeping Dreamwalker looked so much younger, lost and vulnerable. All that reminded of the former tawtute part of her were the beads in her braids and the necklace with the amulet Grace had been wearing as long as Meari could remember – and even those were made by the People and given to Grace as a present.

With a sigh Meari got up again. She had fulfilled her task and there was so much more to do. “Rest well, ma’tsmuke”, she whispered as she left the niche to get back to the other healers and their patients.

[Random the Navigator]

-:-  - Enya -  -:-

Tsanten had already been given plenty to think about, but the duo were not done with him yet.  Brenda shared her story, the translation coming more easily to Enya now that she'd heard it so recently.  It was, if anything, by far the more surprising of the two.  There was nothing in Tsanten's upbringing, learning or frame of reference that would have made the idea of a self-aware Dreamwalker all that surprising; he'd never been told they weren't supposed  to be like that, only that they usually weren't.

But Brenda, now - a soul belonging to a Sky Person which, when that body was injured too badly to sustain her, had been re-centered in the body and mind of her Dreamwalker by the All-Mother Herself, then allowed back into the woman's tawtute body once it could hold her again - was a deep mystery that it might even take Tayu to crack.  That Brenda's soul no longer completely fit in her tawtute's mind because the part that belonged to Eywa had nowhere to go was at once poignant and somehow fitting.  (She'd described the feeling as being "like going back to your childhood home and finding it's been sold to somebody else.")  The dislocation of being two people at once, "Tall Brenda" who could commune with the Worldmind and "Small Brenda" who could not, and the experiences of the one gradually diverging from the other so that eventually they were leading different lives, he had no equivalent for in all the history and myth that he knew.  And the eventual return of that soul to Tall Brenda's body, her real body that carried her whole self, once Small Brenda's body returned to the earth, he found only fitting.  He decided he wanted to spend a lot more time with this woman, teasing apart the layers and dimensions of her experience; he was pretty sure he would learn a lot about the ways of the Great Mother, the life-force of Pandora personified, that not even the Tsahiks knew.  Perhaps he would look her up again on his way back to Rockhome, the vast canyon where the Eastern Sea Peoples lived...

But despite the fact that the only two Avatars he'd really spoken to so far were Dreamwalkers-Awake, he was now aware of how rare they were - indeed, that these two were the only ones in the world, and their awakenings hadn't been a bit the same.

Now he turned to his companion.  "Tayu...?  What do you make of all this?  You've always had a knack of getting straight to the heart of things, even some rather complicated ones..."

Tayu's eyes went distant as he mulled the two Dreamwalkers' stories over.  Finally he said "I think...I think our Mother has taken much interest in these newcomers...  She brought one into awareness and a life of her own, and went to great lengths to preserve the other.  It'd be something, wouldn't it, to find out why?  And if She has plans for the rest of them?  I was absent from my body for weeks after I fell at Iknimaya, yet eventually I was returned to myself.  Perhaps these Uniltiranyu are not asleep so much as their bodies are waiting for their spirits to be returned to them?  Their Soul-friends may be from another world, but the Dreamwalkers themselves can Bond like we do; this tells me that they are children of Pandora, and that somehow Eywa needs them."

This having been spoken in non-simplified Na'vi, Brenda and Enya both had their heads cocked.  Looking so much like twin Nantang pups as they did, Tsanten could only smile; then he asked them one more question:  "Tell me, what is it that Dreamwalkers do for a living?  Those who are not warriors, that is?"

Enya took over.  "Some be warriors, like Angelo.  Most be scholars, like Brenda and Corbin and John, only Brenda be hunter and warrior too when she gotta.  Think maybe she be warrior today.  But when she scholar, she learn 'bout stars; I find old-animal rocks; John learn 'bout rivers; Grace learn 'bout plants, but also 'bout Na'vi.  Camille, she healer, really good one, and she also train other Dreamwalkers - oh, how she make them jump and swim and crawl and climb!  Gillian, she work in tall places and fix things, so she good at climbing already.  And what Dreamwalkers learn, they tell their Soul-friends; then Soul-friends make symbols and share learning with other Skyfolk."

"Ah," said Tsanten.  "That explains much.  You know, Tayu once said a thing - he doesn't speak often, but when he does, his inSight can take even a Tsahik by surprise - and what he said was that the world is new every day, so every day Eywa comes to know it all over again.  She savors this.  It may be Her chief pleasure in Her creation.  And it seems that now She would like to learn it through your eyes, too; you who have been granted bodies like ours, but not the long experience; you who are, indeed, children here, for whom everything is new every day too.  I think She might be curious just to see what you make of it..."  He smiled gently, his eyes softly shining with a nascent dream.