His Fierce Flower - A Neteyam Sully x OC Story

Foolish Words

"Boo!" whispered a voice in her ear.

Enyu shrieked and dropped her basket of collected ovumshrooms. "Neteyam! Seriously? Every time!"

He laughed wildly and bent down to help her pick up the fallen fungi.

"I keep telling you, Flower, you need to be more aware of your surroundings. I've been following you for a while now and you never even noticed. What if I was a Palulukan, hmm? And where is your dagger?" he implored, flicking her empty hip where said dagger should've been.

"'Tey, you know well that Palulukans don't roam this area of the forest. Also my knife is in my bag," she said gesturing to her satchel beside her, "and I'm not alone, Hävïk and Twota are right th-" She'd started to point to where she last saw the other two members of her harvest group, just noticing that they were gone.

Usually those on a harvest shift broke off into teams of threes and fours, but Enyu had a habit of often wandering off alone.

Neteyam was not impressed.

"Well, they were just there. I could have sworn I-" She looked around, frowning.

"You were saying?"

She punched his shoulder jokingly. "Oh, be quiet. They're probably just up ahead. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you'd still be out on your patrol shift."

Neteyam sat and leaned against the tree Enyu was kneeling under. "I was, but I came in early. Dad wanted to run drills with me and Lo'ak again but he got caught up in a meeting, and I was bored, so here I am," he said with a cheeky grin.

"He's been pushing your training a lot more, lately. How's he really been doing?" Enyu asked, sitting next to him.

He shrugged. "You know dad, he just wants this whole RDA war to end already- like the rest of us. It's harder on him of course. Yeah he's the chief but lately, the council's been pounding his back like he's some kind of miracle worker that can eradicate the Sky People with a snap of a finger. Then at the end of the day, after dealing with all that crap, he still has to come home and be a father and a husband.

"Of course there's also the whole, you know, second-in-command thing that's bothering him too." He sighed deeply and leaned his forearms on top of his propped up knees to fiddled with his fingers.

Enyu hummed in response.

Taking one of his large, fidgeting hands into her smaller ones, she looked at him. "Have you made a decision yet? About the position the council offered you?"

Neteyam opened his mouth to respond, then shut it.

Ts'olbia, the clan's second in command, was getting older. He announced a few months ago that he would be stepping down from his position soon. Much to Jake's disapproval- and somewhat hers, the council offered the position to Neteyam a week ago.

Jake had expressed that he knew his son had the tenacity for the role, he simply thought that Neteyam was too young, that he had his whole life ahead of him- to which it really was a bit hypocritical because Jake was his age when he became the clan's patriarch. Technically younger because Neteyam would be turning twenty three soon.

Enyu however just thought that the situation seemed weird. She didn't like how they approached him without Jake's consent or how much they kept pushing Neteyam to accept.

It made her question whether or not they actually had honest intentions. She knew that even after all these years of being led by Jake, a few of the members still didn't agree that an ex-human should be Olo'eyktan- even if he was such a great leader.