it had been a week since the sky people had attacked the first village. after that, four more had been torched. it seemed they would stop at nothing to hunt down jake. currently, me and jake were sitting with ronal in their hut after jake had gotten a nasty cut from the reef when we were hunting. all three of us were sitting cross-legged on the floor, ronal mixing a paste up for jake. once she had finished, she moved to put it over the wound on his arm. jake hissed out when the mix touched the cut, but ronal took no notice. my ears flicked and my head titled, watching my mate clench his teeth through the pain.
ronal sat back when she had finished applying the paste, and she cocked her head towards me. "you are mated." her state bore into me and i blanched at her words. "you knew?" "i could sense it. who?" i smiled with a bowed head and looked back up at ronal, holding jake's hand without breaking her stare. she immediately noticed and her eyes flicked between our conjoined hands and me. "the match is good." ronal gave the tiniest of smiles to accompany her words, which was her ways of saying she approved. i thanked eywa at that, ronal was a force to be reckoned with if she was pissed.
just then, ronal fell to her knees and let out a pained cry. she was clutching her chest and belly in each hand. i rushed over to her and turned back to jake, who had also taken notice of this scene. "jake, we need tonowari." he understood and left the hut immediately. ronal's breathing was shallow, and she clutched at her heart. "where is it in pain?" my focus was on making sure it wasn't her baby. "up here. like i am being stabbed." then jake and tonowari ran in and he rushed to her side, jake to mine. "what is it?" he checked over her entire body before she could respond to his query.
"it is not me. it is ro'a. something is wrong." ro'a was her spirit sister who had a baby an entire cycle ago. all four of us exited the hut then, and went to the edge of the net, diving into the water and calling a tsurak. none of us knew where the tulkun would be but we followed ronal. after a while of searching we saw the pod circling something and we headed over there. there was many birds flying overhead. ronal slipped off her tsurak to swim over to ro'a, who was floating dead in the water. there were orange balloons keeping her afloat under each of her fins. her child lay next to her, unable to stay alive without its mother.
ronal looked back from her place atop ro'a's fin to see the dead child and her tears flowed freely. pained and agonising moans escaped her throat as she mourned the loss of her spirit sister that she felt so deeply in her heart. "her name is ro'a." tonowari spoke to jake, who sat in front of me, taking in the scene. "she was my spirit sister. she was a composer of songs. much revered. we would sing together. she waited many breeding cycles to have this calf. the clan was so happy for her." at that she looked around at the other tulkun who knew that one of their own was gone. "what is this, tonowari? what is this!?" ronal was almost screaming now, hysterical with the fact that she had lost her sister, and at the hands of the sky people.
the tears flowed down my cheeks as i watched on. we moved forward, going to the other side of the carcass, only to see a giant red stick in the back of the tulkun. we swam over to it, and somehow tug a shared effort between both me and jake, we pulled it out. jake turned the incessant beeping, which no doubt shared the location to whoever did this, off. we rejoined tonowari and ronal to share our findings. "this was in her back. the sky people did this. ronal only wailed more, her eyes flooded with pain and tears.
all four of us made our way back to the village, and called the villagers to attention. "my spirit sister, and her baby, have been murdered by the sky people!" there were echoes of yips and hissed throughout the crowd. i stood slightly behind jake, who was standing right in front of where ronal and tonowari were. "this war has come to us. we knew about this hunting of our tulkun people, but it was over the horizon, far away. now, it is here!" everyone was horrified at how heartlessly the sky people had murdered the tulkun, hissing, yipping and doing whētero. i was angry, seeing red even, but i didn't engage in the same rage the other warriors. i had never been about that. then jake stepped in. "no, you don't- you gotta understand how the sky people think. they don't care about the great balance." he tried to reason with them, but no one was listening.
"we do not answer to sky people." another warrior called out from the back. "listen, listen to him." neteyam was beside me, trying to get people to listen to his father. he was holding the tracker that we had pulled from ro'a. "the sky people are not going to stop. this is only the beginning. you gotta tell your tulkun to leave. you gotta tell them to go far away." i grimaced at his words. no one would like that solution. "leave? you live among us, and you learn nothing!" ronal was disgraced at his words. "we will fight to protect our brothers and sisters!" a warrior at the front of the crowd yelled out and everyone was yelling and hissing again. "no, no, no. if you attack, if you fight, they will destroy you. they will destroy everything you love!" he motioned to ronal and she clutched her swollen stomach. "you hear my words!"
neteyam was still attempting to calm people. "stay calm! stay calm! listen to my father." "damn it." then jake took the tracker from neteyam and stepped up onto the mat that tonowari and ronal were on. he held the tracker up, commanding silence with just one move. "you tell the tulkun... that if they're hit by one of these, they're marked for death. and call for me i'll silence it. saving their lives, that's all that matters. right? saving your family." he looked over to me when he spoke that last sentence. no one said anything then, the gravity of what was happening sinking into everyone. the tonowari and ronal spoke up. "tell the tulkun." "go."
