Maybe that's the man I am

Hepbola was a Na’vi on Pandora. At the age of ten, her tribe fell victim to the sky people’s rampage. She didn’t know a world in which her home, her family, and her friends were threatened. Until they came.

She was a girl of the forest. Once they landed, the explosions and fire wiped out the trees, plants, and animals. Her home became ravaged and unrecognizable. She managed to still be alive. Through the flames and the smoke she couldn’t believe her luck when she was joined by friendly faces.

Only too late did she realize the Na’vi weren’t her family or friends. They bore the markings of the Sky people. Five fingers. Strange gait. Foreign tongue. They wore her skin and paraded on her planet to tear it apart and replace the people who lived there first without consideration or respect.

She screamed when the humans controlling the avatars surrounded her and blocked out the light. The people masquerading as one of her own while they dreamwalked, pillaged her land, and extorted her natural resources.

She screamed when they knelt down to her. The fire was suffocating. They knew she wasn’t long for this world. They didn’t kill her with a bullet or a knife to the throat. She screamed. They shoved her to the ground, severed her connection to Eywa, and left her to die there with the rest of her tribe.

She should have died. She thought she had. Eywa should have taken her from the pain of seeing your home bulldozed and trampled over like it was barren land. It would have been merciful to be taken then.

Hepbola woke in pain and surrounded by strangers. They tried to calm her, but her body wanted to fight. She would fight to the death if it meant she could go back home. She screamed at the strangers. She didn’t know their faces. It was then she knew with all of her heart that her family was dead. If they were alive they would have never let this happen. Their faces would have been the first she saw. She was alone here.

She calmed down and took in her surroundings. She seemed to be in some place of care. She knew she had an injury. Her hand reached up tentatively until it reached the blunt stump of her ponytail. Her bond to Eywa, to the mother tree, to the ekran was taken away.

All she could do was breathe. It was like waking up without a limb, without an eye. There was solace in understanding the loss he survived, but it was in quiet defeat because she knew no amount of screaming or fighting would heal it or convince it to grow back.

She sat in the horrible realization that she didn’t die that fateful day and had to go through the effort to survive everyday henceforth.

Tears welled up in her eyes. The will to fight was gone.

Hepbola remained in the new Na’vi’s medic center for physical therapy. The skilled witch doctors of this tribe did not believe she would survive the injury the avatars inflicted upon her, let alone teach herself how to walk again.

She was alone in this new tribe until a kind couple arrived and confessed their desire to adopt her. She was welcomed to this new place with a new family. She recovered on her own time. She was the first in history to have a severed bond and live to tell the story. Hepbola could never bond with an animal Or Na’vi for the remainder of her life.

But that didn’t matter when she recovered and her family was there to see her take her first steps. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. On hopeless, painful Nights she spent time somewhere far away from the tribe that hardly represented Pandora at all.

She taught herself the language after all the media she consumed. She fell in love with the culture depicted on the screen. She devoted time to truly understand and dive into intricacies of earth and eventually it became her.

On earth they celebrated The disabled and the different. At least when she escaped her poor little hospital cot she could be absorbed in a world she could get lost in. Humans had such rich, vibrant, fulfilling, and exciting lives and they couldn’t talk to Eywa, either. Eywa was in them, around them, something. At least on earth, she wouldn’t be a freak.

Once she could walk on her own, she was running. In all truth, it was a stupid thing to do. Hepbola ran all the way home, but she had no way of knowing where it was. Now, she realized too late, she couldn’t even use her bond to Eywa to ask for directions. Still, she did not stop. She did not backtrack or hesitate.

“Your landing could use some work,” she laughed. She was alone, or so he’d have her believe.

He emerged from the trees. He was the boy she saw when she woke up that first day. Not one of the ones talking to her and trying to give her medicine, the one who stayed far enough back where he could still see her from her hospital cot.

He was Jake Sully’s son, Neteyam.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Hepbola smiled at him. Hepbola asked in English and he responded in Pandoran. Her interest in earth was something that could get her in trouble with his tribe, but he was one of the only Na’vi who knew English as well as she did.

She turned away from him and continued her descent. She looked out at the area and sniffed the air. Her eyes slit.

“I have to see it.”

Neteyam stayed back and she emerged from the brush. The ground was black and still smoking. Her heart pound in her chest from The sight. Distantly, she recognized the feeling as pain. She was heartsick.

She could still see her home. Pristine, untouched, the sight she never would have thought she’d have to carved into memory. One she couldn’t believe one day wouldn’t be there.

Only those were phantom images. None of it remained. Her home was a ghost. What was at her feet was her family.

Neteyam crept up behind her. She could feel him wanting to say something to console her, maybe convince her to turn around and go back, but he didn’t. He just stood there in silence.

Hepbola took one step, two steps, three, and then the shock of seeing everything she’d ever known burned to death wore off.

She placed her hands out from her face, framing the scene as though directing a bit of media. She filmed the sparks of fire flying down from the sky in her mind. She backed herself up into the same corner the military men shoved her into. She panned down to the rock they’d slammed her head into.

She closed in on their faces. The three of them. She committed each feature to memory and dropped her hands.

It wasn’t all just a bad dream. She was here to see it. It was real. She’d have to live with knowing what happened and have been the only survivor for the rest of her life. It was resolute. It was already decided.

When she looked down she found something she thought she’d never see again. She held her own severed ponytail in her hands.

She hadn’t noticed before, but when Neteyam said something into his necklace, she realized this was new technology. It was crafted in a way to disguise its purpose, but at its core, that was earth technology.

Neteyam was talking to somebody. He looked at her. He turned away from her to answer the questions coming in through his ear. She didn’t want company. She didn’t want to face the punishment for leaving, or attempting to leave. What made it worse was that he was with her.

Jake sully wasn’t the kind of tribe Leader who’d thank the girl for leading his son away from home and to a dangerous zone previously crawling in sky people. There was no way she was getting out of this.

Stupid nosy kid.

When they landed on their ikran she was still holding the ponytail. Jake Sully said something to his son and looked over at her. She refused to move. Her head was bowed, as though her connection to Eywa was her peace offering.

There were hands on her and she did not refuse them. When the group returned home, she was before Jake sully and his family. She refused to lift her head.

Jake Sully decided she needed to be trained. She looked up at him then, when he suggested his own son to be the one to do it.

Jake Sully saw something in them then. She believed it was aspiration.

Hepbola heard tales of Jake Sully ever since he united the tribes to banish the sky people. Her tribe knew him as fearful, strong, and a warrior. What kid doesn’t want to be all of those things?

I can speak for myself, thank you.

I’m Hepbola. I’ll recount my story from here.

Our desire to prove ourselves to Jake sully became a competition.

My adoptive family had children when I was growing up. I was their older sibling and Neteyam became the eldest sibling to three kids plus a human monkey that spoke our language.

He didn’t intrigue me much because he wasn’t human. Jake Sully came from earth. He could tell me things about where he came from that I would never grow tired of hearing. There weren’t many Na’vi here who pestered him about his life from before. I chose to see it as helpful for Jake Sully to have someone to talk to, someone who would understand where he was coming from.

Neteyam arrived and Jake Sully told us both to fish but not before gathering our siblings for dinner. We groaned but did as he said. Neteyam grabbed his ikran and dove off the floating mountains.

I’d been on the floating mountains long enough to make up for my crutch. Something was different that day. My eyes rolled in the back of my head and my body went limp. No one could catch me before I was falling with nothing to break my fall.

Neteyam found me in the leaves. I was still breathing but he worried I wasn’t. I could have been crying, I couldn’t tell. When I looked up at Neteyam I wanted him to jostled me playfully like we used to do when we were young. He couldn’t mask the concerns on his face seeing me like this and that wasn’t what I wanted to see.

Nobody wanted to tell me, but once I was hospitalized, they couldn’t delay. While my arm was being set and wrapped in a sling, I was told that my severed connection to Eywa could lead to unpredictable fits and spells, but that’s all they knew. I was their guinea pig and I felt like one.

I was already an outcast. I couldn’t do most of the things kids my age did because I couldn’t fly an ikran. My pigment was losing its richness. It looked like my body was beginning to rot. My broken connection to Eywa was cutting me off from the nutrients and minerals in the land around me.

Kids excluded me. I couldn’t speak to Eywa like they could and I was changing colors. I began to grow an intolerance for food on Pandora. I was in every way a freak. They didn’t understand me, so they shunned me.

My parents didn’t hate the idea. It was clear I needed to spend less time on the floating mountains just in case my connection to Eywa flared up again. The next time I fell, I won’t get out with something as lucky as a broken arm.

I spent time alone in my cabin on the ground. When the sully family took pity on me, we’d go out on a hunt. Those days were fun. Most of the time, though, I’d gaze up at those floating mountains and imagine everything I was missing.

The Sully family weren’t my family, but they rescued me. I didn’t belong anywhere. Now, it seems, I don’t even belong in the one place I used to call home.

Since I was basically grounded, it became my responsibility to be the Omatikaya’s childcare. That’s what I was, as uncoordinated and prone to hurt myself as a child was.

It wasn’t all bad. The kids were too young to judge me for looking desaturated and less athletic and healthy as my peers. To them I was just Aunty Hepbola.

I had to babysit my younger siblings, anyway. I liked watching them grow up with Tuk, even though it reminded me of all the milestones I’d never reach myself.

I was studying earth cultures late at night when I was visited by Netayam. I still jumped. I knew I didn’t have to hide my interest in forbidden subjects with him. He was half earthling himself. I was raised to be ashamed of my interest. It was my instinct to turn off the TV at the sound of anyone approaching.

I sighed. Netayam’s large yellow eyes found mine in the dark.

“Please. Don’t hang around because you feel sorry for me. You watching me like a starving puppy is actually making me feel worse.”

“That’s not- I don’t think you’re- I thought we could go somewhere.”

“I can’t,” I faced the TV with its hollow reflection staring back at me. “I am meant to stay here. It’s my only purpose to this tribe.”

“It isn’t.”

“Oh?” I played pessimistically. “A hollow vessel shunned by Eywa and Pandora. Can’t climb basic structures, I’m the last of my people and I can’t even remember our songs. I might as well be dead.”

Netayam knelt beside me. “But you’re not dead.”

“I’m lucky.”

“You were meant to survive. You were meant to carry your tribe’s name into the next chapter even if they couldn’t be here by your side. It’s just like you said. Your disconnection from Eywa isn’t a retraction. It’s allowed you to develop in ways we couldn’t even think of doing.”

“Because you’ve never had to try.”

“Exactly. If any of us went through what you went through, we wouldn’t be capable of half of the things you can do. You’re scrappy and you need to be. You have strength and resilience. It’s unfortunate what happened to you, but you’d be the same with or without your cora. You’d still be the same old Hepbola. Terrible at lying and spending too much time doing things you shouldn’t be doing.”

I watched Netayam without speaking. Though I tried to calm down, I couldn’t stop the smirk growing in the corner of my mouth.

“So, what is my purpose?”

“Why, to follow the orders of the Prince, of course.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Prince?”

“The son of the man who tamed Leonopteryx. Your words.”

I couldn’t help but blush.

“I can’t,” I repeated. “If I get in trouble one more time because of you…”

“You won’t,” Netayam got to his feet and held his hand out for me to grab. Five fingers clasped around my four.

When we were out, I finally felt like I could breathe. The glowing foliage rushed past us in streaks of light as the forest enveloped us. The creatures danced above us as we ran. The plants shrunk as we bumped into them.

It was a bad idea for two teenagers to go running into the forest at night. There were predators everywhere. I guessed teenage ignorance and bolstered confidence that nothing was going to happen clouded our judgement.

I slowed when I saw where Netayam had been leading me. Eywa’s tree. Netayam read the expression on my face and hurried to explain himself as I turned from the tree to wallow back in my shack.

“Wait- wait. Listen.” Netayam took my hands and led me to the tree. “This isn’t a place exclusive to those with coras. It’s holy ground. Everything around here is connected to Eywa and the ancestors. They hear and feel you regardless.”

“Netayam, I don’t want to be here.”

He was quiet looking at me. It looked like he gave up trying to convince me to change my mind.

“Stay for me, then,” he encouraged. “I need you here with me.”

I dragged my feet, but eventually we were underneath the massive willow’s white electric branches. They brushed my shoulders as we walked, taunting me with the ability I no longer possessed.

I could protest all night, but despite me being such a downer all the time, I knew Netayam had been having a rough time. With both of his parents being so skilled in combat, he didn’t have room to fail. He had to live up to their standards and set a good example for Lo’ak and Tuk. It was a heavy burden to bear for the Prince of Torak Makto.

I knelt by his side as he prayed to the tree and prepared his cora to bond. I held my breath and shifted uncomfortably in my spot. What was a person supposed to do in silence while their friend prayed to a religion they no longer believed in?

After a minute’s hesitation, Netayam said, “This doesn’t feel right.”

“I’m glad you see it my way, now let’s go before someone notices.”

“No, I mean, doing this without you.”

“Netayam, the entire time you’ve known me, I’ve never been able to do this.”

Netayam struggled to find the words to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“Netayam, let’s go.”

“No, I mean I’m sorry that it was me who followed you, and exposed your most troubled past to my parents. I’m sorry I ever made you feel like hanging out with you was a burden or obligation of my station. Because that’s not it at all. Happy, you’re my best friend. I’ve never let anyone else see the screw up, a kid who would bring shame to his parents, earth sympathizer like you know. I know this is a fragile line and I don’t even know if you feel the same.”

Neteyam watched my eyes.

“Purple like the sky.”

“Neteyam…” I was truly speechless. “Don’t pick me. Pick those who have a future. Joon is the best rider. Nilly is the best cook. You don’t want this spoiled fungus who could die at any moment.”

“You know what‘s best, don’t you? You know what my parents would say, what the tribe would decide is best for me. Maybe the son of Toruk Makto is just a fuck up who chooses the rotten apple. Maybe that’s the man I am.”

“Appearances…”

Neteyam took my hand. “That’s the man I am.”

I breathed out a shaky breath and smiled. “I’ve had feelings for you from the start. I just reined them because I knew they had no place.”

I stared into his yellow eyes.

“This is where I want to do it.”

“Neteyam, you can’t mate with me without a cora.”

“Yes I can.”

The kisses were more than I’d ever imagined. Neteyam was gentle and sensitive the whole while. I was mating with the most sought after Na’vi in the Omatikaya tribe. He should know better than to choose me, but If we were both being foolish, what really was the harm?

Besides, it wasn’t really mating without a cora. The air filled with sprites that covered our bodies. The ground began to glow just like the tree herself.

We were sweaty and breathing heavily but I heard something else. It was low and quiet until it was a choir of voices. Voices I knew and a song every part of me reacted to.

The songs of my people, a memory finally unlocked after a decade. The voices of my sister and mother. The crackling of the fire. The players and their drums and instruments. I could see and hear them like I was there. I could see them and they could see me.

“Do you hear that?” Netayam asked me.

I was surprised he could hear it too.

He had an idea. He bonded with the tree as if asking to confer with the ancestors.

Then, something miraculous happened. While in the throes of mating, Neteyam’s cora didn’t just connect him to Eywa, but connected me, as well.

I could see and hear the profound music of my people just like I did when I was too young to remember, with Neteyam as my witness.

It was a beautiful joining of two worlds. The past and the present, and royalty and the discarded pebble of a disappeared tribe.

It wasn’t an announcement or anything. Netayam and I were far too young to be betrothed. That night was just for the two of us, two lonely people fitting together like puzzle pieces. Netayam felt for me what I felt for him. It couldn’t get much better than that.

Then, the sky people encroached on our land and Jake Sully decided it wasn’t safe for his family to remain in the floating mountains.

I just made it up in time to see Neteyam board his Ikran. There was no goodbye. No letter. No promise to see each other again.

I wasn’t mad. Jake Sully, the mighty Toruk Makto warrior knew best how to protect his family and Netayam wouldn’t have an opportunity to disagree. He was the perfect son, after all.

I hoped for more, selfishly. A profession of love and commitment, maybe even take me with them.

The Sully’s weren’t my family but I wished they thought of me as their family. I thought I might mean more to them than a departure without an explanation.

At least to Netayam.

I wasn’t and I never was. I was doomed to be the runt of the tribe with or without Netayam, just now I wouldn’t have my best friend with me to make the hard times somewhat livable.

I went back to my routine of babysitting the clan’s kids, hunting and foraging, and defending my shack from predators.

My night with Neteyam felt like a fever dream. It was easier to think it never happened. How could it have? Neteyam and me? Please. He’d never pick me.

The time I spent on the ground alone was dreary but it wasn’t that bad as long as it didn’t get any worse.

Sometime later, news spread of Netayam’s death. The sky people had found them in the reefs and Neteyam was caught in the crossfire trying to rescue Spider.

I was glad I was a recluse on the outskirts of the tribe. If I were around people, they’d notice that I hadn’t done anything but fixate on the same wall for three weeks straight.

Netayam was dead.

The only connection I had to Eywa was now trapped on the other side, the only place I couldn’t get to.

I didn’t care. I swear I didn’t. We weren’t that close. His family were the ones hurting, dealing with real loss and grief. What was I doing? Pining after a guy who was never mine?

I didn’t care. I just didn’t.

When Neytiri arrived with an injured arm, I was ready. We weren’t close. I would never admit it out loud, but I swear Neytiri could smell it on you if you were an earth sympathizer or not. How many times I asked her husband about his upbringing must have tipped her off.

She didn’t expect to see me in her hospital room.

“I’m ready to take arms with you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The sky people killed Neteyam. They need to die. I’m ready to do it.”

“You know nothing.”

“You will refuse my help. You know I trained by his side. I will take his place and his spirit will live on through me.”

“You have no right to stand where he stood. You are nothing like he was. You will never be sufficient. You are exiled from Eywa for a reason. I will not let you infect the rest of my family.”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. It would just give her more ammunition not to see me as an equal. Eywa didn’t banish me. That’s what they all thought. I didn’t have any of the things they had and that was all that mattered to them, the perception of equality. What would happen if I told her her son helped me communicate with Eywa? That I wasn’t disabled but differently abled? They wouldn’t understand. They only believe what they wanted to believe.

Then, she was gone. I put myself out there for nothing. There was nothing I could do or say to prove myself, to be accepted anywhere but the shack, out of sight, out of mind.

Jake Sully was captured in a fight in the reefs. Their one sanctuary couldn’t fight to defend the mighty Toruk Makto. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.

I studied the sky people. I knew them better than anyone in the Omatikaya clan. If there was anything I could do to make them pay for what they did to Neteyam, I was going to do it.

I made it to the sky people base camp. By this time, my severed connection to Eywa left my body black as night. The little lights I had left were weak and flickering like stars. I looked like the galaxy. An abomination to my own people. Neteyam would have been gobsmacked to see it. The human army hadn’t spotted me yet. My dark coat worked wonders for camouflage. I yelped when a noise behind me wasn’t loud but just enough to put me on edge.

It was Neytiri. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No. You’ll handle that well enough yourself.”

“I didn’t mean to barge in here. I can’t just stand by and let others fight for me.”

“You would walk in there- a sure suicide- because what? You’re cut off from Eywa and it’s weighing heavy on your conscience?”

“I hate them. I hate the sky people. All they do is take and destroy. I need to destroy them first.”

“How?”

“You know what we need to do. I know you hate them as much as I do. After what they did to your sister.”

“Don’t speak of her!”

I went too far. Neytiri stalked away from me. I feared that would be the end of my attempt to appeal to her.

“He was always intimidated by you,” I said it and I don’t know why. Neytiri stroked the nose of her ikran for comfort. “Both of you. So stoic and unfeeling. Merciless killing. The respect you commanded. He could feel the animosity in the air between you and Jake. He guessed that was the secret. The only way to gain the respect of people, when you haven’t lost a sister due to a hate crime, or tamed the largest banshee on Pandora, was to simmer in unspoken resentment. That was his mask. His way in. Before he died, I hope he realised the only thing you need to gain people’s respect is vulnerability and truth. The strength required to own up to your mistakes and promise to make up for your shortcomings. Because that’s who he was to me. Neteyam was always a leader. He didn’t need to ever doubt that.”

“Happy,” Neytiri called me Neteyam’s pet name for me. “You act like this loss is your own.”

I put my hand on my belly and Neytiri nearly cried.

“I tried. I tried to talk to him, but Eywa would never let me in. I could only do it with him.”

Neytiri flew her ikran past the sentinels. I rode underneath. We landed outside of Quaritch’s hut. Before Neytiri could threaten the woman for the location of Jake, I froze in place.

I stopped and Neytiri hissed at me. We of all people knew just how dangerous this was and we couldn’t waste time sight seeing. Still, I couldn’t move.

All these years I believed the sky people were to blame for my disability. No. It was these people before me covered in ash. They were the ones who cut my cora, killed my tribe, and left me for dead. How had they fared after that tragic day? Not die off, smited by Eywa. They were celebrating. Welcomed in the armed camp of the sky people.

These people were the source of all the hardship in my life. I hated to realise it, but it was true. The humans didn’t deserve my hate and retaliation. After all, what sane Na’vi tribe would knowingly attack and erase another tribe from existence? It wasn’t the Na’vi way. But now that I knew, I had to do something.

They did not deserve this privilege, this praise. Once the humans knew what they really were, they would be shunned again and forced to eat the scraps we left them.

I told Neytiri to advance. There was something more important that I needed to do.

I started broadcasting. I told my followers the truth. I showed them the despicable tribe of ash and how their existence was a direct offense to Eywa.

Just as Neytiri flew over Jake’s cage, my broadcast infiltrated every screen. We distracted everyone so the truth would be heard and Jake could walk free.

I wasn’t so lucky. The ash people found where I was and captured me. I was relinquished to the scientists for study and there I saw Spider’s scans. We were complete opposites. A human turning into one of the people, and Eywa’s own morphing into a human.

I didn’t expect to ever leave. But, the ash queen, Varang, took a liking toward me.

We were over the water. I saw water clans burn for protecting the Sully family. Kiri attacked Varang and I was there, too. Something about seeing me, the two of us, Varang and I, “rejected by the grace of Eywa,” but me, who had no reason to live, flourishing while she faced eradication tipped her over the edge.

I followed Neytiri as we escaped, but I didn’t make it far. Varang came back to finish the job. Neytitri killed her, but she couldn’t save me.

I delivered Neteyam’s baby and Neytiri held him.

The two boys who I loved would soon meet each other. I would not be there to see it.

Neytiri protected my son when I was weak. I only saw the other side through Neteyam. I knew I was not going there. As the sounds and sights faded, I did not hear the songs of my people. I did not feel the touch of my ancestor’s hands upon my skin.

There was solace knowing at least a part of me would someday be welcomed home again.

---Instead of Ronal’s baby because where’s Tonowari at? That’s his child, not Neytiri’s ----