Chapter 1: Dreams and Visions

Between thoughts and reality, between reality and dreams, Neytiri resided.

She saw herself, or should she say, was lying in her and Jake's alcove in the new Kelutrel.. Feelings and sensations swirled around her, or were they in her mind?

She wasn't sure.

She wasn't sure of anything that was going on in this….dream, if that's what it was. She vaguely sensed some form of pain emanating from her body. She winced at the sensation. She hissed and bared her teeth at what she realized was a faceless enemy, her own body.

As she focused more and more on the pain, it intensified. Her sense of detachment from her body lessened as her pain increased. She began to feel the sweat on her brow and the cool grain of the wood floor beneath her aching back.

Without her consent or direction, a scream ripped from her throat. Immense pain enveloped her body. Though the pain seemed debilitating, it caused her to focus on her body, and she finally felt grounded in it again, all sense of vagueness gone, and with that, she lifted her head to look around. The first thing that caught her sight was her own stomach, swollen and sweaty, it bulged in front of her.

Then it hit her. The pain, the swollen belly.

She had talked to enough females to recognize the fact that she was apparently giving birth right now.

She looked to her left and saw her mother, Moat, the Tsahik of the Omaticaya, grinding plants up in a wooden bowl with a stone pummel. A gentle smoke rose from the stone basin as the plant's gentle leaves were ground to dust.

She looked to her right, she saw three Na'vi women preparing warm water and cloths to receive the child when it was born.

Neytiri looked back down at her belly. How could she be pregnant and giving birth? Why could she not remember herself being with child? How come nobody was helping her through the pain? She had talked to mothers about the experience, and they told her it would be painful, but she had no idea it would far outstrip their descriptions of agony, because to her it seemed like waves of pulsating pain were shooting across her frame.

She needed help. Jake would help her. Then it hit her, where was Jake? She looked to her left and then her right to find Jake nowhere in the alcove. As another wave of pain broke on her, her confusion turned to anger.

That skxawng! She thought. She would kill him herself. How could he not be present for the birth of their child? Jake should be here cooling her brow or talking soothingly to her. Where was he?

She let out a feral scream as the pain tore through her again. Neytiri briefly indulged a thought that involved feeding Jake to a Palulukan, but her thoughts then went back to pondering why Jake would not be present for such an important moment. Even through the pain, she tried to reason why her mate would be missing.

Through her pain-induced fog, Neytiri could envision a dozen different tasks Moat would send Jake on to prepare for the youngling's arrival. That must be it. Jake would only be missing this moment unless he absolutely had to.

Her thoughts were beginning to turn to affection for Jake and how he was always willing to help, when pain such she had never known made itself known to her body, and her thoughts, the few that were able to be make it coherently to her mind through the pain, called for Jake's death in the most brutal of ways. Neytiri cried out in anger.

"Jake, I am going to throw you off the top of Hometree."She screeched. "How could you do this to me?" A pain shot through her frame and she paused to let it pass. Her hands gripped the floor, scratching it with her nails. " You did this to me!" She snarled.

Sweat poured into her eyes and stung them. The pain broke down her anger and reduced her to sobbing. Hot tears poured down her face and she swung her head from side to side, trying to find Jake. She could not find him, so she pleaded to the empty air.

"My Jake, why won't you help me? Jake, help! Jake, it hurts." She hated how giving birth had reduced her to a helpless puddle of a person, but it was too much, too painful. She sat there and called out to Jake. Jake never came.

Neytiri didn't shoot awake from her dream, despite its shocking content. She quickly opened both eyes, but did not move otherwise. Her breathing slowly returned to normal and the sweat dried upon her brow.

She lay there, poring over her dream in her mind. She tried to hold on to the fragments of the dream as reality grasped her more and more and the dominion of dreams faded back into the murky depths of her mind. She was able to hold on to the crucial elements of the dream. She remembered being in labor, and being in immense pain, and her Jake not being there.

She hoped the dream remained just a dream and did not turn into any reality. She could not imagine facing such a challenge or painful ordeal without her mate there. Her hands slid on the moss bed from where they had rested under her head to travel over her stomach, where a small bump resided. Dreams about being with child and giving birth would become even more frequent, she thought, now that she was actually a full moon into being with child.

Surely, in the coming months, all of her thoughts would be focused on the coming youngling. She figured that this dream would be the first of many. However, she just couldn't shake the feeling of the gravity of this dream, of the certain quality it had to evoke in her a sense of apprehension and slight dread.

As the daughter of the Tsahik and a Tsahik in training herself, Neytiri out of anyone could recognize that some dreams were not mere wisps of thoughts, but in fact powerful omens or visions, sent from Eywa.

Such dreams, if ascertained to be a sign from Eywa, were to be regarded in a serious manner, and one was to look for signs of any such omen coming to fruition. Neytiri could not decide her feelings on the dream, but kept it in her mind all the same as she rolled over to greet Jake.

Before her eyes could see him as she rolled over, her hands instinctively reached to touch his chest and feel his warmth. Her hands were met with nothing but air. As she finished rolling over, she saw that Jakes spot in the bed was empty, the moss on his side cool to the touch, indicating his departure was some time ago. She felt a great confusion at this. Jake was never up before her, and on the rare occasion that he was, he always waited for her to wake or he gently woke her himself.

Neytiri could not help the small frown that formed on her mouth and that creased her brow. Maybe some of the apprehension of her dream was bleeding over into her waking life, but she did not like the fact that Jake was not there for her when she woke up.

Neytiri found that waking up next to Jake was one of the best things in her day.

Before the war, Jake had been uniltìrantokx, a dreamwalker, a spirit between two bodies. When she realized that she loved Jake, she was constantly terrified that he would be taken away from her since he did not reside in his dreamwalker body.

The times that Jake was asleep in his dreamwalker body, he slept like the dead, and Neytiri was always slightly worried that he had left that body forever or was truly dead. Then at the end of the final battle, when she had almost lost Jake, the state in which both of Jake's bodies had been in had left her terrified of him never waking up again.

Since that moment, seeing Jake wake up or seeing him when she woke up had become a comforting ritual for her. Being able to wake him up herself, calmed that small, terrified part of her and reassured her worried mind that he was truly in his dreamwalker body, that he was no longer uniltìrantokx, but truly Na'v.

Neytiri had gotten used to comforting herself this way. She wanted Jake to be the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw as sleep took her. And usually she got her desire, so Jake's sudden absence this morning sparked a sense of slightly apprehensive curiosity in her as to Jake's current whereabouts.

Neytiri sat up on the moss pad and swung her long legs over the side. She sat on the edge of the pad for a moment to let her thoughts gather. She told her upset mind that Jake was probably attending to some duty or function; after all, he was olo'eyktan.

Still, he could have woken her so as not to worry her. She looked over to the door of the alcove and saw that Jake's bow and quiver were gone, along with his flying glasses, she noticed. It was obvious he had or intended to go hunting.

Without telling or taking her. This upset her.

Jake always wanted to go hunting with her, why would he not want to this time? She placed both of her hands on her stomach and sighed, talking to her unborn child "What am I going to do with your father?" She asked as she rubbed small circles on her cerulean blue stomach.

Neytiri then stood up and did a little stretch. She flexed her long legs and arms to work out the knots of a goods nights sleep. She walked over to her side of the alcove. She grabbed her necklace from her small shelf where she kept several other personal effects.

She walked over to the entrance to the alcove, where upon the doorframe, hung her father's bow. The bow is a magnificent weapon, and a reminder to Neytiri everyday that though her father is dead, his strong memory still lives on. Neytiri thinks that the bow, such a strong and powerful object, is the like the Omaticaya, who are strong and at peace once again.

Even though the war with the Tawtute was terrible and they lost much, they are now living life once again. She intends to live her life to the fullest in memory of her father and all those who died in the battle. Intent upon finding Jake and prodding him for the reasons of his early rising, she slung the bow and a quiver over her back.

She stepped out of the alcove into the dappled mid morning sunlight filtering down through the branches of the Kelutrel. She looked around, she was alone. She decided that the rest of the clan must already be about their chores.

With her lithe and nimble form, she descended to lower branches, heading for the bottom of Hometree. She moved with the quiet but lethal grace of a huntress, and with practiced ease, the descent was smooth and swift.

Even with the small bump of her pregnancy, Neytiri still seemingly glided through her forest home. She reached the bottom of the Hometree to see other clan members going about their business. She looked around.

The morning light slowly made its way through the vast branches of Hometree to cast strange shadows. She looked up to the sun, it must be nearly midday now. She cursed herself for letting herself sleep so long.

Then she wondered to herself how long that dream really took.

As she made her way towards a cooking fire, she noticed some of the other clan members working off to the side of the camp. Some were preparing the fire pits for the hunters' return, while others worked the Great Loom. She really only wanted to see one other clan member right now though, besides Jake.

She wanted to talk to her mother.

Neytiri still felt some of her previous apprehension of her dream and she wanted to discuss it with Moat. As the venerable and experienced Tsahik of the Omaticaya, Moat would know what the dream meant, or at least have some better understanding of it than Neytiri did.

Neytiri found Moat under the roots of a small Kelutrel sapling. Even though the tree was in its relative infancy, it already stretched to the height of any of the other forest trees and it was as wide enough so that twenty Na'vi would have to link arms to encompass its girth.

This particular sapling had somehow found room in the soil to spring up in between Hometree's colossal roots and start growing within a stone's throw of the base of Hometree.

In the early stages of the trees growth, it shot up out of the ground and the massive roots suspended the vast bulky, trunk of the tree above it. Thus, underneath of the roots was a sort of chamber, surrounded and vaulted with the massive roots of the infant tree.

Moat had chosen the space to serve as a healing area, so that those with sickness and those still not completely cured of grave wounds suffered in the battle could have a place to live that was very close to home and did not require them to climb up Hometree's trunk to get there.

The immense roots of the tree formed archways as they tangled and twisted in between each other, thus creating a sort of walled space with intermittent openings to the area within.

Neytiri ducked through one of these particular archways and looked around. It had been a year since the great battle, so only two or three of those present had been gravely wounded people. Only four or five others populated the space. Three healers ran around the space, tending to the others.

Neytiri saw Moat standing over an old Na'vi, one whom Neytiri did not recognize. Neytiri began to slowly make her way through the wounded and sick to get to Moat. As she looked around, the faces and eyes of the sick and wounded followed her. All of them recognized her and knew her. She was, after all, the princess of the Omaticaya, and amazingly, she thought, the mate of the sixth Toruk Makto, and their olo'eyktan.

Some of them made gestures in greeting and acknowledgement, while the sicker ones merely nodded. Neytiri responded in kind as she made her way over to her mother. She turned back around to see her mother bending closely over the old one, who now seemed to be asleep.

"What troubles you, my daughter, that you sleep so late, and then when you do wake, you come immediately to me?" Moat questions without ever turning away from her charge, or even acknowledging her daughters presence. Neytiri knew Moat was very wise and could see things from very little, so she decided to overlook her mother's knowledge of her morning events. She decided to go straight into her questions.

"I had a dream, mother" Neytiri simply states. Moat continues to observe the old patient and does not turn around or make any attempt to show her daughter she has heard her. Neytiri, from experience takes her silence as a sign to continue. "It was a dream about my 'eveng." She says in a quiet voice. Neytiri notices the change in Moat as soon as her words leave her mouth. Moat turns around and looks at Neytiri, her eyes questioning and her look one of curiosity.

"Go on, tell me more" Moat says. Neytiri proceeds to explain the full extent of her dream to Moat. Neytiri then spills her fears and apprehension before she can stop herself, she rambles on about the feelings of pain and fear she got when she was in the dream.

Finally, she realized how much and how long she had been talking for and she immediately went quiet and sat down on a flat rock next to her, her eyes downcast upon the floor. She then felt Moat's hand upon her shoulder, warm and comforting. Nrytiri looked up into her mother's eyes.

"My dear child" Moat began."….It is natural for such a dream to frighten you, and for such a dream to be had in the first place." Moat continued. She then took her hand and put it in Neytiri's and used it to pull her daughter up so that she was standing. "Don't worry about the dream, my child, we will tell soon enough if it is of any significance" Moat gestures in the air with her hands, as if to dispel the worries like they were in the air, plaguing their sensibilities. "Walk with me Neytiri, we will talk of your future and your 'eveng" Moat says as she tugs on Neytiri's hand and leads her through the patients to the outside of the healing area.

As they step from out of the space from under the sapling, the morning light hits them with blinding light.

They quickly step out and begun to walk across the camp to the cooking fires. They are silent for a moment, before Neytiri speaks up. "I forgot to ask you mother, Jake was not nest to me when I awoke this morning, have you seen him this morning?" Neytiri asks. Moat looks down, a slight look of guilt crossing her face.

This look confuses Neytiri. Moat looks back up at her daughter and smiles.

"Jakesully awoke very early this morning, and I was surprised to not see you with him." Moat replies, putting her hands on her daughters in a calming motion at the sight of her daughter's imminent interjection. "And before you get upset, when I saw him, I asked him what he was doing up so early. He replied that he was getting his day's hunting done early, and that he knew of a spot about a morning's ride from Hometree, where he knew there to be many yerik. He asked me not to wake you, that he wanted you to sleep and get your rest, for you and your child." Moat explained.

She let go of her daughter's hands and looked her in the eyes. "Jakesully merely wants you to be safe and healthy, now that you are with child, and he felt that he should get away and get his hunting done before you could convince him to let you go with him, and to be honest, I cannot blame him, we all want you to be safe and…." Moat says before being cut off by Neytiri.

"I understand Jake wants me to be safe and that he is just looking out for me and our child, but I am pregnant, not a lame pa'li! I just wish he had asked me before disappearing off on his ikran, the skxawng!" Neytiri fussed.

She looked back up into her mother's eyes, and upon seeing the look of slight worry, she assured her mother "Mother, I don't intend on doing anything drastic or stupid while I am with child, but I don't wish to be grounded like an ikran that is too fat to fly. I don't want Jake looming over me telling me what I can and cannot do, and him making my decisions for me, I am perfectly capable of doing that myself, and making decisions perfectly safe for my child." Moat merely sighed and continued to walk forward towards Hometree, Neytiri followed her.

"I know you feel that way child, but don't push Jake away, he is only trying to do what he thinks is best." Moat looked up to see her daughter still looking down with a look of annoyance.

Moat smiled at her daughter's annoyance. "You know, Jake may be Na'vi in body now, but he is still part Tawtute in spirit, and therefore good Na'vi males and Tawtute males cannot be that different, because your father acted very similarly to Jake when I was with child".

Neytiri looked up, a little wide eyed, and Moat chuckled at her daughter's expression. "Don't worry too much child, be happy that you have a mate that values you such that he is trying to protect you, it may be annoying, and don't worry I found it to be annoying when your father acted that way too, but I knew it was out of caring that he did it."

Neytiri seemed to ponder this, as her brow creased in concentration and she looked down at the ground, as if studying it. Moat reached out and put her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Come, we will go to my alcove and eat, and then I will take you to the top of Hometree, to the ikran roost, where you can await Jake's return." Moat coaxed her daughter along. Neytiri gave a small smile at the thought of seeing Jake, hopefully with a full bounty of yerik.

Just as they are about to start ascending the central spiral of Hometree, there is a great commotion behind them and several loud shouts and whoops break the midday peace. One of the hunters on watch came riding up on his pa'li.

The watch was a new habit put into place by Jake when he became olo'eyktan, that there should always be a group of hunters on the guard, watching for threats at all times.

The hunter, a strong male Neytiri knew to be called F'yukan, disconnected tsayhalu and dismounted. He quickly trot over to Moat and Neytiri, having seen them immediately as he entered the camp. He was sweating and breathing hard, and he only half heartedly made a gesture of greeting to the Omaticaya Tsahik and princess.

He started to talk while still trying to catch his breath. "Tsahik, Princess Neytiri…there is a large group of…..Na'vi approaching….I don't think they are Omaticaya…they are very light skinned…..and have strange stripes…..I must speak to the olo'eyktan at once…..he must know of this." F'yukan gasps out his message to them both and puts his hands on his side.

Neytiri and Moat look at each other. Moat has a determined look in her eyes and she straightens herself up to her full height and then looks down at the still panting F'yukan. "You have done well F'yukan to bring us these tidings, many clans are on the move after the war. Unfortunately, Jakesully has not returned from hunting today, me and Neytiri will assume command in his absence, we will go up Hometree to gain a better view of these newcomers." F'yukan nodded, looking up at the Tsahik from his half crouched postion.

She continued "Now F'yukan, if you can run a bit more, I must ask you to go find and bring to me Odo'khal, Dharga, Ja'ri and K'yuut. They are the hunters I know Jake to trust most, bring them to me so that I may confer with them on this situation."

Moat turned to ascend Hometree, and Neytiri followed to do the same. They walked in silence as hunters below them organized their weapons and old ones and children got into groups that waited at the base of Hometree.

Soon Neytiri and Moat had reached a platform a small distance up Hometree, where the branches opened up and they had a clear view of the lake and the gently sloping hill that led down to it.

The hill that led down to the lake was sparsely covered, only being carpeted in small underbrush, with occasional trees. There upon the lake's edge stood a large group of Na'vi, bigger than her own clan's warriors, Neytiri judged. They rested upon the lakes edge. Waiting, it seemed.

Then a rousing cry went up from among them and they marched forward in one large mob. The warriors at Moat's side begun to shout orders at hunters waiting at their sides. Hunters scrambled up and down Hometree, preparing for the imminent arrival of these strange Na'vi.

F'yukan had been right, even from a distance, Neytiri could tell these Na'vi were not close to the Omaticaya at all, they beared little bluish color, and as they got closer, she could see strange whitish stripes upon their skin. They were like nothing Neytiri had ever seen or heard of.

She looked over to her mother, and saw that under the mask of determination, there was worry clouding her wizened golden eyes. Neytiri began to worry and she scanned the skies, hoping for a familiar figure to drop from the sky to their aid. She couldn't help but stomp her foot as she scanned the bright blue noon skies and thought to herself

"Where are you, Jake?"