Shells | Lo'ak Sully

Part 6: The Note

It shouldn't have been so easy to decipher. She didn't want to have figured it out, not after realising what it truly meant.

No. She thought. No, no, no.

Her hands began to squeeze down tighter, the paper beginning to crumple within them.

"Teya?"

Lo'ak was right behind her. To the girl, it sounded as if he was trying to get her to tell him what she had in her hands, however instead, he was trying to show her what he had in his.

"You should see this, Teya." He spoke again, this time with a slight break in his voice.

The girl turned her head only slightly, enough to see what the boy was holding up in front of him between his finger and his thumb.

Oh, no. No, no.

He was holding a feather. It was green. The same exact green that filled the ends of every one of Ni'teya's arrows. But in various spots, it was also red; Blood red.

Ni'teya's eyes somehow deepened with temper. The paper was fully absorbed within her clenched fist as she turned back away from the boy, not wanting him to see her crazed state.

"Ni'teya?" Lo'ak called, getting closer. His voice rang in her ears. She was unable to think straight, to breathe properly, her mind span in circles as she tried to make sense of everything.

"Hey? Teya?"

She prayed she was dreaming, that she was about to wake up as she did every morning, that she hadn't snuck off with Lo'ak at all. It felt like dream, only because of how unreal it all was. 'There's no way', she thought over and over, denying repeatedly what she already knew was real. 'He's not— He can't be.' She shook her head, her eyes shutting as she did so.

"Teya, hey, are you alright?"

His words were merely echoes, muffled noise, all she could hear clearly was her own whirling mind as she dug deeper and deeper for explanations, clues as to how it was possible; How it was possible that the man who Jake was so sure he'd killed, the man who he saw die at the bottom of the ocean, the man who'd already been brought back to life had done it once more. How was it possible that Neteyam's killer was still alive, how was it fair? How come he lives, while the other dies?

"Tey—"

He touched her shoulder, flicking some sort of switch simultaneously. The girl simply turned, looking up at Lo'ak with emptied eyes and straightened lips. She took a second to peer over his perturbed expression, coming to a quick decision in the moment.

She gently patted him on his neck, her hand as still as the tulkun beneath them.

"We should go." She said softly, removing her touch and walking over to where Lo'ak's ilu was waiting for them.

"Hey, what—" Lo'ak tried to talk to her as she mounted his ilu, wondering what he'd just seen happen. From his perspective, he'd walked up to a girl that was visibly shaking, who had an intense energy about her, and watched as it suddenly disappeared in front of him. At the very moment he'd touched her, she switched back to normal, like she hadn't been silent, like she hadn't looked at him moments before with wrecked eyes.

She turned the ilu around, allowing the boy to climb onto it and sit behind her as it was his turn to play the passenger role.

"Do you have any idea where your dad would be right now?" She asked him.

"What?! Are you crazy? Did we not just sneak out to a murder scene behind his back?!" He spoke in a disbelieving tone as he held onto Ni'teya; She was going at quite a high speed.

"I know, okay?! I know." She sighed.

The girl desperately hoped he wouldn't ask her the lingering question she knew was on his mind. She didn't want him to ask her what she'd found, what was on it especially, and thus why she needed to find Jake as soon as she could. Her reasoning behind all this being that if he knew what she did, he'd lash out. She'd be completely understanding if he did, seeing as she just had to suppress what she was feeling moments ago after reading the note. But, she knew that it was the right thing to do; To keep it from him for the time being.

As she travelled, so did her mind. It sifted through files of questions going unanswered, her heart pounding. A few question however, she kept coming back to...

'If Jake was so sure Quaritch was dead, how was it possible that he isn't?'

'Who saved him?'

'And did they know that it was a death wish to do it?"

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