I am sitting with my back against a cold and lifeless boulder, keeping watch at the mouth of the rocky cavern. The woodsprites that occasionally float by bring me anger, they taunt me that I do not belong and remind me of my mortality. I place my four fingered hand on my stomach to make it temporarily forget its hunger.

My once bright blue has become pale as cave water from living away from the open sky, it is not adorned with tribal paint but is criss crossed with jagged scars and dotted with old arrow wounds from several close encounters with members of my race who live in clans. The only clothes I wear are what rags I could find. My eyes have long since lost their golden gleam and turned a murky brown. My queue has not glowed or even been felt for years, and is now a dead tangle. My teeth are nit nearly as sharp as they should be, but what else can be expected from a scavenger diet. Malnutrition has kept he a head shorter than the average Navi has after living as many years as I have.

I am an outcast, one of the despised and hunted, enemy of all the clans, one who has failed his rite of passage and forced to leave his clan forever. Because I could not tame a banshee, the Omaticaya clan, my parents, everyone I knew told me to leave and never return. Many tried to kill me, believing I was a disgrace who did not deserve to live. I have had to run and hide, to scavenge and steal; what ever it took to survive. I did it, and until recently I had to do it alone. Even Eywa has renounced me, severing my connection with the rest of the world. For almost my whole adult life, I have had to be completely alone.

A small child, one who looks very much like me but with few scare, crawled next to me and wrapped hugged my right arm. I smiled, and gently tousled what little hair he had with my left hand.

"I thought you were going to sleep?"

"I was, but I got scared and wanted to be near you."

I did not tell my son that he had nothing to be scared of; I promised I would not lie to him. I simply held him close until he stopped shaking. After a while, he starts to sleep. He sleeps so peacefully that by watching him I can, if only for a brief moment, forget the immense danger we or in or the gruesome fate that will befall us should we be found by either Navi or beast. Some on known sound rumbles in the distance, what it is I do not know and my curiosity is not strong enough to compel me to find out. I reach for the flint knife I carved from rock, holding any weapon at all makes me feel less powerless.

Despite being unarmed, I have been able to make good use of my cunning and navi warrior arrogance. However, there have been too many close calls for me to take any chances. Because I could not pass the rite of passage, because I do not belong, I am an enemy of all my race. Because my son was born of two outcasts, and because neither me nor my sons mother were physically able to undergo tsaheylu before conceiving him, he too will be hated by all. To keep him safe, I would do anything.

Soon the skys great light will fall beneath the horizon and those who hunt us will sleep and my son and I can go about finding food. Everything will still be trying to end our lives, but the darkness should provide the needed cover to keep my son safe from harm. He is the only reason I keep myself alive.