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( proclamation through the heart )
UNENTHUSIASTICALLY TRAILING BEHIND your reef friends and the leaders of awa'atlu, you shot a quick glare toward ronal as she walked behind your brother and forcefully ushered him forward.
with furious stomps, she entered the marui the five of you had stopped in with her husband, her gaze fiercely drifting between her two children.
"you allowed this!" the tsahìk accused, gesturing toward your twin brother with a webbed arm. "you allowed him to bond with the outcast!"
tsireya's breathing had picked up from your side, her eyes glossing over with the unfamiliar liquid of tears as you looked over at her with brows furrowed in worry. fighting against the want to hurry to her side and brush your thumbs across her under eyes, you directed your gaze back toward tonowari.
"tsireya," the leader spoke sharply, eliciting a sharp inhale from his child as she flinched backwards. "you disappoint me, daughter."
biting back a defensive retort out of forced respect for the olo'eyktan, you eyed tonowari harshly, glancing between your brothers as the sounds of hurried footsteps grew close behind you.
"and you," the metkayina continued, his eyes trailing over to rest on lo'ak with a glare, "son of a great warrior, who has been taught better."
"payakan saved my life, sir," your twin asserted. "you don't know him."
"skxawng," you muttered, your eyes moving to shut in a curt frustration as the man before you pointed a finger toward the floor of the tent.
"sit," he ordered, dropping onto a knee just as your brother did the same. "sit."
his gaze traveled around the rest of you, his eyebrows furrowing into a strong glare. "sit down!"
quickly moving to kneel on the ground, you glanced at tsireya's tearful features, watching with sympathetic eyes as she seemed to hold herself back from releasing a sob.
with a fierce intake of breath, tonowari bestowed the story of the tulkun way upon you and your brothers, meeting lo'ak's eyes as he finished off with his previous point that the five of you could no longer bring yourselves to believe in.
"i'm sorry, sir," your brother spoke once more. "but you're wrong."
"lo'ak!" your mother spat from behind all of you. "you speak to olo'eyktan!"
"i know what i—"
"that's enough!" your father abruptly exclaimed, earning a prompt reply of silence from lo'ak before he shook his head, looking back up toward the leader of the metkayina.
"i know what i know," he repeated, and you released a small sigh as you imagined what your father was about to unleash upon the teenager.
ronal let out a snarl, the previous leader of the omatikaya hurrying to lo'ak's side. "that's enough."
jake gazed up at tonowari from his crouched position next to your brother, his stare harsh as he gave a soft nod. "i'll deal with this one."
before anything else was able to happen, your father tightly gripped your twin's bicept, forcefully tugging him away from the commotion. you looked to neteyam in a slight concern of what was to happen to lo'ak, fearful that his usual punishment was way out of bounds for this act.
the older boy let a sigh pass through his nostrils, avoiding your eyes as he closed his own in exasperation. turning to tsireya, she met your stare with ruffled brows, almost as if she could predict your thoughts of the situation.
casting a final look toward the leaders of the metkayina, you quickly stood from the floor of the marui, chasing after the two na'vi as your mother shouted out a call of your name.
"dad!" you exclaimed once the two grew far enough away from everyone else. "dad, wait, please!"
he ignored your words in his state of irritation, your brother glancing back at you with a look of confusion etched over his features.
"please," you pressed, jogging to catch up to the older omatikaya before halting in front of him to keep the two from moving any further. "just listen."
"i don't understand what's going on with you," your father unexpectedly spoke. "why- why do you insist on going along with every stupid thing he does?!"
"dad, if you would just listen to what lo'ak has to say—"
"i don't have to listen to anything, okay?!" he interrupted, thrusting a hand into his chest. "i am the parent here, and you are the kid, and if i tell you to keep your brother out of trouble, you better do what the hell i say!"
furrowing your eyebrows, you looked up at your father with a gaze full of hurt, remnants of his apology trailing through your mind. "did you really mean what you told me before, then?"
jake stared down at you through narrowed eyes, his jaw muscle pulsating through the skin of his cheek as he sandwiched his tongue between his teeth. "let's go, lo'ak."
shouldering past your still figure, your father continued down the pathway, your twin in tow as he looked back at you with an empathetic stare, a hint of appreciation at your attempt laced within it.
you slowly turned around and watched as the two carried on further into the village, lo'ak's arm still tightly grasped between your father's palm as you felt the softening ties of your relationship with jake once again harden under the hurt of his anger.
𓆝 𓆛 𓆞
"i don't know how much more of this i can take."
storming through the colorful vegetation of the greenlands of awa'atlu, the grass and twigs littering the ground pinched at your feet as you stomped through the tree-filled area with tsireya carefully following along by your side.
"this storm will pass," she calmly assured while you two walked on, slipping her hand into your outstretched palm as you helped her step down from a rocky ledge. "your father is just concerned for your brother's well-being— it causes him to worry."
the metkayina girl's words caused you to halt, slipping your fingers from hers just before she moved to intertwine them. turning around, you faced her with ruffled brows, releasing a heavy breath as you shook your head and looked out toward the horizon beside you.
"he is always concerned about his well-being," you shot back. "every second of every day."
tsireya's eyes trailed over your strained features, her glossy irises weaving their way further into your soul as you met her gaze once more. "and no matter what my skxawng of a brother does, i am somehow always at fault."
"it is never your fault," the shorter girl denied with a shake of her head. "you are not responsible for lo'ak's actions."
"but they act as if i am," you spat, pursing your lips with closed eyes.
"then you must tell your father how you feel," tsireya offered, moving to grip your wrist and softly tug you back toward the direction of your family before you quickly grabbed her arm with your free hand.
"no... no," you denied, keeping her from walking off. "it wouldn't do any good, he's already upset."
"he will understand this, you're his daughter," the teen insisted, her eyes pleadingly bearing into your own.
"no, he won't," you revealed, taking your hand from her grasp. "he doesn't understand anything."
her eyebrows furrowed in a weary confusion at your words, watching as you grew more frustrated at your memories of the older na'vi.
"where he comes from— the voices of daughters are not valued as much as they are here," you explained. "he doesn't understand what i feel and he never has."
tsireya kept quiet, allowing you to continue on with your expression of experience as a child of the once-olo'eyktan.
"i want to be so much more than what he has imagined for me," you muttered. "i've dreamed of being a real warrior since i was young, but he'd never allow me to."
"you can be," the sea teenager softly assured, her eyebrows raising in sympathy as her pupils trailed across your face. "you will be."
"my family will never see me as anything but a babysitter," you spoke, harshly shoving a fist into your chest. "that's all they see."
gently grabbing your palm from its place on your upper torso, tsireya interlaced her fingers with yours, holding the back of your hand with her own to rest over her heart. "i see you."
at the intimate connotation behind her simple words, you felt the tips of your ears perk up in bewilderment, the familiar pattern of your increased heartbeat sounding out through your ears as your friend gazed at you through struck eyes.
"you are a daughter of the strongest leader the omatikaya has ever seen," she proclaimed, her stare never wavering as you felt her fingers tighten around your knuckles. "if you want to be a warrior, by eywa, you will be a warrior."
at the face of assertion that was etched over tsireya's features, you felt a small smile tug at the corner of your lips while a hint of a laugh bubbled out past your throat. she seemed confused at your reaction, the sudden mood switch causing her eyebrows to pull toward the center of her face.
"what is funny?" she questioned, peering up at you through her ocean irises as your smile increased slightly.
your gaze traveled in the form of a triangle between her pupils before drifting down to her lips, your feet subconsciously moving to bring your body closer to hers as you shook your head softly and slightly tilted it. "nothing at all."
the girl's eyebrows raised at your movements, her stare trailing downward from your eyes to the lower half of your face. "then why do you laugh?"
"because," you started, slowly lifting a hand to graze over the skin of her cheek and tuck a loose curl behind her ear, "you always know just what to say."
"i do?" she repeated, earning a nod from yourself as you leaned down a bit closer to her face.
"do you... mind if i try something?" you requested, feeling an abrupt pool of nervousness suddenly flood your stomach at your bold quip.
"no," she agreed, a smile of her own curving across her lips as she lifted her head higher toward yours. "no, i do not mind."
"good," you finished, using the most amount of strength you could muster up to fill the rest of the space residing between your faces.
her lips met your own in a mix of slight nervousness and eagerness, any emotion causing your nerves to act up ceasing to infiltrate your mind as tsireya's grip around your hand tightened.
your palm hovering over her cheek moved to rest over it fully, feeling the burning warmth of her flustered skin meet your fingers with an amused smile.
through all the lessons and personal hangouts between the two of you, your imagination never could have envisioned any feeling that would have been remotely close to the true ecstasy of kissing the girl you had been so fond of since first arriving in awa'atlu.
never would you have thought that you would find someone like tsireya in a land that was so far from your home, and even under the more than unfortunate circumstances your family had to uproot their entire life and move due to, you were forever grateful for the opportunity that it granted you.
pulling your lips away from her own, you released a heavy breath, your eyes shutting momentarily to bask in the essence of the reef girl's gaze as a grin twisted its way over your face.
you met her eyes with a slight bashfulness, watching as she lifted a finger to her mouth with a look of awe plastered across her features.
"that felt... different," tsireya murmured, causing your smirk to fade momentarily before a smile of her own spread out onto her lips. "can we do it again?"
"we can do it as many times as you would like," you answered, moving to slide an arm around her waist before she let out a small giggle. "is this alright?"
the metkayina nodded, resting her hand over the one you had placed on her cheek as she moved her other to lay across your shoulder. "it is more than alright."
"outstanding," you muttered with a smirk, leaning in to once again connect your lips in yet another kiss full of even more eagerness, and even more excitement.
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a / n :
call me the captain of the
dropping an update than
dipping for a month club
cuz wtf is wrong with me😭
—i'm sooo sorry, i thought i'd
have time to write during the
summer courses i was taking,
but i thought wrong💔 they're
over now though, so take this
kiss scene (FINALLYYY)
as my full apology.
—thank you guys for sticking with
me so long, next update should
be out in a week or two (i hope)
🤞🤞🤞