Chapter Text
Neteyam is angry he realizes as he is riding next to siblings towards Metkayina , the journey to Metkayina is long and tiring, it feels like a never-ending journey with the days they spent flying. He misses his home, and he can see that his siblings miss it too, especially Kiri and Tuk. He doesn't want to leave his home and hide,running away from his enemies just for them to follow them.
Riding longer he finally sees the island up ahead, “are we here yet?” Tuk complained about the hundredth time.
“Yes, it's up ahead,” Their mother said.
The Island gets bigger and bigger as they fly closer. Neteyam could see the Metkayina people down below, starting to get closer to where we are landing. They follow behind his father as he starts to land his ikran to the island floor. Neteyam landed carefully with his ikran removing his connected braid, following closely behind to his father, with his siblings by his side.
Neteyam notices they have much lighter skin than them, they had very different tails then ours and different builds. Their forearms are wider, and they have more muscles as well. And different designs on their skin and instead of yellow eyes they have light blue eyes.
Neteyam started to hear the whispers of the Metkayina people.
“What are these strangers doing here?”
“Look at that, can you even call that a tail”
He was starting to get uncomfortable at the unwelcome and judging stares and even a bit angry. Until he saw a Metkayina pushing through the crowd and circling around.” He is beautiful’’, Neteyam thinks with his bright blue eyes and his stupidly long eyelashes to top it off. He has his hair tied up in a bun with some of his brown curly hair sticking out, while he has a long braid down his back. Neteyam and Lo’ak give him the” I see you” but he doesn’t return the gesture he notices the pretty Metkayina fixates them with a malicious glare the short Metkayina boy next to him starts to make fun of how our tails look.
“Look, what is that? Is that supposed to be a tail?” The short Metkayina says
Both of them start to laugh really loud.
From the corner of his eye, he can see another Metkayina coming out of the ocean with a loud splash, he turns to look at her as well as Lo’ak the Metkayina girl is getting off a creature and swimming towards them. She comes closer flipping her hair and turns to stand next to the two Metkaynia boys
“It's too small, how are they supposed to swim?” The short one starts up again and both of the boys start giggling, The Pretty Metkaynia hits him in the head and tells him to quit it.
“Hey”, Lo’ak says with a love struck look on his face.
The girl starts shyly giggling as she looks down. Neteyam starts to look at Lo’ak with a teasing grin, Lo’ak sees it and tells him to shut up with a mean glare. Neteyam tries to hold back a laugh.
Neteyam and his family start to look up when they see the olo’eyktan on a flying sea creature, he flies over us and lands in the sea. He starts to walk up to us, Neteyam watches as he and his father start to do the “i see you” motion, me and the rest of the family greets him as well. Neteyam starts to take notice that some of the crowd makes way for Tsahik as she walks towards us and stops by the chief, my father and mother makes the same gesture to her.
My father starts to ask the chief if we could stay here.
The chief observed us and spoke.
“You are forest people. Your skills will be useless here.”
Neteyam heard his father start talking to the chief. That is when the Tsahik walked up. She circled around them.
“Stay here?” She said, she goes on to say that our tails are too weak, and our arms are too thin.
“You’ll be slow in the water”, She says as she grabs Kiri’s tail.
“Hey, let go.” Kiri grabbed her tail away.
I saw Tsahik grab Kiri's hand, holding her fingers for everyone to see.
“These children aren’t even true Navi,” As She was still holding her hand, The crowd surrounding them gasped very loudly.
Kiri says, “Yes we are” with a mean face
She walks over to Lo,ak and grabs his hand, “They have demon blood” the crowd gasps again and starts to back away like we have a disease.
“Hey, I’m a half-breed too,” Neteyam saw his father showing his hand, he listened as his father tried to talk to the chief and convince him.
“You cannot bring your conflict here.” The chief replied.
“You want to stay here to be away from someone. I thought you were the mighty Toruk Makto.” Tsahik said with disdain.
Neteyam saw his mother walk up to the Tsahik and say, “He is Toruk Makto, he led the clans to victory against the sky people.”
He heard the Tsahik say, “It seems the Eywa turn its back on you.”
His mother hissed. And the Metkayina Tsahik hissed back.
Father starts to apologize for our mother, she complains about that.
The Metkayina Tsahik eventually walked to stand next to the chief. Tsahik looked at him and the chief looked at her as well. Neteyam was praying they would let them stay.
The chief looked back at us and said, “Toruk Makto and his family will stay with us, treat them as our brother and sister, teach them our ways so they do not suffer the shame of being useless.
We all start to say thank you.” My son and daughter will teach your children, ``the Chief said.
“Father no wh-”, The pretty boy tries to resort,
“It is decided,” Chief said, with a stern voice that left no arguments.
Neteyam starts to stare at the boy again. It makes sense, how close he was to me and my family. He acts just like his mother.
The Girl comes up to us and says, “Come I will show you our village” with a smile on her face. Neteyam goes to follow her with the rest of the family but not without one more glance to the boy, he sees him glaring hard at him. He knew then and there that this was going to be a problem.