Shooting Stars | Lo'ak¹

Chapter 05: Is This Goodbye?

Italicize - someone's thoughts or a story from the past

Bold - sign language 

The Sully family and Ja'lia trudged through the forest as they made their way back to the campsite. The walk back had been painfully slow as Ja'lia held onto Lo'ak's hand for comfort and solace. Ja'lia had been torn on who to walk with because Kiri was devastated that Spider was taken, and Lo'ak was currently blaming himself for Spider being kidnapped.

Ultimately, she ended up choosing Lo'ak when she saw that Neteyam slowed his pace to walk beside his sister. Jake held Tuk as she placed her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Too much had happened in such a short amount of time, and it exhausted the little girl. She was too young to have witnessed anything of what happened moments prior. In fact, all of them were too young to witness it, but they were overlooked by the two parents who were fussing over their youngest child.

Eventually, they made it back to the campsite, and Jake gently placed Tuk down. "You guys should go get something to eat. I had Norm put some food for all of you in the laboratory," Jake said, and Tuk shook her head.

"I want to stay with Mom," She whined. Jake looked down at his youngest child, and his heart broke. She was frightened at the thought of leaving her mother. He looked at his three other children for help, but all of them were looking at the ground.

Ja'lia walked over to Tuk, "Come on, Tuk, we'll eat, and then I'll walk you back," Ja'lia persuaded, and Tuk hesitantly grabbed onto Ja'lia's hand as Jake shot the girl a thankful smile.

Once Ja'lia had a hold of Tuk's hand, she walked toward the laboratory and heard the other three teens' soft footsteps behind her.

No one said a word, and it was almost like they were afraid too.

The silence felt suffocating, and as soon as Ja'lia stepped into the pod and heard Norm's cheerful laughter, she let out a sigh of relief.

"Hey, kids!" He yelled as he got up, and walked toward them. "I saved all of you some food from dinner," Norm informed, looking at the group.

His brows furrowed when he only counted five kids instead of six, "Where's Spider?" He asked, and the silence grew so tense that you could cut it with a knife.

Kiri walked past the man, ignoring him, with Lo'ak and Neteyam on her tail. "Did I say something wrong? Did something happen?" Norm asked, confused.

"Those Avatars took Spider," Ja'lia said, brushing her shoulder against Norm's as she walked with Tuk to get food.

Everyone slowly ate, and Ja'lia felt sick to her stomach as she forced the food down her throat. She didn't know why; but she felt immense guilt that Spider was taken. Maybe all those years of trying to keep him at arm's length didn't pay off. Perhaps she allowed herself to care too much, and now she was worried for the human boy's safety.

It wasn't necessarily a bad thing to care for Spider. It seemed contradictory to her. How can she hate every other human but like him?

Well, almost every other human. Although she genuinely considered Norm to be Na'vi since he had done so much for her people, the same thing went for Max.

Ja'lia took one more bite before she couldn't eat anymore. She hardly ate any of the food on her plate, but she felt that if she ate anything else, she would throw up.

When she looked over at Tuk, she saw that the girl was stirring the food around on her plate as she had a blank expression on her face.

"Tuk, are you full?" Ja'lia asked, and Tuk absentmindedly nodded.