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[Random the Navigator]

"Me and my big mouth..."  Ash growled, glowering to hide her tears.  "It always happens that way--I try to be honest about my feelings and it blows up in my face!  'Open up to people,' they say.  'Just be yourself,' they say.  And the minute I confess to being angry or hurting or scared, BOOM!--I'm on my own again.  Bloody...Frickin'...Hell...!"

[Kiyevanie]

Ni'ka shook her head.  "No...no, that's not true.  Nobody blames you for being angry or scared."  She turned to Ash, taking the Dreamwalker's hands in hers, her silver eyes looking very serious.  "It's just that...that...some things just need to be faced, no matter if you're scared or angry.  And the Tsahiks - they care, they listen, they help, but sometimes their help can look strange now and then.  Like a healer's potion - sometimes it tastes like Nantang piss, but in the end it helps."

She made a face.  "Although in that case I'd say: scratch Nantang and replace with Palulukan. They're bigger."

[Random the Navigator]

Ash gave Ni'ka a bug-eyed look, and she couldn't help a barking laugh.  "Nantang...piss?  You've tasted Nantang piss??  You must have, or you couldn't compare medicine to it...  Oh, great...and I get the supersized version!"

Then she blew out a sigh.  "I know what you're talking about, though.  Remember me telling Tiye about having a blood sickness?  The treatments for that are nasty, hard on your body, and sometimes made me wish I'd just stuck with the disease...  I had that all the way until I came to Pandora, Ni'ka.  Just eight years ago.  We found plants and animals here that could help me get rid of the sickness.  You know, it takes five years without a recurrence before they'll say you're cured...which means I've only known I was clean for three years.  Just three.  And when that...thing...started corrupting my arm, I thought the sickness had come back.  That's the first thing I told Rick, was that maybe it was the illness--and this is how bad that disease is, Ni'ka, that the shard in my arm only felt the same way.  So he's scared I'm gonna relapse, and I'm scared I'm gonna relapse, and that's even if the crystal hasn't weakened my body permanently, and...and I don't know what's gonna happen then, what I'll do..."

She inhaled sharply, the beginnings of a sob.  "I've had it with this, Ni'ka; I've had it with the tradeoff between pain and fear of pain, which is about the only 'balance' I've ever known in my life," she said, her eyes brimming.

[Kiyevanie]

Ni'ka's eyes widened at the description of Ash's sickness and how harsh the cure for that illness was.  And Ash had to go through that as a child?  She stepped closer and gave the other woman a short, tight hug.

But then she looked at her again.  "And still you beat it all," she said.  "The illness, the cure, even the shard in your arm.  Sure, it left scars, like every fight does.  We all show traces of our fights."  She held up one of her hands - much better, but still different from a 'normal' Na'vi hand.  "Inside and outside.  They show we've frickin' survived!"

Now her eyes turned pleading.  "Ash, you've come so far, there have been so many good things as well.  Small ones like floating in the hot spring; big ones like finding friends, people who care, a mate who loves you.  Don't say that pain and fear of pain are the only balance you had in your life."

[Random the Navigator]

"The only balance, Ni'ka," the Dreamwalker clarified.  "I've had good things happen, and not just the ones you've said.  But they're not part of my balance.  There weren't enough of them, and the ones there were didn't last very long...  So I've never learned how to handle the good things.  Maybe that's what's happened to me every time I've blown up today--it was always after something nice was offered to me, either good news or friendship or encouragement.  It's like some part of me is daring the good things to still be there after I give 'em a good hard scare.  And they keep going away; and if they don't on their own, I seem to drive them off myself...  When something good happens to me, the main feeling I have is to not get too attached to it because I'm just gonna lose it again.  Like I said--pain, or fear of pain.  Loss, or dread of loss.  See why I keep to myself?  See why I don't let others close?  Besides the fact that I am monstrously and unpredictably ill-behaved...just ask anybody at the shack."

She found a buttress to lean against and sat down with a sigh, the urge to cry having abated.  "So here we are...I've upset everyone over there who gives a rip.  And I have to make it up to them.  A bad sickness, so to speak, for which I'll just have to take nasty medicine.  And the 'treatment' is gonna take a long time, and there's no guarantee that the cure will be permanent...and I'm so tired of this pattern...and the Tsahiks are feeding me right back into it...and this time it affects people besides me."

[Kiyevanie]

"Then break it," Ni'ka said.  "That pattern.  Trust in those people - they might surprise you."  After all, Ash was talking about Ni'ka's adopted family, and the Changed huntress trusted 'Iheyu and Tangek with her life.  "Nobody says you have to blow up or drive good things away.  No, there's no guarantee that the healer's potions will work and cure the sickness, but they won't even have a chance if you don't drink them."

Then she scowled.  "And don't you say you are monstrously and unpredictably ill-behaved.  I've seen true monsters - fpi Eywa, I've been one, and that has nothing to do with how you are.  Not even when your eyes are flashing red and you're lashing out."

[Random the Navigator]

"Easier said than done," said Ash.  "Not the 'trust them' part, although even that's gonna be a challenge...but how likely is it that they're going to trust me again?  Right, I'm not in charge of their reactions, but...I dunno...it just sounds like I'd be dragging myself through a lot of unpleasantness for nothing.  Or, let's say I behave myself well enough for long enough to be on good terms with them again...what happens the first time I snap at someone?  Even regular people who have not  been infected by a sliver of a demon's heart get mad sometimes.  Tangek does it, 'Iheyu does it, even Enya does it.  But when they do it, someone's always right there going 'What is it, dear?  What can I do to help?'  When *I* do it, it's just 'There she goes again' or 'Same shit, different day'..."

She turned to the dark-skinned huntress--once her ward, now her friend.  "Ni'ka...I know I shocked you when I said that stuff about Enya this morning...but...haven't you ever loved someone to bits and envied them at the same time?"

[Kiyevanie]

That was a question to think about.  Yes, Ni'ka had been shocked by Ash's words, wondering where they had come from - from the Red or from something in Ash herself.  Now she thought of the explicit explanation Ash had just given for her strange reaction.

Finally she had to shake her head.  "No.  At least I can't remember it."  A crooked grin appeared on her face.  "And you know that there are still a lot of big holes in my memory.  But," she went on, "I think I see what you mean.  The little girl in you sees her free and playful, loved by all of us and without carrying the whole load of the world and the Red on her shoulders.  You always had to carry a heavy load, even as 'evi.  Of course that little girl in you is scared and upset - and maybe envious."  She made a face.  "It's not as if there isn't a little girl in me too - most of the times she just wants to run home to Sa'nu to hide in her hug and not see anything of the world outside anymore."

She tilted her head to one side.  "And with Enya being a child, that's what she does - play, laugh, sing, run to Sa'nok...  She's a child, she doesn't have to act grown-up if she doesn't want to.  I still would never envy her anyway.  There's been so much hurt in her life, and I'll never forget how she went 'wee-small' inside and her spirit went to the Heart.  She lost her Soul-friend, one half of herself.  I can't even begin to understand how that must be."

She paused a moment, then went back to Ash's comment from before.  "And about getting mad...well, I think it's the 'sometimes' that makes the difference.  Everyone snaps now and then, but people usually have a reason for it.  When Atreyu lashed out at everyone in the longhouse there was a reason for it, and the help of the other people there at least lessened the pain.  But you did not only do it much more often, so many times people didn't know when or why, but sometimes there didn't seem to be a reason--it just happened out of the blue."  Ni'ka looked sad now.  "And you didn't let people help you.  I think most people just don't know what to do and how to help you anymore."

One of her ears then perked up in careful optimism.  "But now you do let people help you.  You start listening, you see things that go wrong and try to change them.  That's different from how it's been before, you know?"

[Random the Navigator]

Ash closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the buttress and pondered that for a good long while.  When she finally brought her head up, her expression was soft and sad and more than a little wistful.  "I think..." she began tentatively.  "I think I want to be that little girl, the one I never got to be; one like Enya, just running around being loved and being free...  But that's what Ra'nah and the Tsahiks recommended too, isn't it?  That's why they're sending me home...  And maybe I'd just better do like Mohani says and, you know, listen to Enya and to whatever she awakens in me.  She's forgiven me, at any rate...and we all know that being seen with Enya grants you a free pass--just ask Brenda!"

Then she eyed Ni'ka intently.  "And I ought to be ashamed of myself for even pretending to suffer compared to what you and Brenda and Enya and Tsanten have been through.  I've been a sickly child and a frail adult.  But I always had my parents and the doctors and the different charity groups who paid my hospital expenses and made sure I had toys and treats.  I complained about being cut off just now; Enya's been cut off for reals--she's never gonna have her mom again, never gonna have that relationship, that Soul-friendship...that particular brand of love.  You and Tsanten won't ever be the same again either, and I don't know about him, but you're pretty sure you can't go home again.  And my childhood was positively pampered compared to Brenda's.  You know what she told me? --She slit her first throat when she was barely in her teens.  I can't even imagine...  And yet she still talks to people--okay, grudgingly and only because she absolutely has to, but...she has said some really beautiful things.  How she held onto that after losing not just her family and her tenderness but her very homeland...  And then Enya shows up and it turns out Brenda didn't even lose her tenderness."

She stood up with a grin.  "Okay, Ni'ka, I'm all done feeling sorry for myself...for now; you know how I backslide!"  She took the dark Na'vi into her arms in a long, warm, tender embrace, then stepped back and brushed away a stray wisp of the huntress' hair.  "And...I hope for the best for you," she said.  "You'll be fine, sweetie...honest."

[Kiyevanie]

Ni'ka smiled brightly, answering the hug with one of her own.  A decent-sized rock slid off her heart, noticing that something she had said in those last minutes, hopefully together with the insights Ash had gained that day, had done the job to bring some of Ash's hope and optimism back.  "Mohani said wise words there," she agreed.  "Following Enya's lead in being a child is one of the best things you can do.  She's an expert there, and what she doesn't know, Tali will fill in."

She squeezed Ash's hands.  "You'll be fine too, I know it!"  Then she took a deep breath, knowing that now the time for parting ways had come.  Ni'ka herself had to go back to the Tsahiks, preparing for her journey physically and spiritually.  Some of that would include telling Lor that she wouldn't fly but walk and ride together with the Tsahiks.  Ash, on the other hand, would need to meet with the warriors who would be her escorts and protectors on the way back to the camp.

So now Ni'ka stepped back, putting a hand on her heart and bowing slightly.  "Travel safe, ma'Ash," she said.  "We'll meet again soon.  And give everyone over there a hug from me, especially Enya."

[Random the Navigator]

"I will do that," Ash promised.  "Especially the 'hug Enya' part...  And you make sure the Tsahiks take good care of that badge and key; I don't have to tell you why.  Tell Na'vie 'Hi' from both of us...and tell her to hang in there, that the next time we visit it'll be just to spend some time together...and that the good people on my world know what's going on now...and...OH!"  She almost jumped, then pulled forward her queue.  "And...as long as we're sending things that have someone's spirit all over them...take this."  She removed the little ornament on the end.  "Was it you or Tali who put it on Seze?  I don't know, and she isn't saying..."  She winked.  "But Enya made it, and I've been wearing it since even before my first visit to the Heart, and...well...maybe it's got a bit of me all over it too.  That'll just have to do until I can see Na'vie again in person..."

She hugged Ni'ka again, then stepped back.  "And now I guess I'd better go apologise to Ali'ite--I can't have her going away all mad."  She smiled again, misty-eyed; patted her friend on the shoulder; then turned her steps back towards the Tsahiks' meeting-chamber.