Pandora's Hope

[MidnaPhobia]

Nearae took the leaf and began eating calmly. She would take bits and pieces of different things and mix them together before she ate them, only stopping briefly when she heard Ethan speak again. She turned to look at him and smiled reassuringly. “Well... you are out of place.” The girl said, trying to be reassuring but failing miserably. “I mean... that’s why you’re here isn’t it? Because you want to become more like us?” The girl left it alone for the rest of the meal because generally around here eating time was not a time for speaking to each other.

Ethan may pick up on how quiet everyone was. When she was finished Nearae sat there quietly, waiting for Ethan to finish before she stood up. “Come on, we’ll get you into something a little less conspicuous. That is... if you want to of course.” The girl added hesitantly, unsure if he did want to wear clothes like them or if he would feel uncomfortable and he wanted to stay in his own clothes for a while. However she couldn’t see the point in them, he seemed to get them caught on things far too often for her liking.

[Draco_James]

Ethan’s brow quirked up slightly at Nearae’s initial comment, not having expected to get that response. After she had explained what she’d meant, though, he understood and nodded. It would take a while for him not to feel like an outsider, but hopefully he eventually would. That was the whole idea, for him to learn the Na’vi way of living and become part of their community, and it was only natural that he wasn’t yet. Even as more Na’vi showed up to eat their morning meal, the place remained almost completely silent, and so he followed suit, not talking any further until it was over.

He stood with Nearae when he’d finished his food, considering for a moment if he did want to continue wearing his own clothes. He quickly decided against it, though. He was going to have to make the change eventually, and the sooner he did so, the sooner he’d be used to it. It was pretty obvious it would be a big change, going from wearing clothes that covered most of his body to little more than a loincloth. “Yes, I do. You’re right, I’m here to learn your people’s way of life,” he said, motioning for her to lead the way, “Why put off until tomorrow what I can do today?”

[MidnaPhobia]

Nearae stopped and frowned slightly as the boy said that last part, as if she were repeating it over her head and thinking about the words. “I like that.” She nodded finally, a smile crossing her face as she continued to lead Ethan through the tree. “Oh... I should probably warn you that making clothes here isn’t an easy process...” The girl said. She wasn't sure how things happened where he came from but here they made their own clothes from scratch. “I’ll show you, but it doesn’t mean it’s still not hard. It never was my strong suit however.” The girl laughed as she continued to descend the tree.

She took Ethan all the way down to the bottom which meant he would have to scale it again. Once on the ground the girl quickly began leading him through the forest, not really explaining where she was going. Soon enough there was a sound of waves crashing upon the shore and the forest slowly began giving way to a sandy beach. Not too far out there were massive razor sharp looking rock pillars which would explain why the waves had sounded so loud. “This is usually where we get all the little beads and decorations from.” Nearae explained, showing off her own top. You can sometimes find okay ones on the beach but to get the good ones you have to go diving.”

[Draco_James]

“I wish I could take credit for it. It’s a somewhat common saying where I’m from,” Ethan replied when she seemed to like the little saying about procrastination - or rather avoiding it. He was fairly certain it was actually a quote, but had no idea what the source was. “Well, only one way to find out if I can manage it,” he replied, following her on the long decent down the massive tree. It occurred to him that he could probably fashion the material from the clothes he was wearing into several items of Na’vi clothing, if he had any idea what he was doing, but he wanted to learn the proper way that they used to create clothes. Again, there was no point putting off learning that skill.



He followed without bothering to ask questions, and had to moved fast to keep up with her as they moved through the forest. The sound of water ahead definitely intrigued him, and when they reached the beach his eyes widened in awe at the sight before him. The rock formations had a definitively sinister look about them with their sharp points, but the vast stretch of water was stunning. At her explanation, he glanced over, and was taking a look at her top when she said one word in particular that got his attention.


“Diving?” Ethan asked, practically grinning. He’d never been out in a real, natural body of water on Earth, partially because most of them were pretty heavily polluted, and partially because those that weren’t were not exactly safe for someone in his condition. About the only real form of physical activity he got beyond the daily norm was swimming, because it was low impact and therefore about all his body could easily handle. In anticipation of going in, he reached to pull his shirt off, but then hesitated for a moment. He’d never been fond of even going shirtless before, because his body was on the somewhat sickly side. It took him a moment to realize that in this body, though, he had nothing to worry about – it was strong and fit. And so he pulled the shirt off and let it fall to the sand beside him before moving toward to the water to get his feet wet.

[MidnaPhobia]

Nearae nodded slightly when Ethan asked her if she had meant diving and the girl smiled as he took his shirt off and walked to stand in the water. She waited for him to be ready before she walked over to the water herself. “You can take as long as you want and collect as many bits and pieces as you want. I’ll probably be staying nearby just in case you get into trouble. It’s not that I don’t have faith in your swimming skills or anything like that, it’s just that there are dangerous creatures in the water as well.” Nearae told Ethan as she began wading deeper into the water.

“Also be wary of rips, we should be alright but it does tend to have a heavy undertow right in between the mother daughter pillars.” She pointed out the rock spears in question before she took a small breath and dived underneath the water. It was nice and warm underneath but once you reached a certain depth it did tend to get very cold very quickly. Covering the bottom of the ocean were thousands upon thousands of small shells and bead like items. Nearae was enjoying just looking at them, and even found a couple more she wanted to add to her own garments.

[Draco_James]

Ethan just enjoyed the feeling of standing at the water’s edge for a little while before Nearae headed in. “Don’t worry, you won’t be getting any arguments from me,” he replied as she explained why she’d be staying close. He’d meant that he accepted there were dangers that it would be good to have her around to help him out of, but the other possible meaning – that he wouldn’t complain about her sticking around regardless – was equally true.

As he got in to about his shoulders, he dipped his head under just to get a look, and found that the waters were pretty much crystal clear, except for a little sand down by his feet that he’d stirred up by walking. He pushed out further, wading deeper before he too took a deep breath and dove down. The first attempt at this didn’t go that well as he tried to work out the best way of swimming down. His swimming experience was mostly at the surface, because he’d never really been able to hold his breath enough to stay under for any amount of time. His second, try, though, was much more successful, and he got himself down to the ocean floor.

It truly was covered with little interesting stones and other small things. That trip down he didn’t really get a chance to pick any up, but after going to the surface for another breath, he was back down again. He started picking out ones that caught his eye. There wasn’t really much else he could do for the moment, given that he wasn’t sure what exactly he’d be using any given item to make yet. It was on about his fifth dive down that he spotted a silvery iridescent spiral shell about the size of a quarter when he felt something brush his leg, and he spun as quickly as he could, but saw nothing anywhere near him. He turned back, looking for the shell again, and had just spotted and grabbed it when he felt something brush his leg again, but this time the sensation was accompanied by a rather painful stinging sensation.

Again, he saw nothing, but this time quickly surfaced before taking a look at his leg. There was a cut a couple of inches long, though fortunately not overly deep. Whatever it was, it has sliced rather cleanly through his pant leg, too, and the cut was bleeding a little, leaving a tiny cloud of red in the water around it. The initial pain was already gone, but he had enough common sense to guess that swimming around bleeding in water that had dangerous creatures in it wasn’t the best of ideas. He started to wade toward the shore, scanning the surface of the water for Nearae, and the next time she surfaced, he waved her over. “I think there’s something down there with me,” he called as he made his way back to the beach.

[MidnaPhobia]

Nearae was more milling around on the ocean surface , watching Ethan as he swam around under the water. She was trying to make sure that there wasn't anything too dangerous around. Generally there were always things that presented a small amount of danger, but that was just because it was the nature of Pandora to be dangerous. Sometimes the creatures really were just curious and didn't realise what they were doing. She noticed a fair few vipercanth milling around in the water, circling around the pair of Na’vi. The vipercanth (made this one up) were a translucent silvery looking kind of long eel like fish, which made them near impossible to see in the water but were easy to spot from above it.

Their scales were, however, razor sharp and highly abrasive. One small one seemed curious about Ethan because the fish were curious by nature as they weren’t very nice to eat so the Na’vi usually left them alone. When the boy surfaced and said that something was down there with him the girl nodded and encouraged him open as she moved out of the water herself. “Yeah... the vipercanth were checking you out, they’re mostly harmless... that will probably sting a little bit though. Come on, we’ll go get it cleaned up a little bit, we can finish this later.”

As she led him into the first the girl began picking at bits and pieces of the trees they passed, giving them to Ethan. Once she had gathered up about a dozen ingredients she found a rock and sat down. “Remember what I did the other day? I want you to grind up most of these things here with the rock.” The girl instructed as she took the leaf off him to make sure he didn't use that.

[Draco_James]

Ethan made his way toward the beach until he got close enough to touch bottom again so that he could walk out. The cut did sting, but walking wasn’t too bad. Still, even a small cut could get infected, so he understood the need to deal with it promptly. He slipped the shells and beads he’d collected thus far into his pocket as he followed her back toward the trees, scooping his shirt of the ground and just draped it over his shoulder. It wasn’t like he really needed to wear the garment anyway – it certainly wasn’t too cold out.

“Whatever vipercanth are, I definitely couldn’t see them,” he said, and winced as his pant leg brushed against the cut. He accepted the various bits of flora she passed him, looking at them curiously and definitely recognizing a few from the little balm that she’d created when the netang had hurt her shoulder. “I think so,” he nodded, sitting with her and getting to work grinding the things up. He noticed then that there was actually a second, much longer cut near the bottom of his other pant leg, but his leg was untouched beneath it. He decided that it must have been the first time he’d felt the thing, and he was just lucky it hadn’t been just a little closer that time.

He reached into his pocket as he continued to grind at the ingredients with one hand, and pulled out the round silvery shell, looking it over for a moment, seeing the faint rainbow swirls that appeared on its surface in the right light. “For a minute, it almost seemed like it was trying to stop me from getting this,” he said idly – though he didn’t really think so, it had just seemed like an interesting coincidence. He sat the shell down as he went back to grinding the ingredients together thoroughly.

When it looked to him like hers had, he stopped and took another look at his leg. “Can I see your knife? It will probably be easier to just cut these off,” he noted, indicating his pant leg. Might as well cut them off into shorts for the moment – he wouldn’t be needing them much longer anyway.

[MidnaPhobia]

“They’re... they have a long straight body with about six sets of fins either side. They can be anywhere from about this long.” She indicated a length of about sixty centimetres with her hands. “To about as long as I am tall. They have one eye on the top of their head and a large circular mouth the circumference of their body that doesn’t close full of short but very sharp teeth. They tend to latch on to larger creatures and they drink a little bit of their blood before moving on. I’ve never actually heard of a creature dying because of a vipercanth bite.”

“They are only interested in aquatic animals but fresh blood has been prone to cause them to become a lot more curious than is safe for us, which was why I wanted you to get out of the water. They have strange scales which makes them somewhat transparent looking under the water but when viewed from above they look more silver and are easier to spot.” Her eyes went to the shell as Ethan pulled it out but she didn't recognise if it had any significance to it. “Maybe it was.” The girl shrugged again.

She then sat back and casually watched as Ethan began grinding up the plants she had given to him. And when he asked for her knife she barely paused before passing it to him and sat back, waiting for him to be finished. “Once you’re finished with the balm you can smear it on the leaf and press it to your cut and I’ll show you how to bind it with some fibres. I can then show you how to start weaving together some clothes.” She told him softly, her voice gentle and instructive.

[Draco_James]

“Sounds... charming...” Ethan replied quietly to the description of the sea creatures. He definitely wouldn’t want to come across one as long as Nearae’s height if it got too curious. Then again, he hadn’t a clue how long the one that had cut him was. And he soon found out why when she mentioned how they seemed transparent when you saw them underwater. He’d thought they’d just been too far for him to see, but this definitely explained it.

He accepted her knife, and went to work cutting the pants off around the knee, being very cautious not to cut his legs in the process. When he was done with that, he handed the blade back to her, and then applied the balm to the leaf before pressing it to his cut. He’d forgotten her mentioning how bad it hurt, but soon remember and hissed at the pain, his jaw clenching until it subsided. “Well, you weren’t joking about it stinging when you showed me before...” he noted with a small slightly forced smile.

After that, though, he followed her directions on how to bind the leaf in place to keep the wound covered so the balm would do its work and let the cut heal. And then it was on to weaving clothes, which was definitely well outside his field of expertise. Then again, just about everything was, and not only on Pandora. On Earth, after all, he’d been through schooling – though his had mostly been from private tutors at home, rather than in a school with other children – but he’d never had a chance have a job, or really be anything. It seemed that, too, would be changing if he was truly accepted here.