Little Miss Perfect | Neteyam¹

Prologue

When she makes it into Jake's tent, she sees the rest of his children and Spider messing with each other. While Spider wasn't Na'vi, Marali still considered him to be her best friend and brother. She would do anything to protect him. She would do anything to protect all of them.

The girl then looks over to see her father, Jake, and Neytiri talking in hushed whispers which stopped when they all take notice of Marali in front of them. All three looked at her with a smile, before they suddenly got serious.

"Hey, sweetheart." Her father greeted her. She gave him a soft smile before turning her attention to the Olo'eyktan and his mate. It felt like Jake was staring straight into the girl's soul. Marali had to fight the urge to look at the ground, and rather looked over at Neytiri to see that her gaze was much more soft, and endearing.

"Marali, as I'm sure you are aware, you are one of the best warriors in the Omatikaya clan, and you are Norm's daughter." He says, pausing for a moment before he continues. The girl always hated when he paused in between sentences, it made her nervous.

"And, because of this, Neytiri and I feel you are one of the only Na'vi we can trust to fulfill this task," Jake says, again pausing. Marali felt her patience growing thin with Jake's constant pauses. It was one of the flaws the girl had. She could wait all day to find an animal to hunt, but when it came to conversations, the girl wanted to be as quick and efficient as possible.

"Neytiri and I want you to look out for and protect our children. While it is Neteyam's job as the oldest sibling to protect the younger ones, he is going to be the future Olo'eytkan. He has other responsibilities that he needs to fulfill besides being an older brother. My mate and I know that you care for our children as if they were your siblings, which is why we asked your father if he would be comfortable with you doing this, and he said that he was fine with it as long as you wanted to do it." Jake says, looking at Marali.

She looked between the three adults, taking in everything Jake had just said. He wanted her to protect his children. The girl knew this would be the most difficult task she had ever been given. She didn't know if she was the best option for this role. Of course, she was a talented warrior, but the clan had many capable warriors.

The girl was about to express her doubt about being able to carry out this task when she saw Neteyam from the corner of her eye.

Neteyam was looking down at the ground with his shoulders tense, and his fists clenched together. He looked pissed off, and Marali would be lying if she said she didn't think it was hot. That's when she knew what her decision would be.

"Of course, I'll protect your children. It would be a great honor to protect the children of the Olo'eytkan." Marali proclaimed. All three adults smiled at the girl, and her father came up to hug her, telling her how proud he was of her to accept this task.

The girl knew it was wrong, and she knew it was petty to only accept the role as a way to get closer to Neteyam, but she didn't know how much longer she could go with hating him when she desperately wanted to love him.

One year later

Since then, Marali's days have consisted of eating breakfast with her father, training, hunting, trying to keep the Sully children out of trouble, sleeping, and repeating the same cycle. Keeping the Sully children out of trouble had been a lot harder than what she thought it was going to be, most of the time Marali was glad that she could keep them all alive with minimal injuries.

Occasionally she had been invited to raids, but they became less and less frequent after she killed for the first time. The last time she was invited to a raid was two months ago, at least, until she was informed that she would be a spotter the next day with Jake's two sons.

Great. Now I have to watch for bogies and make sure that Lo'ak doesn't get himself killed. The girl thought to herself.

Marali could already feel the start of a headache coming, and she knew the next day was going to be a long one.

Unedited. 05/10/2023

Edited. 06/29/23

Word count: 1437

Hey everyone! Hopefully you enjoyed - honestly, I'm not to sure how I feel about this chapter.

I won't do an author's not every chapter, it will probably be every other chapter.

I know this is short but my goal is to make the chapters 2,000-3,000 words long, eventually. I'm out of school for the summer so I should be able to update regularly.

If anyone would like to make a cover for the book, please feel free to reach out! The one on the book is generic because I have no artistic skills.