Chapter Text
Sareyu shivers against the bite of the wind.
It’s always colder here, right on the shoreline—it’s even colder now as she unwinds the thick wrappings covering her arms, legs, and feet.
Beside her, Nakari does the same.
Frost-grey tangsìk hide falls away, thrown behind them to land in a pile atop their discarded shawls. The girls are left in their loincloths and chest wrappings, and Sareyu is quick to reach for the bowl of warm grease resting on the ground beside their dying fire.
The syewe is thick and oily against her fingers, its yellow tinge standing out against the pale blue of her skin. As she smears it across her face, coats her bare arms and legs, it’s unpleasantly sticky, but syewe turns smooth and white as it dries.
Most importantly, it will keep her and Nakari from freezing to their death.
Sareyu takes a step forward. The syewe is doing its work, softening the wind’s bitter sting into a muted, more tolerable chill. Standing at the ocean’s edge, her feet bare against water-smoothed stones, she lingers for a moment to admire the view.
The sun is at its peak—a full hand’s breadth above the blue horizon. Sareyu soaks in its distant warmth, her eyes fluttering shut. Here at the very heart of Eywa’eveng, sunlight is a fleeting gift that crowns each day.
Something flicks her tail.
Sareyu jumps, her ears swiveling back and her eyes snapping open. She turns, frowning, to face her friend.
Nakari flashes her a too-innocent smile. “Come on, ‘Reyu—daylight’s wasting.”
Together, they wade out into the sea.
The ground falls off quickly, rocky and sheer. Before the water can swallow her waist, Sareyu lets out a high, happy trill and dives beneath the waves.
She opens her eyes to a different world.
In this space between frozen shore and open ocean, life can bloom. Moss—purple and faintly glowing—clings to the rocks, swaying in gentle currents. Lichen pulses dimly from the depths, blue and green like the water it’s engulfed by. Colorfully patterned fish swim in shoals or hunt alone.
Sareyu swims slowly, careful not to leave Nakari behind.
While they’re in the safety of relatively shallow waters—not the endless dark of farther out where riptides and strong currents spell certain death—it is forbidden to swim alone.
Nakari taps her ankle and points a finger upward. Sareyu nods and follows her friend to the surface. Their heads emerge above the waves to take a breath.
Treading water, Sareyu grins.
“At this rate, we’ll never make it back before the sun sinks,” she teases—despite the fact that their destination isn’t far, and they’re almost there already.
Nakari splashes water at her face. Sareyu splutters.
Nakari’s grey eyes glimmer with mirth. “My people were meant to climb,” she says with a haughty sniff, waving a hand whose nails are sharper than Sareyu’s.
Sareyu gasps in mock offense, swatting lightly at Nakari’s arm. “They’re my people too, you skxawng!”
“Says the girl who can’t climb!”
“Says the girl who can’t swim!”
Nakari huffs, shaking her head. A smile tugs at her lips. “Daylight’s wasting,” she repeats as if she isn’t equally to blame.
Before Sareyu can reply, Nakari ducks her head back under.
The kelp forest is soon in sight. It begins gradually, lush stalks of deep speckled green rising up, straining to reach the filtered sunlight of higher water. But as they swim, the kelp grows denser and darker like a tangled net—Sareyu and Nakari slow before it threatens to stop them entirely, impassable to all but the smallest of sea creatures.
After surfacing once more for a lungful of air, they dive back down among the kelp and get to work.
Sareyu grabs her knife from where it had been fastened carefully to the side of her loincloth. It’s a practical thing made from braided reeds and sharpened bone, its handle long and its blade curved, and it cuts through the kelp’s thick stems with ease.
Side by side with Nakari, she harvests armspan-length sections from the tops of the plants. The cut kelp drifts to fill the water between them.
Home, Nakari signs with her hands sometime later, tilting her head in question.
Sareyu nods back, flashing back Gather and Go.
The kelp is collected into bundles, then tied to their backs. With nimble fingers, Sareyu knots a strand around her waist to secure her bundle. Her knife is returned to its place at her hip.
And then they swim.
The sea is dimmer now, daylight weakening with the sun’s descent. The plants and fish they pass glow brighter in reply, and the swirling patterns of Nakari’s tanhì shine like constellations—Sareyu can see her own on her hands and arms doing the same.
Trailing behind Nakari, Sareyu looks back.
The kelp forest is a distant shadow. She spots the shape of a sye’ele—three pairs of webbed fins jutting out from a fat, rounded body—drifting through the outskirts. The syewe of a similar creature is coating her skin in a layer of translucent white.
It’s peaceful down here in the water.
Even with the plants’ luminescence, it’s safer to gather by daylight, but Sareyu finds herself wishing that the sun stayed in the sky just a little bit longer.
She watches the sye’ele’s lazy motions for a moment more before catching up to Nakari.
They return home to the village of Wengrr as the sun slips beneath the sea.
Clothed and dry, a bundle of kelp carried in her syewe-white arms, Sareyu watches the last band of red on the horizon fade away to welcome in the long night. Starlight reflects in the ice-crusted stones beneath her feet. The great, swirling shape of Naranawm looms in the dimness of the darker sky.
Wengrr lies among a cluster of rocky spires the height of five stacked huts. Ice lives in the cracks and crevices, and vegetation blooms from the ice—spike-flowers in pale pinks, thorn-leaved climbing vines in yellows and whites.
The spires are narrower at the base, eroded by storm winds and the memory of higher seas—layers of draped hides line the ring-shaped hollows, serving as entrances to communal shelters. Family dwellings with similar entrances fill the caves pocketing the cliff faces above, spiraling up toward the spires’ flat tops where storm-watchers stand. Their eyes track the girls’ approach, spears or bows in hand, faces illuminated by flickering firelight.
Green fishing nets woven from dried kelp fibers connect it all, hanging down from the caves and linking the spires together, forming bridges and climbing paths.
Wengrr, Sareyu has always thought, is like the web of a giant spider.
“How are the skies?!” Nakari calls up to her older brother, cupping a hand to her mouth and balancing her kelp bundle in the other.
Arako peers down at them from the top of his spire. The butt of his spear rests against the frozen rock. “Clear!” he shouts back, sending a performative, sweeping glance across the horizon. “For now…”
The storm-watcher pauses as Sareyu and Nakari approach the spire’s base, then adds, “Ma’ak is certain that the Ring will close tomorrow.” Arako tilts his head toward his friend who kneels at the top of a neighboring spire, clutching a bow.
Sareyu sighs, resigning herself to a day trapped inside. Ma’ak’s predictions are rarely wrong.
Nakari hums in thought.
Sareyu reaches the weavers’ shelter first, ducking past a flap of frost-grey tangsìk hide. Walls of leafy kelp drape down from the uneven ceiling, dividing the hollow beneath the spire’s sculpted overhang into wedge-shaped segments. The far wall is curved, weather-worn stone, and barnacle-orbs grow on its surface, their luminescence painting the shelter in a soft, bluish light.
Overlapping mats of woven reeds pass underfoot, warding off the ground’s seeping chill.
At the floor’s center rests the loom.
The people surrounding it are hard at work—weaving together long strands of vine fibers, stepping around the overflowing baskets of hides and plant material scattered on the floor. Nakari’s mother, Elani, is among them.
Sareyu has always been in awe of Elani’s hair. It’s a lighter shade of brown than most in Wengrr, and there’s never a strand out of place. Colorful threads wind through her braids, adorned by iridescent fish scales that shine with an almost haunting quality in the barnacle-orbs’ blue light.
“Sa’nu,” greets Nakari with a smile. “We went to the forest again today.”
Elani pauses her work, fingers stilling. After a quiet word to the woman on her left, she steps back from the loom. The long shawl she wears over her hide wrappings swishes as she moves, and it’s stunning—a spiral-patterned tapestry of silvers, blacks and whites accented by a blue that’s deep and dark like the sky.
“Thank you for your help, maite. Sareyu,” Elani says. She eyes the bundles of kelp in the girls’ arms, gestures to the floor beside a pile of finished mats and half-knotted nets. “Over there is just fine.”
Sareyu happily dumps her kelp in the indicated place. She shakes out her sore arms, stretches them above her head.
“I wish we could go out again tomorrow,” she tells her friend’s mother, gaze flickering toward the entrance hides, “but Ma’ak says the Ring will close.”
Nakari groans and adds her own bundle of kelp to the pile. “I for one will welcome the break. Sareyu has been dragging me out there every day.”
Elani nods sagely, amusement shimmering in her expression. “I was wondering when a Great Storm would rise again—these past several days have been too calm.”
Sareyu’s attention slides past Elani to settle on the busy weavers. They’re mesmerizing to watch, their movements around the loom like a well-practiced dance.
Farther in, seated in a circle on the floor beneath the barnacle-orbs’ steady glow, a group of elders fashion shawls from rolls of completed fabric. Their gossiping chatter flows gently like the ocean currents close to shore.
Off to the side, gathered along a wall of kelp separating this shelter from the next, children laugh as they practice tying knots under the patient instruction of Nakari’s father, Vo’txey.
A hand resting on her shoulder startles Sareyu from her thoughts.
“Why don’t you girls enjoy what remains of the calm skies before Ma’ak is proved right, hmm?” says Elani. She smiles down at Sareyu and Nakari, one hand on each of their shoulders like she has two daughters instead of one.
Sareyu nods back, returning the smile.
The warmth of Elani’s hand lingers as she pulls it away.
Nakari nudges Sareyu’s arm, ushering her back toward the entrance. Reluctantly, Sareyu follows.
The cave of Nakari’s family dwelling isn’t far. Seated just above the weavers’ shelter, it belongs to the lowest level of bridges connecting the spires.
Sareyu climbs, the green rope of a vertical net passing beneath her hands.
She thinks she can feel a shift in the direction of the wind. It’s so subtle that she might be imagining it, Arako’s warning stuck in her mind, but the air feels heavy and restless like a hunting beast preparing to strike. Whether the weight is physical or not, she thinks Nakari can feel it too.
Reaching the top of the net, Sareyu rises onto a ledge of ice-slicked stone and steps aside to make room for her friend. Nakari slips past with an unconscious hand sliding across Sareyu’s back, leading the way onto a bridge spanning the gap between this spire and two others.
A shuddering ripple passing through the bridge’s ropes stills their feet—Sareyu looks up in sync with Nakari.
The culprit is a familiar boy. He stands out in the center of the bridge before the split, bouncing lightly up and down on hide-wrapped feet. His eyes are on the horizon, watching the swell of distant waves.
Sareyu’s lips twitch.
“Tikan!” Nakari chides her younger brother. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping Sempu tie knots for the nets?”
“I finished mine already!” Tikan protests. “Sempu said I was done for the day.”
Bemused, Nakari shakes her head. “I swear he goes easy on you. Arako never got to leave early from his lessons, and neither did I.”
Tikan sticks out his tongue.
Nakari lunges forward to tickle him. The boy yelps and hisses, limbs flailing—Sareyu steps in before he can run away, sweeping him clean off his feet.
Trapped between Sareyu and Nakari, his legs dangling in the air, Tikan pouts in surrender. “No fair, Nakari! There are two of you!”
Sareyu snorts and puts him down.
“Go on and bother Arako,” Nakari replies, her attempt at sternness foiled by the grin on her face. “The Ring is closing soon—you shouldn’t be out here alone.”
Tikan doesn’t need any more encouragement. His face brightens at the suggestion, and he scampers off, climbing up the spire to join his storm-watcher brother.
Sareyu watches him go, remarking, “I can’t tell whether he would be an excellent storm-watcher or a terrible one.”
Nakari laughs, high and musical. The wind rises to snatch it away. “He gets bored too easily. Storm-watching might seem exciting, but there’s a lot of waiting around—I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed in Sempu’s footsteps instead.”
They finish crossing the bridge and pause before Nakari’s family dwelling. Flaps of grey hides conceal the entrance, but with Nakari’s parents in the weavers’ shelter and Tikan joining Arako on his spire top, Sareyu knows it’s empty.
Lingering on the narrow ledge where net bridge meets stone, Sareyu turns a thoughtful look on Nakari. “What about us?” she says. “After our Iknimaya, when our songchords begin…what will we do?”
Nakari doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes are distant as she thinks, seeming to look through Sareyu instead of at her. Imagining, maybe, what they’ll look like years from now.
“I’ll join my sa’nok in the weavers’ shelter,” Nakari decides, “and you’ll be the gatherer who can’t stay away from the sea. You’ll bring me all the best kelp and reeds and vines to weave, and I’ll make you pretty shawls that everyone will be jealous of.”
Sareyu snickers, shoving at Nakari’s shoulders. “Just me?” she teases. “You’d let the rest of the village freeze?”
Nakari pretends to think deeply on that, tapping her fingers against her chin. “I suppose everyone else can have shawls too,” she amends.
“But not pretty ones?”
“...No,” Nakari says at last, smiling softly. “Those I’ll save for you.”
A purple blush burns through the white of the syewe coating Sareyu’s cheeks. She looks away to the cold blue horizon, dim sea against darkened sky, and pictures the shape of that life.
It’s a simple one, Sareyu thinks, but…
“That sounds nice.”
The dwelling where Sareyu lives with her parents is near the top of the tallest spire. She can see the entrance to Nakari’s from here, far below and across the way—she can see Nakari from here, too, still standing outside. Her friend meets her gaze, hand raised in a farewell that Sareyu echoes as Nakari disappears into her home.
Up here, the wind is howling. She can finally see the hazy line of grey swallowing the stars above the pay ko’on—the vast, circular ocean that surrounds Eywa’eveng’s icy heart.
From this height, the Great Storm is an impenetrable shadow drifting across the churning waves.
It won’t hit land—Great Storms never do, locked into their path around the pay ko’on until they fade away—but its trailing winds are powerful in their own right. Sareyu can feel their force even now, the sharp, frigid air tugging against the edges of her shawl. Gusts nip at her skin and threaten to unravel the braids in her hair.
None of it is quite loud enough to drown the muffled sounds of her parents’ voices.
Sareyu turns and slips inside. The heavy hide flaps settle behind her, and she sighs in relief at the way the air is instantly warmer.
Her family’s hearth fire blazes bright like a golden sun, flames dancing lazily from the open top of a dark bowl. Smoke rises into a clay-coated funnel whose bones are fashioned from rings of reeds—the funnel’s narrow top pokes outside through a hole in the hides draped over the cave’s entrance.
“...too young,” she hears her father say, his voice clear and close. “She needs more time to prepare.”
Her mother lets out an agitated hiss. “When I underwent Iknimaya, I was years younger than her! You’re too soft, Rukul.”
Sareyu pauses by the hearth with a frown as she realizes that not only are her parents arguing—they’re arguing about her.
“And you are too harsh!” her father shoots back. “Have you forgotten the dangers? Za’ora, ma yawntu, she could die!”
Za’ora is quiet for a moment. Sareyu can just barely see her shape through the white curtain of thornless vines separating the hearth room from the space where they sleep.
“Have you forgotten the ways of our people?” Za’ora says slowly, her tone quiet yet sharp. “Or does your ocean softness plague you still?” A pause. She steps forward to lay a hand against Rukul’s chest. “If she dies, then it is Eywa’s will. This rite is important—the most important one of all. Sareyu must pass so that she can be reborn as a true member of the Txe’lanwe. Weakness has no home in this clan—you know that, ma Rukul.”
Rukul goes still. Sareyu can see the hurt in the outline of his body.
Tail swishing in discomfort, Sareyu bursts through the vines.
“Enough!” she exclaims.
The space is dim and small, illuminated by the glow of purple-pink mushrooms more than by the golden firelight filtering weakly through the vines. Even so, as her parents turn to look at her, Sareyu finds that the differences between them have never been starker.
The shade of Za’ora’s skin—the pale icy blue of the Txe’lanwe—is contrasted by Rukul’s darker and more saturated greenish hue. His frame is broader, especially his hands, forearms, and feet, and while their tails are both flat, his is longer and thicker. Za’ora’s eyes are the grey of stormclouds—Rukul’s are the blue of a clear, daylit sky.
He looks like one of the Ocean People, because long ago he was.
Sareyu shoots him a gentle smile, trying to ease the tension of his pinched brow.
“Sa’nok is right,” she says, glancing at her mother. “I am prepared. Nakari is my age, and she will undergo Iknimaya this season too.”
When Rukul returns her smile, there is a sadness in his eyes. Sareyu wishes he wouldn’t worry so much, but she knows he cannot help it.