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The firelight danced in rhythmic orange pulses across the azure, bioluminescent patterns of the women gathered within the massive, sheltered roots of their new Hometree. The air hung heavy with the cloying scent of crushed nectar and the sharp, earthy tang of fermented kava.
Neytiri sipped from her carved bowl, her golden eyes darting over the rim. She was a daughter of the forest, a huntress who found her center in the tension of a bowstring, not the idle chatter of a circle. Her life had been shaped by the heavy mantle of a future Tsahìk and the iron-tasting blood of the Sky People’s war.
The Great Mother had seen her changed; the war had stripped away the innocence of the forest, but in its place grew a desperate hunger to cherish these quiet moments of txasì. She looked at the faces around her—sisters, friends, and elders—and forced her lungs to find a slow, steady rhythm. She was safe. The People were safe.
“Drink, Neytiri!” Ninat laughed, her tail flicking a playful beat against the soft moss. “You look as though you wait for a Palulukan to spring from the shadows. There are no enemies here. Only sisters.”
Neytiri offered a small, shy smile, the kava warming her throat. “I am... out of practice with stillness, Ninat.”
“Then let us fill the silence with something better,” Peyral suggested, leaning back on her elbows. She was a fierce warrior of the Olangi, but tonight, her eyes were bright with a different kind of fire. “We speak of the heart.”
“Tonight,” Peyral whispered, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hum, “we speak of them.”
Laughter rippled through the circle—soft, teasing, full of knowing looks. Tails flicked in unison. One young woman hid her face behind her hands.
Warmth crept beneath Neytiri’s stripes as the gaze of the circle shifted toward her. Too many smiles. Too much tìyevame.
She lowered her gaze to the dark liquid in her bowl, but she could not hide the twitch of her lips. The "them" was no mystery. Among the Na’vi, the bond of Sì’eyng was sacred, a thing of the spirit not spoken of lightly—but among the women, it was also a source of endless, competitive pride.
“My Ralu is like a palulukan in the dark,” Peyral boasted, leaning back on her elbows with a smug, predator’s grin. “He is fierce and swift. When we make the bond, I feel the strength of his entire lineage surging through me. He does not tire until the first light of Awve Kaltxi touches the leaves.”
A ripple of appreciative murmurs and low, rhythmic tail-thumps went around the circle. One of the older women let out a sharp, barking laugh of approval.
“Swift is good,” Saeyla countered, her golden eyes shimmering with mischief as she leaned into the light. “But my mate has the patience of a forest stalker. He knows every curve of my spirit before we even touch queues. He makes me sing to the Great Mother before the tsaheylu is even complete.”
A chorus of "Ooooohs" and playful shrieks erupted. One young woman, newly mated, buried her face in her hands, her ears flattened against her head in a deep, indigo blush that made her bioluminescent freckles pulse wildly. Ninat reached over and poked her ribs, causing her to squeal and tumble backward onto the moss, sending the circle into fits of hysterics.
Neytiri listened, a small, private smile tugging at her lips. She felt a warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with the kava. She thought of Jake—her Ma Jake—his broad shoulders, his scarred skin, and the way his eyes burned with an intensity that often made her breath hitch.
The unmated girls giggled, their ears twitching with fascination and a touch of envy. They turned their gazes toward Neytiri, who was watching them with wide, curious eyes.
“And what of the Olo’eyktan?” Ninat teased, her tail giving a sharp, provocative flick as she nudged Neytiri’s shoulder. “We all see how he looks at you. Like a starving nantang looking at a feast. But... he is a Dreamwalker. Even in that body, he was once so clumsy he could not walk through the brush without snapping every twig.”
She lowered her voice, a predatory smirk dancing on her lips. “Surely, he is... basic? Functional, but perhaps a bit lost? I imagine he simply connects his queue and hopes for the best, yes? Does he even know how to use his tail to hold you, or does it just wag like a pup’s?”
The younger girls whispered, stifling laughs, their bioluminescence flickering in jagged, excited patterns. “I heard the Sawtute do not know how to be gentle,” one whispered, her eyes wide with a mix of horror and thrill. “That they are too rough, like the metal machines they used to ride. That they do not feel the spirit, only the skin.”
Neytiri felt a sudden, fierce warmth rise in her chest—not of shame, but of a soaring, predatory pride. She took a slow, deliberate sip of her drink, letting the silence stretch until every eye was fixed on her. She felt herself preening, her spine straightening and her chest rising. She was the mate of the Toruk Makto, and these women had no idea.
“Clumsy? You think the man who tamed the Toruk handles me with ‘basic’ hands?” Neytiri asked, her voice dropping into a low, silken purr that commanded the air. “No. Jake is... he is a master of a craft you do not know.”
The women leaned in closer. The firelight caught the golden glint of Neytiri’s eyes, which were now shimmering with a secret heat.
“He told me once that on his world, the Sawtute have no Bond,” Neytiri explained. Her tail curled slowly and powerfully behind her, the tip twitching with a rhythmic, possessive strength that mimicked the way Jake’s would wrap around her thigh. “They have no way to share sensations directly through the neural path. Because of this, they had to learn... other ways. To make the body speak when the mind cannot reach.”
Peyral frowned, her ears flicking in confusion. “What other ways could there be? Without the tsaheylu, it is just... waiting for the end.”
Neytiri laughed, a soft, melodic sound that carried a edge of wildness, making the other women exchange baffled, wide-eyed glances. Her skin began to pulse—a deep, beautiful violet blush that started at her cheeks and bled down her neck, highlighting her bioluminescent freckles until she seemed to glow from within.
“Oh, it is much more than waiting. Ma Jake... he uses his mouth. Not for speaking, but for worship.”
The circle went deathly silent. The crackle of the fire sounded like a thunderclap in the sudden hush. Ninat’s bowl stopped halfway to her lips, kava nearly spilling onto her lap.
“His mouth? On your skin?” Ninat breathed, her voice a mix of scandalized horror and breathless fascination.
A young woman beside her let out a choked, tiny squeak, her ears pinned so flat they disappeared into her hair. The elders shifted, their tails lashing the ground in a frantic, stunned rhythm. The idea was alien—almost blasphemous in a culture where the neural connection was the beginning and end of all intimacy. To the Na'vi, the body was the vessel, but the queue was the soul. Jake was reversing the order.
“Where?” Peyral breathed, looking at Neytiri as if she were a creature from a fever dream. Her eyes were wide, unable to fathom where a man—an Olo'eyktan—would find a place for his mouth that wasn't for eating or speaking.
“On all of me,” Neytiri whispered, her voice thick and syrupy with the memory. She felt a delicious, predatory vanity as she watched their skepticism dissolve into stunned, breathless disbelief. “He spends hours exploring. He calls it 'foreplay.' He uses his tongue to find secrets I did not know my own body kept. He says that because he cannot 'see' my soul through the Bond until the very end, he must hunt for it with his senses. He tastes my skin, Ninat. He breathes me in until my very bones feel like they are melting into the moss.”
The shock in the circle was palpable. One of the unmated girls gripped the moss so hard her claws dug into the roots, her mouth hanging open. The idea of such raw, tactile intimacy—the agonizingly slow build-up without the immediate shortcut of the tsaheylu—was scandalous, alien, and dangerously erotic.
“And his hands,” Neytiri continued, her tail lashing with a fierce, possessive pride. “He does not just grab. He uses his fingers to trace the glowing tracks of my stripes, his touch so light it makes my skin shiver, then so firm it leaves me bruised with longing. And his tail... he does not let it wag like a pup. He uses it like a hunter’s coil to pin my legs, or to lash me flush against him so I can feel every corded muscle of his chest, every beat of his thundering heart.”
She leaned forward, her bioluminescence flashing a deep, urgent violet. “Sometimes... he binds my hands above my head with a soft leather cord. He says it is so I can do nothing but receive his love. He calls it 'surrender.' He makes me wait. He makes me beg for the Bond, denying me the tsaheylu until I am weeping with the need for him. And when he finally yields, when our queues finally snap together... the explosion is so great I think the Great Mother herself feels the tremor of my scream.”
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the root-hollow. Ninat looked faint, her hand trembling against her throat. The younger girls were vibrating, their tails entwined in a knot of shared, frantic energy. They looked at Neytiri not just as a princess or a huntress, but as a woman who had tasted a fire they didn't know existed.
One woman dropped her bowl entirely, the wood clattering against the roots, but no one moved to pick it up. They were paralyzed, trapped in the vision of a war-leader who fought like a demon and loved like a beast.
Saeyla’s jaw was literally hanging. The "strong" and "fast" mates they had just boasted about suddenly seemed very... simple. Very routine.
The silence that followed was thick, charged with the scent of ozone and the heavy, musky heat of the circle. For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire and the distant, haunting cry of a pa’li in the night.
Finally, Peyral found her voice, though it was thin and strained. “He binds you?” she whispered, her eyes darting to Neytiri’s slender wrists as if expecting to see the ghost of the leather cords. “Like a captive? Like a yerik caught in a snare? Neytiri... you are the daughter of Eytukan. You are Tsakarem. How can you allow a man—a Dreamwalker—to treat you as something to be mastered?”
Neytiri’s ears flicked forward, a sharp, defiant movement. She didn’t look insulted; she looked like someone who had seen the sun and was being questioned by those who lived in caves.
“It is not the mastery of a hunter over prey, Peyral,” Neytiri clarified, her voice hummed with a low, vibrating resonance. “It is the mastery of a storm over the trees. I allow it because when I am bound, I am not a leader. I am not a warrior. I am only Neytiri. In that stillness, in that ‘surrender,’ I feel his strength pouring into me before we even touch queues. It is a gift of trust.”
“He touches you... there? With his face?” Ninat managed to choke out, her ears pinned back in pure, fascinated shock. “Is that not... kawng? Forbidden?”
“Forbidden?” Neytiri tilted her head, her smile growing feline. “No. It is sevin. Beautiful. He told me it was the 'Marine way.' I thought it was normal. I thought perhaps all of you were hiding these secrets from me because I am to be Tsahìk.”
“But the mouth...” Peyral interrupted, her face a mask of scandalous curiosity. She leaned in so far she was nearly in the embers. “You say he tastes you. Like... like fruit? Does it not hurt? Does he use his fangs? We are Na'vi—our teeth are meant for tearing meat, not for... worship."
The younger girls leaned in, their tails lashing the ground in a frantic, syncopated rhythm. One of them, Ko'at, whispered breathlessly, “Does he do it even when the moon is high? In the open air? Or only in the shadows of the sleeping furs?”
Neytiri’s grin grew wider, more feral. She saw the way their pupils had blown wide, their golden irises nearly swallowed by the black of their desire to know.
“He does it wherever the spirit moves him,” Neytiri purred, relishing the collective gasp that rippled through the sisters. “In the high branches of the Hometree, under the spray of the falls... he says the Sky People have a hunger that the Bond alone cannot sate. He says he wants to know the flavor of my skin in the rain and the scent of my hair in the sun.”
She paused, watching a bead of sweat roll down Saeyla’s temple.
“And as for the pain, Peyral... there is a fine line between the sting of a tooth and the fire of a touch. He walks that line like a tightrope. He makes the pain feel like a promise.”
“I do not think I could breathe,” Saeyla choked out, clutching her bowl with white-knuckled intensity. “To be looked at so... to be touched without the Bond to shield the intensity... it sounds like madness.”
“It is madness,” Neytiri agreed, her bioluminescence pulsing in a slow, hypnotic wave of deep violet. “It is a beautiful, screaming madness that makes the blood sing. Tell me, sisters—does your mate make you feel as though you are flying without an Ikran? Does your mate make you forget your own name before the tsaheylu is even made?”
The air in the root-hollow was no longer just warm; it was stifling, charged with a frantic, pulsing energy that made the bioluminescence of every woman present flicker in jagged bursts. Neytiri sat at the center of the storm, her skin glowing a radiant, deep amethyst as she basked in their stunned contemplation.
“It is not the way of our people,” Peyral muttered. She looked as though she were mentally dismantling every memory of her own mating bed. Her golden eyes were wide, her pupils blown so large with curiosity that they nearly eclipsed the amber. “The Sky People are... they are terrifyingly creative.”
“He is a warrior,” Neytiri said, her voice dripping with a dark, honeyed satisfaction. She was preening now, her long, blue fingers tracing the leather cord of the necklace Jake had given her—a human-style trinket that felt like a mark of ownership. “He applies the same lethal focus to our nights as he does to the hunt. He is never clumsy, Ninat. He is precise. He knows exactly how much pressure to use, how to graze his teeth along the sensitive curve of my neck without drawing blood... he says he wants to ‘drive me crazy.’ And he does. He breaks my mind before he ever takes my soul.”
To drive the point home, Neytiri tilted her head to the side, pulling back the thick braids of her hair. The firelight illuminated her shoulder, where a dark, mottled bruise bloomed against her azure skin— deep and unmistakable.
A collective, sharp intake of breath hissed through the circle. One of the younger girls let out a strangled yelp and covered her mouth, her tail thrashing so violently it kicked up a cloud of dried moss. They had seen battle scars, but they had never seen a mark of passion so bold, so visual, and so devoid of the Bond’s invisibility.
“He did that... with his mouth?” Saeyla whispered, her voice trembling. She reached out a hand as if to touch it, then recoiled, blushing so hard her bioluminescent freckles turned a frantic, neon white.
“He did,” Neytiri purred, her own blush deepening until she felt the heat radiating off her skin. “It is a mark of his hunger. A sign to the forest that I am sought even when our queues are apart.”
The silence that followed was heavy, pregnant with the frantic imaginations of twenty women. The younger girls were staring toward the dark forest path, their ears swiveling at every rustle of the leaves, their tails twitching with a restless, newfound ache. The mated women were unnervingly quiet, their expressions a volatile mix of awe, scandalized jealousy, and a sudden, frantic desire to return to their own hearths and demand a very different kind of attention from their mates.
Neytiri felt a surge of intoxicating triumph. She wasn't just the mate to an Olo’eyktan; she was the consort of a man who loved with a foreign, exhaustive, and bone-deep passion that made the traditional ways seem like a whisper against a scream.
“I see,” Ninat finally managed to say, her hand shaking so badly she had to use both palms to steady her bowl. She took a massive, desperate gulp of kava, her eyes never leaving that dark mark on Neytiri’s skin. “Perhaps... perhaps we have been too quick to judge the ways of the Sìltsan skxawng. Perhaps the Sky People have secrets the Great Mother kept from us.”
Neytiri smiled, a slow, wicked curve of her lips as she envisioned Jake waiting for her in their high, secluded bower. “Yes. He has much to teach. But,” she added, her voice dropping into a low, territorial growl as she gave a playful but warning snap of her teeth toward the circle, “he is my teacher. And I am a very, very greedy student.”
The tension in the circle was a physical weight, a thick coil of curiosity and heat that seemed ready to snap. Just as Ninat opened her mouth to ask one more frantic question, the heavy thud of a warrior’s footfall echoed against the Hometree’s roots.
Jake emerged from the shadows.
He looked every bit the Toruk Makto—his broad, scarred chest gleaming with a light sheen of sweat from the evening hunt, his movements possessing that strange, hybrid grace that was both feline and soldier. The women fell instantly silent, their eyes tracking him with a new, wide-eyed intensity that bordered on terror.
He didn't seem to notice the suffocating atmosphere. His eyes were only for Neytiri.
"Hey," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate right through the moss. He stepped into the firelight, offering a casual nod to the sisters. "Sorry to interrupt the party, ladies. Just headed back to the bower."
He stopped beside Neytiri, his large hand coming down to rest heavily and possessively on the nape of her neck, his thumb stroking the very spot where she had just shown her mark. The circle of women collectively held their breath; Peyral actually leaned back as if scorched.
"You doing okay, baby?" he murmured, leaning down. The word 'baby'—that strange, soft Sky Person sound—sent a fresh ripple of murmurs through the girls. It sounded like a caress.
Neytiri looked up at him, her fierce pride melting into something soft and hungry. "I am well, Ma Jake."
"Good." He grinned, a flash of white teeth in the firelight. Then, ignoring the twenty pairs of eyes watching him with scandalous fascination, he tilted her chin up.
He didn't just lean in; he claimed her. It was a kiss—deep, slow, and unapologetically carnal. His tongue swept against hers in a way that had nothing to do with the neural bond and everything to do with the "other ways" Neytiri had described. His tail didn't wag; it lashed once, then curled firmly around her calf, pulling her body flush against his leg.
A strangled sob of shock came from one of the younger girls. Ninat’s bowl finally hit the ground, splashing kava everywhere.
Jake pulled back after a short moment, a string of silver saliva glistening in the firelight. He let out a low, satisfied huff and swiped his thumb across her bottom lip. "Don't stay out too late," he whispered against her mouth, his voice loud enough for the stunned circle to hear.
He gave her a lingering squeeze on the waist and a wink that promised much more later.
“Enjoy your drink, ladies,” he said with a casual wave, his tail giving Neytiri’s thigh a final, firm flick before he turned and disappeared back into the darkness of the Hometree.
Neytiri sat in the ensuing, dead silence, her lips swollen and her skin pulsing a violent, triumphant violet. She picked up her bowl with a steady hand, though her eyes remained fixed on the spot where he had vanished.
The silence that followed was no longer brooding—it was shattered.
“He...” Saeyla choked out, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated awe. “He tastes you... while you are still awake?”
Neytiri took a slow, triumphant sip of kava, her golden eyes gleaming over the rim.
"As I said," she whispered into the silence, her eyes gleaming. "A very greedy student."