I see you, Tsu'tey

Chapter 4

The next two weeks consisted of Awa being awoken at the crack of dawn to begin her training and going to sleep well into the night. While the woman was used to controlling a body in a simulator it was very different from being inside the real body. The feelings she had while in simulation only grew when she finally got to spend time inside the Avatar body, the feeling of her finally being in her real body. While her overall control of the body was above average her movements were still a bit clumsy and unsure, something that Grace quite literally beat out of her by the end of the the first week. The second week it was Awa beating the shit out of herself when she started doing more advanced and real things that were outside of the base perimeter.

During her training she used every piece of equipment provided by the base and when that grew boring for her she started going into the actual jungle with Grace's approval of course. That was when things started getting interesting. She would sometimes catch small glimpses of cyan and blues lurking in the jungle but she wrote it down to her own imagination. She doubted the Na'vi would have any interest in her or whatever she was doing. The Omaticaya wanted nothing to do with the sky people she came with.

After about 2 and a half weeks Grace was feeling confident enough in Awa's abilities that she authorized them to go on a little tour all alone in the jungle a little bit away from the immediate Hell's Gate area. The two were making small talk as they ventured deeper and deeper into the forest, the footprint of humans slowly disappearing and the true nature of Pandora showing its glory.

"Where are we going?" Awa asked her mentor while tugging at the uncomfortable clothes they had forced her to wear for the trip. She didn't like the constricting feeling of the cloths against her skin, she knew she was acting like a spoilt child but she thought she would at least have some say over her outfits. Not only that but it was getting hot and she would rather walk naked than wear those worthless pieces of clothing. They've been walking for quite some time now and she could see the barest hints of a trail far up ahead.

"You'll see" Was Grace's cryptic response as she trudgen on ahead of her student, not wanting to be around the area longer than she had to. Too many bad memories, she thought to herself, so much pain. The jungle hadn't recovered from the old trauma yet, if you knew where to look you could still see the marks from the heavy suits the soldiers wore, the discarded arrows that belonged to a child's bow and bullet holes in trees and thick plants. The jungle hadn't forgotten and neither had Grace. She doubted she ever would, she felt so guilty and so responsible for what happened and she would never forgive herself. "We're almost there"

Awa didn't reply, knowing that Grace expected none, and instead focused on her surroundings. Grace had given her a short lecture on always staying alert and the importance of constant vigilance. She hadn't had a lot of practical training on it yet but she trusted her instincts, they had never failed her before. Except for that one time playing tags that she ended up losing. She couldn't see anything potentially dangerous lurking in the shadows but she knew that if she let down her guard she would be surprised, foolishness was not allowed on Pandora. Especially not foolishness from the dreamwalkers that didn't have those neat instincts, training or embedded knowledge that the Na'vi had.

After a few more minutes of careful walking the two reached an abandoned wooden building that was surrounded by overgrown plants and trees. At one point a tree had actually grown straight through one of the walls of the small building. Awa wondered what it used to be for, it didn't look like it belonged there. The wooden structures stood out like a sore thumb, no, no Na'vi did this. That meant that a human did and the only human she knew that would do something like this was Grace.

"Did you build this?" She asks, cursing herself for her slow thinking. Of course Grace brought her here because she built the place, her mentor wouldn't drag her into the unknown and just stumble upon a building that just happened to have been made by humans. No, this trip was planned, she only wondered why.