Chapter Text
Ao'nung lay sprawled across the warm sandbank, one arm hanging into the shallows. Beside him, Rotxo was attempting to teach a tiny crab how to climb onto his hand. The crab was not interested.
"When we are grown," Ao'nung squinted into the sunlight, "we will live together."
Rotxo looked up from his row of smooth pebbles. "Yes."
"Even if we become warriors."
"Yes!"
"We will have neighboring marui." Ao’nung kicked a leg out. He never said it, but he hated how Rotxo lived so far that he had to walk all through the village to see him—his mother blamed it because Uncle Yapto preferred being closest to the port. After all, he had to go on long hauls, so he could just go. She said it was a fisherman’s burden.
"Next to each other to eat together."
"And hunt together."
"Every day?"
"If anyone is mean to you, I will punch them." Because Rotxo was tender in the chest, he was less of a warrior and more like an ilu.
"I will…punch them too. Try to."
"You could not punch people." A tiny voice interrupted them; Tsireya sat knee-deep in the water, carefully weaving shells into a bracelet. “Ao’nung, you know better.”
Ao'nung ignored her; who was she to dim his future? "Even when we get mates."
Rotxo's face scrunched. "Ew."
"Mates are weird." Ao'nung immediately grimaced as well.
"They are always touching." Rotxo hated this morning! His parents were kissing and playful in the waters before going on a small fishing trip, and afterwards, they came back and were trying to kiss him…he accepted it, of course, but it was so sticky! His grandmother and grandfather, before Eywa took them, were the same…sticky, sticky, sticky.
Ao'nung gagged dramatically. "Sempul always is curled around sa’nok."
"Even they are sticky?"
Tsireya gasped. "They are not!"
"They are," Ao'nung insisted. "Our parents are sticky all the time."
“I think everyone has sticky parents," Rotxo shrugged.
"That is not nice," Tsireya scolded, pouting.
"It is true."
"It is not."
"It is."
"They love each other."
Ao'nung rolled onto his back. "They can love each other over there." He pointed vaguely toward the horizon; Rotxo nodded in agreement. "Far away."
"Very far away."
"Across the sea!"
Tsireya threw a shell at them, and Ao'nung dodged it; Rotxo was not fast enough and yelped when it bounced off his nose.
A deep laugh echoed from farther down the beach, and all three children looked up. Yapto sat mending a fishing net beneath the shade of a mangrove, shoulders shaking with amusement. "So I am sticky?" he repeated.
"When I am grown, I am not getting a mate!” Rotxo huffed.
Yapto laughed even harder. "Did you not say last night you wanted to forever be with Lä'eal?"
"Sempu!"
"What?" Yapto wheezed. "You are only embarrassing yourself." How his boy will be with a Na'vi of air journey, only the Gracious Mother will know.
—
“Rotxo, can I ask you something?” Ao’nung pressed into him one night, eyeing the beaded necklace of oranges and browns.
Rotxo looked up from his wrap, still chewing.
“Do you have feelings for Neteyam?”
Rotxo choked on his next bite.
・・・・・
Ao’nung remembered sprinting; he memorized how salt burned his lungs as he slid from his ilu, feet splashing into the shallows. Overhead, the eclipse had turned the once black sky into a shimmering, unimaginable blue. Ikrans screeched; tsuraks came to ports, and so did many warriors of many clans—the fight was over.
“Tsireya—” he choked on her name, nearly stumbling as he reached her. “You…you are okay…!”
His sister crashed into him, arms locking around his neck, blunt nails digging into his shoulder, anchoring him, and immediately, his face was buried in the curve of her neck, breathing in her curls. She smelled a bit like the sweet cream buns they had hastily devoured before joining the adults, and beneath that, the sharp, distinctive odor of their mother’s birthing herbs.
“Where is Rotxo?”
He pulled back just enough to see her face, hands skimming over her shoulders and her arms, searching for wounds he would not know how to respond to if he did find them.
He licked his busted lips. “I saw him in the mists behind you before I lost him. I—Tsireya?”
Tsireya’s mouth trembled, so she twisted her bottom lip between her teeth, her wide, seapuppy eyes growing even larger, shining with a feature that made the pit in Ao’nung’s stomach stretch, vast as the open ocean.
“Reya…What is wrong? Where is our cousin?”
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Ao’nung did not know a day where he was not doing some sort of manual labor.
From the time he could stand without wobbling, swim, and communicate with Äang, there had always been something in his hands—nets to haul, ropes to knot, fish to gut, and shells to scrape clean. He did not know a day where his hands were not exposed and burned with saltwater, or where his hair was not baked stiff and white with salt, or where his muscles were not aching from use. Work had always been there: A tide never failed to come to shore.
He had never known a day when he was of not of use.
It seemed that day had finally come.
The marui felt too small around them, the air thick with the traces of incense and drying herbs, with the faint, lingering smell of his mother. His father crouched over her things, movements slow, almost clumsy for a man whose hands could steady an entire reef.
Tonowari’s broad shoulders were hunched as he folded her cloths one by one, smoothing the worn edges where her fingers had worried them over the years. He took her spear from where it leaned against a post, thumb brushing over the familiar notches, and then he tacked it back onto the wall in its old place—as if she might walk in at any moment and reach for it.
He had not said much after the funeral nor during the hours of cleaning the marui and cleansing bodies, not during the long stretches of praying until his voice went hoarse, not when the Tulkun songs started their low, mournful echo over the water. He only stood there, rigid, holding his spear as Tsireya gave the last prayers and rites.
Ao’nung could still remember the way his sister’s voice shook on the final words and how the Tulkun sang their songs for their mother, circling. He remembered Rotxo being taken by the sea anemone, his body swallowed in soft, glowing tendrils until he was gone, given back to the ocean that had raised them all.
It was a long swim with an equally long walk from the sea to the marui. Long enough for the weight of it all to settle in his blood and release throughout his body. Every step across the damp sand, followed by the woven walkways, he could feel the fatigue that was gnawing at him, the ache of carrying his own body forward when all he wanted to do was sink down and let the tide drag him deep.
Tsireya had walked close to their father, almost underneath him, curled small beneath the arc of his arm. She clung to him the way she used to when she was smaller, her slender shoulders shaking with each quiet breath. He could hear her sniffling from where he trailed a few paces behind, each wet inhale carving another sting into his chest.
He should have gone to her and said something, but instead his tongue felt thick in his mouth, and his hands hung uselessly at his sides.
There was no net to pull, no fish to clean, no order to follow…and he did not know how to carry that.
He watched his father fold cloth after cloth, watched Tsireya wipe her face with the heel of her hand, and for the first time in his life, Ao’nung did not know what he was supposed to do.
Pril curled into his arms.
“You have given your son back to the Great Mother with honor,” he remembered his mother saying to Toruk Makto and his mate. He had not wanted to come along that morning, nor did Tsireya or Rotxo; they did not know what to say or offer to a family that seemingly had it all yet lost it all in the blink of an eye.
His mother argued fiercely that she did not raise insolent, rude children; so here they were—awkwardly standing outside the Sully pod.
Keep your head down; do not look them in the eyes.
“I do not know the rites of the forestpeople, but you are Metkayina now, and we will hold you as Metkayina are held. These moons are for mourning—for songs and memories, for holding one another. You do not work. You do not worry about food or about duties. The Metkayina will carry that weight for you.”
His father nodded once toward the satchel at his mate’s feet. “Our hunters and fishers will leave meals and water at your door each day—for as long as you need, until you tell us no more. Your only task now is to be with your family and cherish this time.”
Ao’nung raised his head gingerly to watch how Tsu’Tey had stared at the basket and then at his mother. Toruk Makto reached out in his stead, followed by Neytiri bowing her head and Peyral nodding as well.
It was not long until they left. Ao’nung remembered that day vividly—his mother had spent the rest of the day praying and crying.
・・・・・
“Have you gone to see your mother?” His father tried at conversation as he ran a cloth over Pril’s back, tummy, and legs.
“There is much to do here,” Ao’nung concluded with, eyes fixed on Pril’s tiny feet kicking and her little girgles as she reached out for their father's curls, following with chest feathers. “Tsireya needs help with Pril”—because Pril gave him reason enough to stay inside when everything outside felt too intense—"...while the people need unity."
"Duties are unchanging," Tonowari hummed with a modest smile. “It would not hurt to go—to get air that is not bound around this pod.”
An elder had suggested he go to Ranteng Utralti, too. Claimed that seeing the ancestors would fix the gnawing the battle was doing to him, just beyond the reach of his hand; to feel and not be able to drag anything back felt worse than standing here with nothing.
His stomach turned.
“I ask again, and if I have to, I will pry it from your mind," Ao'nung pressed, chasing his cousin down the port. “Do you have feelings for the forestboy?”
Rotxo stopped, but the force caused his fruits to swing out of his basket and roll down the waters.
“Would you get upset if I did?” Ronal looked up; his necklace very bright on his teal skin.
"You know you can not."
"Why not?"
"You father would not approve."
"My father would not care."
Ao'nung curled his hand at his thigh, "this will only hurt you in the end."
Rotxo's ears flicked down, and he went to pick his fruits before he looked back at Ao'nung. "The only one hurting me now...is you."
He did not know where he was when he woke, only that his shoulders were stiff, his spine curved, and his chin pressed almost to his chest. The old habit of curling in on himself when the world felt too overwhelming.
Straighten your back, Ao’nung. You are not an elder, nor are you a root.
A featherlight touch ghosted over his skin, and he could almost feel her again: webbed, calloused fingers tracing the line of his spine, spreading over his back, grounding him, while another hand eased up into his hair, scratching gently at his scalp the way she used to when he was small and clung to her side during harsh thundering that came with seastorms. The roughness of her knuckles as he nuzzled into her cheek and the low hum in her chest when she laughed.
“I thought you were too big to curl under me,” she had once remarked full of easy jokes.
He had only shrugged, pressing closer.
He drew in a slow breath and straightened. Shoulders back. Spine long. Chin lifted. It stung as much as weaving through ice-cold water with an open wound.
The marui was dim, lit only by the pale wash of morninglight slipping through the woven walls, and shadows danced with the tide’s rhythm. He shifted, careful not to disturb the small bundle in the center of their home that their father curled around.
Pril’s tiny freckles glowed faintly against him, her little tail tucked close.
Ao’nung stared.
He done that so much these days.
Stare. Question. Grew restless and irritated and slumped into himself.
He had forgotten…what type of cousin was he…that in the roar of war and loss and the hollow space Rotxo had left behind, he had forgotten that he was an older brother again. Rotxo was dead…but Pril was here. Pril was warm and breathing and real…and Pril needed him as much as she needed everyone else (as much as she needed her mother).
Tsireya lay nearby on her own hammock, turned half away from them. Her shoulders rose and fell in uneven jerks, and even over the hush of the waves against the pylons below, he could hear her soft, hitching breaths. A quiet sniffle, then another. He could only assume Tsireya was trying to hold it together and not to seem so affected, yet the sound was something he had grown used to since the Sullys came back—it threaded through their days and nights.
He watched the way her fingers curled into the edge of her sleeping roll, knuckles pale. Ao’nung’s hands tightened in his lap; silently watching, he stayed.
He straightened his back again, just a little more.
Too big to curl under me.
Maybe.
"Why do you no longer talk to Rotxo," his mother asked him as she rubbed cream over her belly before taking the extra and massaging the muscle of her thighs.
"I have nothing to say to him."
Ronal paused and tilted her head, "you will say something, this is my roof and I will not allow for these games and stupidness."
Ao'nung fiddled with his curl, twisting in between his thumb and index; "what do you say if your loved one is doing something stupid and...you know it is?"
"Stupid how?" Ronal paused.
Ao'nung thought about it. Rotxo was mad at him for everything. He was the cause of Lo'ak going to Three Brothers', he was the one who messed with Kiri...he was the reason Neteyam was not willing to talk to him, and the reason for his own avoidance with his blood. "Stupid."
Ronal rolled her eyes; youth and their lack of giving an answer. "People are oblivious to their actions sometimes, and the only way to help them is to tell them. You will not always understand why someone does what they do—the heart is not meant for everyone to understand. That is why Eywa gives us those who will stand by us, even when we cannot stand for ourselves. So, I would tell that loved one what I see. I would ask if what they are doing is truly for their benefit, or if it is only bringing them pain. If it only brings strife, I would not be silent."
She wiped her hands clean and fixed him with a firm look.
"Do not forget, you still have duties with Jakesully's youngest. Avoiding your heart will not excuse you from your responsibilities."
Ao’nung woke on the sixth day to the soft sound of Pril’s bubbling giggles. For a moment, he thought it was the sea outside, the gentle lapping against the pylons, but then a high, breathy chirr followed, and his eyes blinked open to the dim light of the marui.
Tsireya was already awake.
She sat cross-legged near the entrance where the light spilled in, Pril propped in her lap. Pril’s tiny hands fished at Tsireya’s fingers, webbed little palms slapping and curling as she tried to catch the dancing strands of hair that slipped loose over Tsireya’s shoulders. With every successful grab, Pril chirred and kicked, bioluminescent freckles flickering with delight.
Ao’nung merely observed.
Tsireya’s face was tired and bruised beneath the eyes, her cheeks still streaked from nights that bled into mornings, but there was a softness there that he had not seen in days. She wiggled her fingers above Pril’s face, making little clicking sounds with her tongue, and the baby squealed, tail flicking as she reached up with all her might.
Ao’nung pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
“Where is Father?” he mumbled with disuse.
Tsireya glanced over her shoulder at him, one hand automatically steadying Pril’s back. “He went to speak with Uncle Yapto. He landed at the port this morning.”
The words hit like a slap of cold water. Ao’nung sat up fully, muscles tensing. “What?” His tail lashed behind him, striking the woven matting of the marui floor with a sharp thud. “Now? He went now?”
“Ao’nung,” Tsireya lurched, grabbing his bicep with desperation. “Do not.”
He froze mid-motion, turning to look at her. “What do you mean, ‘do not’?” he demanded, voice climbing. “We should be there.” Images flashed—Rotxo’s wide grin, the way he laughed with his whole body, the last glimpse of him in the mists. The idea of his father facing Uncle Yapto alone, bearing that news without them, twisted in his gut.
“We should be there,” he forced out through his throat.
Pril, startled by the rising volume, let out a thin, uncertain whine; her little face scrunched, freckles dimming as her mouth trembled. Immediately, Tsireya’s expression crumpled into apology. She scooped Pril closer, tucking the baby against her chest. The polished shell and woven beads of their mother’s chestpiece caught the light as she moved—once a comfort; now a weight.
“Hush, little fish,” Tsireya murmured, rocking gently. “It is all right. We will see Kiri as I promised yesterday.”
Pril fidgeted, small hands pushing at the beadwork, feet kicking in protest, but the steadiness of Tsireya’s heartbeat and the warmth of her body slowly worked their way through the baby’s distress. The whines softened into soft hiccups, then quieted.
Ao’nung’s anger did not bode so easily. He stood anyway, fists clenched at his sides, chest heaving. “He was not just Father’s burden.”
Tsireya looked up at him over Pril’s damp curls, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Ao’nung,” she whispered, “please. Uncle Yapto is…he is in great pain, and Father thought it best to go alone.”
“That is exactly why I should be there,” Ao’nung shot back. “I am his son. I am Rotxo’s cousin.”
The woven flap of the marui rustled, and Tonowari stepped inside.
He filled the doorway as always, but the sight of him made Ao’nung’s breath stutter. The great chief looked smaller somehow—shoulders drooping, eyes rimmed red, beads in his twists sitting dull and lifeless; even his movements lacked their usual certainty. He paused, taking in the scene: Tsireya clutching Pril close, Ao’nung half-turned toward the entrance, fists still balled.
Ao’nung met his father’s gaze, and Tonowari’s eyes softened with a weary understanding.
“I…” Ao’nung began.
Tonowari lifted a hand, cutting him off with a small wave.
“No,” The usual thunder of his voice was gone; what remained was roughened, scraped raw. “He is my bloodcousin. It is my burden to carry—as Olo’eyktan, and as family.”
He stepped further into the marui, the faint scent of ocean wind and incense clinging to him, and for a moment, the only sound was Pril’s soft, sleepy snuffle against Tsireya’s chest. Ao’nung swallowed hard, the protest dying on his tongue. His hands hung useless at his sides again, the old familiar ache of helplessness settling in.
His father claimed the burden, as he always did.
Tsireya claimed the burden as she always did.
What use did he claim now?
—
Great Mother, did you hear Yapto yelling at the Olo’eyktan?
I would scream to the sea and beyond…Rotxo was his and Mukì’s only child. They trusted Tonowari.
Can you really trust someone who invited the beast of war onto our lands?
Aya, you be quiet; he lost his lifepartner and us…our balance.
This is the Great Mother’s way of restoring the balance.
—
He thought sometimes the people forgot his father is a people too. That his weight must carry himself outside of everyone else; that the person who had willfully burdened themselves to him, alongside him, for the past sixteen songs had not become nourishment for the Great Reef.
“Payoangtsyìp,” he heard his father murmuring before he could stop himself; how could you forget something as natural as breathing? A matter that was of you as eyes were for seeing. Nothing but the soft rasp of woven reeds and the distant wash of the tide answered.
In the end, shoulders sank a fraction, followed by the lowering of ears.
Ao’nung stayed in the corner, chest tight.
・・・・・
He avoided the Sully Marui when he could.
It was not as if the path did not exist; the woven walkways all fed toward one another, and ever since the battle, people came and went with baskets and satchels, with fish and fruit and little trinkets meant to soften the raw edge of loss. There was always someone at their door, exactly like the Sullys.
He simply learned all the ways to be somewhere else. If a chore took him near that part of the reef, he slowed, pretended to check a net, fussed with a knot, or studied the tide. Omega and Alpha Sully were home again—Toruk Makto and his mate, the forestpeople who somehow belonged to two worlds and were held by both.
It was not dislike that kept Ao’nung away.
He did not hate them. He could not after he had seen Neytiri’s face at the funeral, hollowed out, nor once he had stood at a distance and watched Jakesully’s shoulders shake as he clutched his mate. They had stayed for the clan's funerals before they flew off to the mountains and back; now Jakesully had a walking stick and was always in the pod rather than out.
Why did the Great Mother permit him to stand in front of a family that seemed to have everything and find the right way to breathe?
Sure, they had lost a child, the steady one everyone spoke of with the kind of reverence usually reserved for elder seasoned hunters and songkeepers. The sea had taken him, and loss was a wound that never fully closed; yet still, they had a home. Two homes since their parents decreed it.
A clan in the forest that would spill blood for them. A reef clan that made room and carved out new spaces on walkways and in hearts.
People willing to give their lives for them...they had each other.
…Ao’nung did not even know what he meant by any of it; irritating half-thoughts rose up like a tide nowadays, and every time his feet carried him too close to the Sully pod, the ache in his chest sharpened, and some bitter, shapeless thing crawled up his throat.
It hurt to walk these sands without Rotxo at his side.
Paths were the same, of woven fibers underfoot, the same creak of wood as the waves pushed and pulled since he was a seapup—but they felt wrong now, as if one of the support beams had been quietly removed while he was not looking. There was no wide, easy grin waiting for him at the next corner, no familiar shove to his shoulder, no breathless, ridiculous story about fishing duties or another body to just coexist with and talk about what he felt.
There was only the empty space where his cousin should have been.
...And how it hurt to go home and sit for a meal with his father and his sisters and know that his mother was not there.
The home still smelled of her, even though her cups were stacked where she had left them; her woven mats still marked the herbs she favored when shelling seeds or mending nets. Sometimes, when the light slanted a certain way, Ao’nung could almost pretend that if he turned his head fast enough, he would catch sight of her back, curls swinging, hands busy.
Stupidly, he did look; there were only his father’s broad shoulders bowed over a bowl, Tsireya picking at her food with red-rimmed eyes, and the soft, hiccuping breaths of Pril bundled close.
His mother’s lifecord was now twined with his father’s, resting on his hip.