Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rumi dosen’t know how the original engineer was chosen for this expedition. Because there had to be one person (and only one person, if she is to have any faith in her fellow engineers) behind all of these decisions. Maybe the first person who decided to go to pandora had a buddy in college. Maybe that buddy had qualifications such as: “knows anything about aircrafts” and “I made this look so cool!” and those were somehow good enough qualifications to be a lead aerospace engineer. Because there is no other possible way that RDA went any amount of time without having any kind of fixed wing aircraft engineers. Honestly, they’re lucky that they got Celine out here (and that she brought Rumi with her). And look, Rumi understands why they only had the VTOL craft here initially. For a fixed wing craft, you need a runway. Runways that very forested moons just don’t have. But now there is space for runways. Hell, Rumi and Celine are stationed by water. You can have water planes and then you don’t even need to cut down any trees to make a runway. And VTOL craft are good at hovering for sure. It's just that they also need to be good at flying. And they’re not. They aren’t efficient either. Gravity may be less here, but that does not mean that we should be adding enough weight onto these things to make them still behave like they’re on earth. Superconductors are only good and useful if your crafts are fully electric too, and the craft that they have right now aren’t. There were already 3 different kinds of VTOL craft developed and being produced before Celine and her team got here. No one needs that many different types of hovering craft before having a single fixed wing one.

Rumi can hear Celine’s voice in the back of her head. Repeating what her mentor told her the first time she went on this rant, “Rumi, we aren’t in the Sec-ops division. They might need things from their crafts that we don’t. We don’t have all the information, so let's not be so quick to judge”. So Rumi tries not to judge. Besides, she's here, after all. Being able to help with the discovery and exploration of this moon is an amazing opportunity. Even if Celine and her team are stationed far away from everything else. And are given limited resources. And sometimes their communications or other equipment fail and no one is able to fix it until the 4 engineers out here can develop a solution. It's an amazing opportunity! They all even have avatars, and the link units have been the one thing that has never broken (not that all the people stationed here don’t expect it to happen at some point. They have all decided to become experts at repairing it, just in case). Rumi truly is happy to be here. She's stationed at a high cliff near the eastern ocean to be able to study how altitude affects air density on this moon, and how that could affect the functions of the RDAs aircrafts at those higher altitudes. She's also working with the other engineers stationed here to develop at least one fixed wing option for surveying. They’re currently trying to design a craft that is loosely based on the Ikrans, because if they can fly, so can we, right?

There is a quiet knock at Rumi’s door. She hadn’t even noticed that the sky had shifted to its nighttime hue until she looked over and saw that her desk was the only thing in her room that remained properly lit. Her notes in front of her as if staring at them for a few more moments would yield the answers that she has been looking for all day.

“Come in”, she calls.

“Still working on those lift equations?” Celine asks as she walks into Rumi's space. The path to the desk is clear, but Rumi has so many books, equation sheets and notebooks open that she had to move some to the floor. It looks like the purple haired girl was hit with an area of attack spell that was formulated to cause the most stress possible.

“I swear that we were able to find the lift coefficient for this in our tests. Or at least something that could get me there. And I think I was told the wrong initial value for the sea level mu”, Rumi sighs as she holds up one of her papers of “given” values for Celine to see.

“That could be,” Celine says as she strides over to the desk, careful to avoid the scattered notes “but I think you might be having more trouble because you are trying to run numbers for an airfoil that we haven’t tested at all yet.” Celine taps on where Rumi had written the name of the airfoil,"That's the one that you’re testing tomorrow.” Rumi just stares at it defeatedly “Have you eaten today?”

A pause. Rumi looks around her desk for any sign that she had moved at all today. She finds none “I probably should” she admits quietly before getting up from her desk with a small groan. Careful to step around the mess scattered around her as she follows Celine out of the room “Is everyone else already asleep?”

“Yes. They got back about two hours ago and didn’t do much before heading to their rooms. They promised to share the results of their tests tomorrow evening”

“Did they seem like they learned anything?”

“They said that they had learned, quote, something” Celine deadpans. Great. That means that they learned something that was not what they wanted to learn, and it will cause problems for someone. Who that someone is will be determined tomorrow evening. “But, young engineers will learn many things” Celine adds before Rumi even has time to make a face about what “something” could be.

And she's right. This team has Celine and three newer engineers. Rumi thinks it's because the RDA wanted at least a few people who were younger so that they could do research here longer. And if they were only bringing seasoned engineers to Pandora, then she wouldn’t be here. So she tries not to be too frustrated with them. Even if they make her job harder when they don’t tell her when things change, or break, or fail, or what about them failed. Rumi is “the brains” here so she's stuck trusting what people tell her, while she sits at a desk and crunches the numbers that they give her. There are some days when she's out testing, but that's usually when she determines that she needs her eyes on a project. When she needs to be the one to see what's happening. Or when she just needs to do something that isn’t banging her head against a desk because a number doesn't make sense. Celine knows this. She basically raised her, and knows what can happen if she's stuck in one thing too long.

Celine hands Rumi a plate of food. What everyone else had for dinner a couple of hours ago. She even heated it up for her. Rumi thanks her before Celine leaves her alone in the kitchen. In the new quiet, Rumi listened to the hum of the Pandoran night life. She loves how everything here is full of life. She hopes that she can do all that she can to preserve that life. She wants to believe that she can do good. She will do everything that she can to do good here.

Dinner is cold in the middle, and is finished despite that. Rumi cleans as quietly as she can before her feet carry her out of the kitchen. Windows let in purple and blue glows that light up the hallway to her bedroom. Rumi likes how the darkness never fully takes over on this moon. She's always hated the dark more than she cared to admit.

Once back to her room, Rumi trudges over to her desk. She marks the important pages in her books by shoving any corresponding equation sheets where she deems them to be needed, puts the books in a pile, takes inventory of any broken or otherwise unusable writing utensils, and spends some time at her desk journaling. She finds it helps keep her frustrations with her teammates to a manageable level. Plus, the art on the cover is a nice personal tough in her otherwise impersonal room.

She's trying to make her room more like hers. She really is. But grey walls block her in and one window is not enough to fully illuminate it. No plants will grow inside here because they need more oxygen than Rumi can stand. She tries to draw sometimes, but she just doesn't like her art very much. She can hum her own little tunes. She finds music bounces off these walls quite nicely. But she shares a small space separated by thin walls.

Rumi finishes up with her journal and begins to get ready for bed. She changes out of her day clothes and slithers her way into bed. She knows that she needs to sleep for tomorrow. Her team said that they would be ready “first thing in the morning” for the tests that she needs. Rumi doesn't know how much she trusts that, but she would still rather be early than late.

The morning is quick, for Rumi anyway. She is up before everyone else, and makes a quick breakfast with some other leftovers. She eats it as if it will disappear at any moment (or be replaced by the same equations she stared at for hours yesterday) while Celine steps out of her room. She goes over the plan for the day with Rumi. What tests they'll be running and the knowledge that they hope to dain from it. She slowly sips her coffee, trying to savor the morning before everyone else is awake. Rumi does not share in this ritual and is ready in her link unit before the last member of her team is even awake. Already outside gathering what everyone will need for the day. Any measurement tools, materials to test, and food for when they’re out. Rumi makes sure that she has her machete before looking back to see where the others are. She peers through the window that looks into their dining room area to see everyone still eating breakfast. Their pace unhurried as they rub the sleep from their eyes.

Rumi just looks at them for a moment, as if her stare will do anything to get them outside faster. No. She knows them. She’ll just have to wait until they’re done.

She turns away from the window and lowers herself to the ground next to all of their things. At least this gives her some time to enjoy the morning, because she does enjoy the morning. Just not. The inside morning. She enjoys being outside and away from a desk. She missed the way that the light warmed her. The smell of the ocean nearby. The little sounds in the wooded area that lies ahead of her. All the colors that surround her. It's not as many as there are in the evening, when everything is alight and glows brighter than any star in the sky, but greens are far more colors than the greys of her room.

Rumi takes some time to comb her fingers through her hair. She's used to having a long braid, so that's luckily not a big adjustment for her, as long as you ignore the direct connection to her brain at the end of this particular braid. She even managed to find a way to dye her hair. She has a healthy amount of purple streaks in her Avatars hair that matches how she dyed her own. She wanted more purple, but vastly underestimated the amount of hair that she now had. But she likes it. The lavender color almost glows with everything else, should Rumi find herself out at night. She likes it. It makes her feel like she's a part of something important. Like she belongs there too.

After a few more minutes she peeked through the window again. Still eating. Still sleepy. Still without any pep in any steps. Rumi considers just going off and trying to take the measurements herself, but realizes that there is no way that she can hold everything with only two hands and a tail. Maybe she’ll just. Explore some. She was encouraged to do so when they were first stationed here but she never really had the time to do so. She wished she did. Everything here is so beautiful. She has her comm, so they can contact her when they’re ready to actually do some work. She's been meaning to learn more about her environment anyway. Culture lessons and learning what's dangerous on paper can only get you so far. With her mind made up, she stands up and grabs her gear. Catching Celine’s eye though the window, she points at her comm, herself, and then the area behind her. I have my comm, I'm going to explore. I’ll be within range and call me when everyone's ready. Celine nods at her before going back to breakfast, and that's all that Rumi needs before she heads out.

It's nice getting to stretch her legs. She hasn’t really been in her avatar for a while. She finds that she missed the blue tint of her skin, and the faint stripes that seemed to replace the scars that normally decorated her skin. She didn’t really know where she was going at all. Just. Exploring. She could look for a clearing. Or somewhere high up with an accessible ledge for “flight” tests (throw tests). Her hand brushes gently along some of the flora, seeing how it reacts. She does her best to step lightly, to avoid spooking any of the local wildlife. She allows herself to explore. To become familiar with her surroundings. With the way that some of the leaves shrink away from her touch, how the ocean sounds the same as it does on earth, how there aren’t as many bugs out in the mornings and the way that the dew feels against her fingertips. The air smells cleaner too. Cleaner than she ever remembered on earth.

The spot she finds isn’t too far from their base, but it's not close either. There is no path that leads there. Honestly no evidence that anyone has been over here at all. It's a cove. Blue-green ocean pushes gently against the rocks that Rumi finds herself on. It’s partially shaded by water-loving trees, with vines reaching down to graze the waves. Light glistens off the water and reflects off the aquatic creatures below. Glimpses of colorful reef beckon her closer to the edge of the platform that she stands on. The biggest thing here seems to be a pincer fish. Rumi always liked the way that their fins moved. Mostly coral makes its home in this little sancutary that Rumi found. There isn’t much space for anything else in the water. It seems deep enough to swim in, but probably not too much deeper than Rumi is tall. It's probably no longer than 20 meters wide and it must lead out to the ocean through some underwater tunnel.

The land around it is full of life too. The reflections of water cover the nearby rocks and trees with the echoes of waves. The morning light catching the leaves in a way that feels sacred. Rumi catches that there are many good spaces to set up a hammock. Places higher up that would be a wonderful place to hide away. They seem easy enough to get to as well. Lots of fruit trees with strong, sturdy trunks and branches. It must be beautiful at night, with the water reflecting the glow of the plants around it. Rumi runs her hand along the bark of one of the more climbable trees, and experimentally reaches for one of its lower branches. It holds, like she thought it would. How long has it been since she climbed a tree?

Too long she thought to herself before pulling herself up. She didn’t even know what her goal was. Getting as high as possible maybe. Seeing where she can set up a place to sit. Getting higher to survey the area. Tasting the Celia fruit that she can see higher up the tree. Getting more used to balancing in her Avatar body. Maybe all of these goals can be true.

She climbs, her fingers never once slipping off of rough bark and her shoes only causing minimal problems. She can see a lot of fruit up here. It's a wonder that she didn't run into any wildlife trying to get to it before she did. She does eventually find a place to stop. High enough that she can see over the trees that were hovering over the cove. High enough that she is somewhat worried about something flying into the branch where she sits. She does get to try a Celia fruit. Just one of the small ones. Just a taste. But a taste that she feels like she earned. And Rumi just sits there. Looking out at the environment that she has so much still to learn about. She tries to commit everything that she can to memory. The fruit on the trees around here, what grows in this area, what trees are by the water and if she's seen them before somewhere else, any nests or animal signs that she thinks to notice. Everything that she can.

Her comm signals her to come back. That her team is getting in their link units and they’ll be ready to do their tests shortly. Rumi makes her way back down the tree, finding it more difficult to keep from falling on her way down. She wonders how much more she can learn about this private little space that she found. How much it has to teach her.

Time moves forward. Rumi continues to do her regular research. Her regular amount crunching into the later hours of the night. But she also finds herself returning to that cove. Any moment that she has free she’s outside. Packing tools so that she can learn all that she can. Learning how to draw so that she can more accurately record the flora and fauna that she sees there. No one has stopped her and there has been no other sign of other people knowing that this place exists at all. She enjoys her quiet time there.

Rumi remembers getting into the water for the first time. She maybe could have picked a better day to decide to actually measure the depth. The morning was just a little too cold for her swim to be enjoyable. But she didn’t care too much. She got measurements that she was looking for and was able to see more of the marine life that was hidden beneath the surface. The way that the aquatic plants swayed with the waves was mesmerizing.

Sometimes she sets up a hammock and watches the wildlife that wanders past. Sometimes she climbs up in the trees to see what fruit is there. Sometimes she sits with her feet in the water and watches fish swim past. She is always doing something to better understand this place. Better understand what she found and what it could mean.

Sometimes when she finds herself awake long after everyone else has gone to bed, she takes her work out there.

The glow against her paper is barely enough to see anything by, but she doesn't often care. Sitting there brings a calm that she could never replicate within her four walls. It helps sometimes.

It's one of those nights that she first meets them.

Late, too late for anyone to really be up, she slips out of her room, notes in hand. She puts on an exo-pack and moves her notebooks and writing supplies to where they have their Avatar bodies rest. She gets into the link room with a practiced lightness to her steps. Soon, she's back in her avatar body and gathering what she needs to brave the path to her cove.

Rumi is always aware of the nighttime predators around. She took careful notes on how to avoid them without needing to cause them harm. She knows some of the culture of this moon, and wants to do her best to minimize her impact in a place that is not yet her home. She follows the path that has grown familiar to her. She still marvels at the bioluminescence that covers this land. The glowing dots that mark her own skin. They remind her of those glow in the dark stars Celine had put on her ceiling once.

As the cove grows closer to her, she expects the sound of the water against rock, or the sound of a nighttime creature going about its life. But she hears voices. Her steps slow to a stop a safe distance away. She's too far away to make out any of what they are saying, other than the fact that it’s being said in Na’vi. Na’vi?

Oh Rumi is going to be in so much trouble. Her group of engineers was not supposed to be interacting with locals at all. They were stationed, at least they were supposed to be stationed far enough away from both the Tayrangi and Ta’unui clans that they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone getting near them. Rumi does not have the full training to be talking to people yet. Her team is one of the last ones considered for outreach (something about having nothing to talk about except work, whatever that means). The fact that she knows any of the language at all is because of her own need to not mess anything up on the off chance that she did interact with the Navi and to get ahead of what the RDA is eventually going to teach her.

Is it too late to turn around? Just go back like nothing happened and never come back to this little cove? Could she just hide until they’re gone and hope that they don’t come back? Turning around would mean that she wasted the trip out here and she really does need to do some work. She has no way to really hide. Even if she wasn’t concerned about something eating her (which she is) she also has no map or compass because she had long memorized the path here and back. Celine would be WAY more pissed if she had died or gotten lost than if she was spotted by locals, right? And this was the place that Rumi goes to. Where she does work and takes time away from her normal flight equations to be curious about the land.

She selfishly doesn't want to give that up.

Not yet.

…

But maybe she can turn around for now. Just to see if they’ll return later. She can brush up on her Na’vi and come back later. For sure. She's not being a coward if she knows that staying will cause her to make some sort of mistake. She's just coming back when she's better at everything. And then it’ll be fine. Rumi starts to move from her position, just the start of a pivot when she catches the two saying something. They’re talking a bit louder now. More playful? Rumi can still barely hear them, but she tries anyway. Just for a moment.

“Ngaìl lu to oel kaw’it win ní’ul” It takes Rumi one precious second too long to remember that word order doesn't matter so much in Na’vi. You’re not faster than me

Rumi can only assume that the exchange she missed out of earshot was something along the lines of “bet. I'll race you right now” and a laugh that was maybe supposed to be quieter than it was before she hears footsteps coming towards her. She couldn’t have hid even if she wanted to. She was close enough to hear them, so she is close enough that it takes all of 5 seconds before the first girl sees her.

And she is so pretty.

She seems to be more fit for the ocean. Rumi can see the way that her dots travel across her arm. She can see her tail, thicker than Rumi’s own, behind her as she geared up to go faster into the forest. Most of her hair ends at about her shoulders, with the exception of her braid. Rumi can tell that the girls skin is lighter than her own and that she seems to have at least one tattoo. The details of her face are blurry in the lower light, but with the purples and blues reflecting off of her skin Rumi is sure that she will never forget the curve of her lips as the smile she was giving to the person behind her fades when she sees someone in front of her.

The other girl isn’t far behind.

She's taller, but only a little bit. She looks more like Rumi. Her skin is darker and her tail thinner. She has some white face paint on. Something that highlights her eyes. She's thinner and more graceful on her feet than the first girl. Her hair seems to have hints of pink within it, like how Rumi’s is purple. Her details are blurry too. Her actions are not. She is quick to notice what the first girl is looking at and is just as quick to step between Rumi and her.

They all stare at each other for a moment.

No one knowing how the other party had found this place, or what they were doing there.

Luckily, Rumi remembers at least some things about the Na’vi language.

“Oe kìyä” She says, stuttering through the statement and pointing behind her, dropping her pencil by accident with the motion. She takes half a step backwards along her path. Maybe this strange person who speaks Na’vi like a toddler with her strange clothes and the most awkward and scared demeanor ever was enough to thoroughly confuse the two in front of Rumi. The two seem to loosen up a bit at her words, even if they’re now looking at her like she has two heads

Rumi sees this as a perfect opportunity to leave. “Oe hum” she says quickly and waits for half a second to see if they plan on doing anything to stop her. But neither of the two move. Rumi takes a full step backwards now, then another, still eyeing the strangers in front of her. She pivots on the ball of her foot and walks away quickly, feeling their eyes watch her retreat.

So much for coming back more prepared.

Rumi can’t focus at all for the next few days.

Well she can. Just not on her work.

She does all that she needs to do, but for the first time since she's gotten here, she doesn't do more than what is expected of her. No extra tasks, surprise organizing, or going extra miles.

She spends all her time refreshing her Na’vi knowledge. Anytime she's not doing her assigned tasks she is in her room reading. Learning grammatical rules and how dialects vary. Prenouns, infixes and how to count all over again. She wouldn’t say that it's fun but she learned english. This can’t be worse than learning english, right?

And it's not because she wants to see these girls again. Definitely not. She wants them to be able to exist in peace without her getting involved. But Rumi still selfishly wants to have the cove as a space to be away from her peers. A place to be closer to nature. A place she had found peace in. And if she does happen to see these girls again, she wants to be able to talk to them and not sound like a 2 year old.

There's only so much she can learn without having someone to actually talk to. She can only hope that she is reading the pronunciation guides correctly. Conversations with herself in her room get boring, but she knows more now. Hopefully at least enough to get by and hold her own in any potential conversation that she may or may not have.

Celine doesn't say anything about this change in work ethic. Rumi is sure that she notices how the Na’vi language book has become more worn. How Rumi’s late night pencil scratching and calculator typing has been replaced with foreign whispers and pacing the floor. But she kindly pretends that she doesn't notice. Rumi appreciates that.

After a few more weeks of material and environmental tests, equations, and late night language learning, Rumi begins to return to the cove.

She spends her first time back there drawing. It's the middle of the day and they are doing more evening focused tests, so she had some time to kill. She follows the familiar path, unchanged aside from some plants growing tall enough that she now has to duck beneath them. The cove remains the same. The same waves lapping at the rocks. The same trees swayed by the breeze. The same pocket of calm that Rumi had left behind that night.

Sitting down, she begins to draw. The scratch of her pencil the only sound accompanying the water in front of her. She jumps at the slightest noise and is constantly checking back over her shoulder. She draws everything that she can see, even if she's drawn it before. She doesn't want to be so wrapped up in work that she gives someone the chance to sneak up on her. Her drawings are messy and distracted, but she still finds herself more at peace here than she would be back at base.

No one comes that day. Or the next time Rumi visits the cove. Nor the time after that. Rumi starts to believe that maybe they really don’t go there that often, or maybe they only go there during the nights. The latter being proven false when Rumi visits during another late night correction to her coefficients. Maybe they just left.

Rumi tries not to dwell on the slight tug she feels in her chest when she thinks that. After all, would you really want to risk running into an alien who was just staring at you and your friend before you saw them, and then they said “I was just going. I am leaving now” before speed-walking into the night?

So she returns to her normal routine, with additions of language learning. Working all that she needs to, side work studying all aspects of the cove, and free time language learning whenever she can.

They’re getting closer to actually building a prototype. The structures engineer keeps changing things though, and frankly he doesn't have enough of a reason to. If he changes the fuselage without consulting Rumi one more time, she might actually punch him.

And this is what she was working on a month after she started returning to the cove. Another fuselage change. Maybe he thought that he could change it because they weren’t working on people sized planes yet, just drones. But if you shorten the nose of this craft then it throws every existing balancing act out of place. And Rumi has to run every single number again. He didn’t even know the exact value that he wanted to change it to, just that he wanted it “shorter” and told Rumi to “do the math to figure out how much shorter we can make it”. Honestly she might just kill him. It would make her job so much easier.

Rumi’s feet were folded beneath her. Light filtered though the trees and dappled the notebook that she rested in her lap. The daylight was bright, and Rumi planned to be here until she had something, anything figured out for this. They needed to start testing actual prototypes. The waves were calming and consistent, a sharp contrast to Rumi’s sporadic scribbles as she found another value that didn’t work.

Rumi was so lost in her work that she didn’t notice a change in those waves. Far enough away from the waters edge that she didn’t see the person who just swam into her little sanctuary. She doesn't notice the green eyes peeking at her over the rocks. She's too absorbed bouncing between ways to get her peer to quit engineering and finding a way to make his impossible idea work.

The other figure stands in the water, but doesn't yet leave it. She watches Rumi for a while. Notes how her leg is bouncing against the stone. How one hand is writing while the other is almost always moving. It runs though her hair, scratches at her skin, drums against her other knee. She notes how Rumi’s hand has an extra finger than hers or her girlfriends. She flinches the first time she sees how aggressively Rumi crosses out half of her page, but when that scratch is immediately followed by the girl in front of her leaning down to press her forehead against the paper with a frustrated groan, her curiosity gets the better of her.

Rumi didn’t notice any sign that she had company until she spoke.

“Kaltxì” the woman in the water says. A simple hello that Rumi doesn't have the mind to appreciate. The purple haired girl startles so badly she almost falls backwards as her head whips up to look at the person who made the sound.

She looks like she's holding back a laugh. A hand covers her mouth, but humor is present in her wide eyes. Water droplets cling to her skin in a way Rumi tries not to stare at. “Are you okay?” She says from under her hand, and Rumi is very thankful that her one sided conversations were enough to clearly and quickly understand her.

Rumi begins to nod, before stopping herself and just saying “Yes”.

They just stare at each other again. It's filled with much more curiosity than the first time they were here together. The girl in the water lowers her hand from her mouth and just looks at Rumi. Studies her. The corners of her lips pulled up ever so slightly and an unmistakable wonder in her algae green eyes.

Rumi finds her voice eventually. “Ah, Hello. My name is Rumi,” she says the words slowly, almost like a question. She doesn't move, her notebook remains clutched against her chest and her pen gripped tight in her hand. The other girl seems to be waiting for more words that never come.

“Rumi,” the girl echoes. She adds a bit of a roll on the R.“Tx’oë te Parul Soma’ite,” the girl in the water introduces as she gestures to herself. Given Rumi’s searching stare to the tune of “did not learn enough about Na’vi names” she looks at Rumi for another beat before clarifying “You can call me Zoey. Can I sit with you?”

“Yes, please” Rumi gestures to the rocks nearby, as if this woman actually needed her permission to sit. But Rumi knows how uncomfortable standing in that water can be. There are really only so many places to put your feet that don’t disturb the wildlife there.

Zoey lifts herself out of the water with grace. Rumi can feel her cheeks heat up as she looks away from her. Knowing that the Navi don’t wear much clothes and actually seeing it are two different things. Her instinct is to avert her gaze and she pretends to be very interested in her equations again.

But Zoey notices that her pen is not moving across the paper, that her cheeks have a more purple hue than before, that her eyes and ears flicker towards her before remembering that she's not supposed to be looking. And Zoey has always been one for teasing.

She sits herself down right next to Rumi, almost close enough for their shoulders to brush. She holds back a giggle at Rumi's slightly panicked body language, but takes note that her blush deepens and she doesn't move away.

“What are you doing here?” Zoey questions. It's a light question, she's not accusing her of anything by existing here. But she's curious about what is on her papers. What lead this stranger to this place.

“Oh, ah” Rumi tried to think of the words and how to say them “I’m building new… Flying thing- aircrafts! In my mind” she flipped a page in her notebook to show the most recent diagram of their current prototype. It luckily has a minimal amount of scratched out numbers on it. “My team and I are making this so that we can explore quietly”

“Quietly? None of the-” Zoey made a spinning motion with her hand and did the best approximation of the blades used in the VTOL craft that a mouth could make. Rumi held back a giggle and nodded.

“Yes, mostly” she pointed to the propeller near the leading edge of her diagram “This will still make noise, but it will be more like-” Rumi tried to copy the noise the Zoey made, but notably quieter and a bit higher pitched. She could feel her shoulder soften as she spoke “So it will be very less.. Loud,” Rumi cringed at her lack of vocabulary “It will also go over trees and not make them move so much,” she does her best to communicate. She uses her hands to mimic the motion of the trees swaying, then stilling instead.

Rumi always hated how the VTOL craft would bend and break the trees that they hovered above. How little care the pilots seemed to have once they were assured that they wouldn't break the craft they were using.

Zoey seemed to share this sentiment.

“So it won’t disturb the ones that live here?” she asks

“I hope”

They share a small smile. Zoey opens her mouth to ask another question when the pair hear a voice from behind them.

“Is that her?”

Rumi hopes that the Navi are just really good at hunting and sneaking up on people. Because if everything on this moon was as sneaky as these two it was nothing short of a miracle that Rumi hasn’t been eaten during one of her late night adventures.

Rumi jumps worse than she did the first time. Maybe because this voice came from behind her instead of in front. She whips her whole body around so fast she's surprised that she keeps hold of her notebook. It wouldn’t have helped her if this person meant her harm though. Rumi can see that it's the second woman from the other night. She looks much more like she comes from the Tayrangi clan. Her tail and skin clearly more closely matching Rumi’s than she had gotten the chance to see in the lower light. Her hair does indeed have pink in it, and Rumi is glad that it wasn’t a trick of the nighttime glow.

Zoey speaks relatively quickly, leaning back to look at the figure behind her “Yup! Purple and everything!” she says cheerily. Rumi barely had the mind to register that the new woman had asked a question, much less that the question was about her.

She takes a moment to just. Look at Rumi. Her expression is hard to read, but Rumi finds herself somewhat shrinking under her gaze. She's intense, and seems much more apprehensive about Rumi than Zoey was. Her ears are pinned back against her head and she looks ready for Rumi to try to fight her.

Rumi has no interest in doing that. None at all. She can hold her own in a fight. But she's also smart enough to know when she's at a major disadvantage. Not here, and not against her.

It only takes a moment for the Tayrangi girl to assess the situation. She sees her friend, who is acting like nothing is wrong and everything is normal, and a very startled engineer who is looking at her like she is one sudden move away from bolting. If this stranger meant Zoey, herself, or this place any harm: then Zoey would’ve taken care of it by now.

Rumi watches as Zoey’s friend relaxes a bit and raises her hand to her forehead before gently extending it towards Rumi. Her eyes now holding a spark of curiosity behind caution.

“She's jumpy. What have you been telling her?” She asks with a tone Zoey interprets as playfully accusative

“I haven’t been telling her anything!” She defends with a smile “I got here and she was so frustrated with what she was doing that I was worried for her safety”

“I’m sure you were”

“She was going to break something!” The taller woman fondly rolls her eyes while Rumi looks like she wants to say something to her defense. Any protests die in her throat when she remembers that she was about to rip her notebook in half “Anyway. This is Rumi. Rumi, you can call her Mira” Rumi offers Mira an awkward smile before settling back in her spot next to Zoey. Mira steps closer to them and lowers herself onto the rocks on the Turquoise girl’s other side.

Zoey explains what happened over the last few minutes. She's talking fast enough that Rumi can only pick up bits and pieces. Zoey is very animated when she's talking, a good thing for Rumi. She's able to follow along with what Zoey is saying, even if she doesn't always understand the words. Zoey mimics Rumi’s frustrated scribbles, her jump when she first said hello, talks about their introductions and how Rumi reacted. She talks about the prototype that Rumi showed her and adds a story about a VTOL craft crashing somewhere nearby a while ago. How it took out a fair amount of trees and animals without care. She was reminding Mira about how much time they had to spend with the Tayrangi clan cleaning up the mess that was left behind and how many pieces of their home were hurt.

Mira nods along as Zoey is talking, sparing the occasional glance at Rumi when it feels appropriate. Rumi can see the corners of her lips twitch as Zoey talks about their meeting, and see her careful consideration as a better flying machine is considered. She does comment about Ikrans being leagues better than anything Rumi could come up with, and Rumi is inclined to agree. Planes don’t care about you back.

After a few minutes Zoey seems to have told all of her recap.

“So. Are you here with others?” Mira asks at a much more understandable speed for Rumi.

“Yes. There are three of us. We live some ways that way” Rumi motions towards the path behind her.

“What brought you to this place?” Mira gestures around them at the cove “What brings you back?”

Rumi takes a second to answer. She knows why. But you never realize the vocabulary that you're missing until you need words like design or disturb or want to say the answer that you feel is akin to This place is the closest to holy ground that I have found in my brief time here. I wanted to learn how to worship before I am forced to leave

“I was exploring, and thought it was pretty. I come back to learn about it. I tried not to change it too much”

Mira accepts the answer that Rumi can say. After a pause she responds “I think it's pretty too.” Her head turns to the trees, eyes watching the reflections of the waves.

“What brought you to this place?” Rumi mirrors her question. She's not quite sure who she's directing it towards, but she has a feeling that both of their answers will lead to each other's.

And Zoey’s eyes light up.

She starts saying… certainly something. Just. Not something that Rumi can understand. She's talking really fast, and getting distracted by other things that she is saying. Rumi can make out something about “Sneak away”, “inbetween”, “our place”.

There is one point where Rumi looks to Mira to see if she is understanding all of this. Her face must show how lost she is because Mira gently lays a hand on the bubbly girl’s shoulder.

“Slow down, yawntu. She can’t understand you when you talk that quickly”

“Oh! Oops!” Zoey gives her an apologetic smile before starting again, slower this time.

“We were both wandering. I’ve always wandered between the Tayrangi and Ta’unui clans so I had seen Mira before- she lives with the Tayrangi people- and she was looking to explore some and decided to accompany me on my journey back to the Ta’unui village one day. We decided to take a longer path-”

“She was too busy talking to me and got lost” Mira interrupted her

“I was not lost! I was taking the scenic route! I knew this place was here.” Mira looks like she doesn’t believe her. At all. Not one bit. “Anyway, as I was saying. We were on a longer path there and we decided to hang out here for a while. It's almost perfectly in between the two clans, so we decided to always meet here whenever I’m coming back over. Mira sometimes comes with me to the Ta’unui village, but she's just not built for swimming like I am” Zoey wiggles in a way that demonstrates how her arms, which are thicker than Rumi’s own, would help her in the water. Rumi can also briefly see how her eyes seem to have an extra eyelid. Probably for diving.

Mira just shrugs “So we like to meet up here. It's quiet, since no one else really wants to go out this far for a swim. Beautiful, too” She looks at Zoey when she says that last part. Zoey suddenly seems fairly interested in the rocks that they’re sitting on as her cheeks flush a light shade of purple.

“So yeah!” Zoey says, hoping that Mira missed how she blushed “That's how we found this place! We also like to come here sometimes just because. We just were wanting a more… private space. The other day when we saw you” Zoey smiles

“And then we were curious to know how you got here.” Mira adds “We hadn’t seen you before and you were dressed weird so we tried coming back to find you for a bit. When we didn’t see you again, we had figured you left or something so we went back to our normal visiting schedule”

“Wait yeah! Now you’re here! And we can talk to you!” Zoey says excitedly “I have so many questions! Oh and Mira! We could show her all the awesome things around here! You did say that you wanted to learn about it, right?”

Rumi is suddenly glad that she doesn't have anything else planned today.

Suddenly glad that her co-worker changed the fuselage.

Suddenly glad that her cove isn't just hers.

Chapter Text

Over the next couple weeks, Rumi makes up and finds any excuse to go to the cove. She brings her work there, she goes there in the night after everyone else is asleep, she wakes up before the night is over for even a few precious moments with them as light starts to streak its way across the sky.

Zoey and Mira almost always meet her there. Some days it's just one or the other, but most of the time they’re together. Sometimes they’re already waiting for her. They always look as happy to see her as she feels to see them.

The two of them poke fun at each other and joke all the time. Rumi can tell that they care about each other a lot. She can see it. She sees how their eyes linger on each other. How they are constantly in contact with each other. One’s hand resting on the other’s thigh. Pressed shoulder to shoulder as they listen to Rumi talk. Fingers idly combing through hair. Rumi can see it. She sees them.

The first few meet ups are mostly filled with more basic learning of the area. They ask Rumi what plants she knows and what she knows about them. Rumi was studying this place for a while, so she knows a good amount of the plants around the cove, but did grossly neglect the forested area around the cove. That's where they start to show her first.

They spend days wandering away from the water. They go over signs of local wildlife, footprints and nesting areas and what food everything else likes to eat. The area that they explore isn’t large, probably close to 1 km radius around the cove, but almost all of it is information that Rumi hasn't learned yet. And Mira and Zoey are both so helpful, so patient with her learning.

Zoey presses berries to Rumi’s lips for her to taste. Rumi tries not to think too hard about the feel of her fingertips on her lips as sweetness bursts along her tongue. Zoey points out what will stain fingers and what makes a colorful and bright face paint. She shows her how to make the paints most commonly used by the Tayrangi clan and how to make those paints more waterproof.

Mira shows her what plants can be used for medicine, and how to use them for medicine without poisoning herself. She tells her how to use plants to help with headaches, labor, stomachaches and everything in between.

On a rainy day, they point out how some leaves turned to indicate a coming storm. How some leaves have grown and adapted to catch the water nicely, almost like a cup. Rumi remembers being absolutely drenched that day, her regular clothes holding water against her compared to the (still little) clothes that the other two had. She was goaded into going over to the other two from the relative safety of a tree she put herself under. Zoey wouldn’t expand past “Trust me” and, of course, what was enough to convince her. Rumi remembers Zoey telling her to open her mouth and a turquoise hand gently tipping the leaf it was holding, water pouring from it into Rumi's mouth.

She’s still very proud of herself for not choking that day.

They later took shelter in a cave that is just a few meters away from their cove. Mira showed her mushrooms that prefer the darker environment. Their green glow looked radioactive to Rumi, and Mira mentions that if one were to eat too much of them “everything would feel like a dream for a few hours”. She did not elaborate on why she knew that, but recommended that Rumi not eat them without supervision.

Rumi asks all the questions she can. The other two seem to like teaching her right now, so she will take every opportunity to learn.

She learns more about them too. She learns Zoey’s favorite berry and that she prefers dawn over dusk. She learns that Zoey is very physically affectionate. She sees it mostly with Mira, but there have been times (only a few times) where Rumi has felt the girl's head on her shoulder. Where Rumi has been the one receiving playful swats when she joined Mira’s teasing. Where Zoey’s hand has been steading her when she was unsure on her feet.

She learns Mira’s favorite color, and where she gets her hair dye components. Rumi learns that she likes mid-day. Says that it’s the best time to fly. She learns bits and pieces about Sussie, Mira’s Ikran. But the conversation never stays on that topic very long. She learns that Mira fills silence. She doesn't like when quiet lingers over the group. If Zoey is not filling it with her rambles, she’ll ask Rumi a question that will have a long answer. She will always find a way to connect through voices if silence stretches longer than 5 minutes.

They learn about Rumi too. Even if Rumi tries to hide. They piece together that Rumi doesn't share much past the surface, but they still learn about her too. They learn that she couldn’t relax to save her life. That she prefers the night, so that she can see everything glow. That she is gentle with everything that she does, and that she wants to learn everything that she can.

So Zoey and Mira try to teach her everything that they know.

This day was no exception to their teachings. The trio was looking out at the water of their cove. The surrounding land has been explored almost fully. Zoey was working on some project that she refused to elaborate on, insisting that it was a surprise and that both of her companions would love it.

Rumi was laying on her stomach, face over the water to observe all the fish that would swim past.

Zoey promised to show her all the life hidden under the waves someday. “When you have more appropriate clothes”. Whatever that means. Before Rumi is able to ask any follow-up questions about that, Mira speaks.

She looks to Rumi, excitement shines in her eyes that she’s only half trying to hide “Until then, I could show you the trees if you want. I promise Zoey isn’t that bad of a climber”

That earns her a playful shove from the other girl “I’m really not! Just because I can’t confidently climb up the floating mountains of basically nothing but air does not mean that I’m a bad climber!” She laughs

“The floating mountains? You climb those?” Rumi flips over and sits up to look at Mira “Why?”

Mira shrugs, but a small quirk upwards can be seen at the corner of her lips “that’s where the Ikran live. The journey to get there isn’t short by any means. But it’s an important part of the clan’s lives.

The Tayrangi people hold the Ikran with the highest respect. You and your Ikran are a team, through thick and thin. They are your companion for hunting and the bond between Ikran and their rider is critical. Once you are bound, it lasts for life.”

Zoey gives a small smile in Mira’s direction “Yeah. You and Sussie make a great team. I love watching you guys work together.”

“Do you have an Ikran?” Rumi asks Zoey. She means to prompt Zoey to talk about her companion the way that Mira has. Sussie means a lot to Mira, and Rumi wants to hear about Zoey as well. And she doesn't recall ever hearing about Zoey’s Ikran. The topic doesn't come up much, but Rumi has always been too curious for her own good.

Mira is the first to react to Rumi's question. Her posture goes rigid and her ears briefly pin to the back of her head before she has time to think about who asked the question. Rumi doesn't yet know Mira well enough to see the brief rage that flashes in her eyes, she doesn't know Mira like Zoey does. Zoey can see how quick she reacted to Rumi’s question.

Zoey goes quiet in response. Too many times that question has been followed with someone saying that she wasn’t worthy of an Ikran. That she wasn't Tayrangi enough to earn one. Rumi doesn't yet know Zoey well enough to catch the change in her posture the way that Mira does. The way Mira always had.

But Rumi is looking at Zoey with polite curiosity. Still relaxed, if a bit confused, with her head slightly tilted and her brows only barely scrunched.

The paler girl offers her a quiet answer “No. I don’t. I couldn’t make it up the mountain when I went. I’m not as agile as others,” she shrugs, trying to act like it doesn't bother her “besides. I don’t think I would make a great aerial hunter anyway”

“But you should see her in the water” Mira does not seem to like how this conversation turned. Her tail flicks from side to side and she still seems almost ready to pounce if Rumi says anything to insult Zoey “she’s fast as an arrow. I can barely keep up from above. And she stays underwater longer than anyone I know. Comes back to the surface like it was nothing. She’s impressive. She does hunt with me. Just not from the sky.”

Zoey turns away, heat creeping up towards her cheeks and settling across her ears, She doesn't seem to know how to react to the praise, so she does what any normal person would do: changes the subject. “but the trees! You said that you wanted to show her the trees? I can definitely climb trees”

“Yeah. There’s a lot to see in the trees,” Mira accepts the change in subject readily “and if you ever want to try to climb those mountains, trees are a good place to start. Stand up. Come here” she says to Rumi, standing up and motioning Rumi over.

Rumi does as she is told, standing and taking a few steps towards Mira, who starts looking her over.

“Have you,” she starts cautiously, “climbed a tree before?”

A shocked bark of a laugh escapes Rumi before she can stop it. She slaps a hand over her mouth and takes a second to regain her composure as the two other girls try to defend with “it’s a valid question!” And “you didn’t know where Ikran lived, I don't know what you’ve done before!”

“Yes, I have climbed a tree before.” Rumi says, trying to keep a smile off her face “I’m just not as practiced as you are”

“Can you climb with those on?” Mira nods towards Rumi's shoes “Can you balance? Are you going to hurt your hands?” Zoey is giggling at Mira’s questions, but she is very serious about them.

Before Rumi can fully register what's happening, Mira is reaching out and grabbing her hand. Rumi jolts as their skin makes contact. She’s still getting used to Zoey touching her, but Mira has always been more distant with Rumi. She wasn’t expecting her to reach out. She can feel the callouses that cover Mira’s hands as she turns Rumi’s over within them, her fingertips gently dragging across Rumi’s palm . Mira’s skin is rough against her own, and Rumi wonders why she expected anything different. “Your hands are soft. Softer than even Zoey’s were.” Mira is mostly talking to herself. Yeah. That makes sense. Spending all day at a desk won’t exactly build endurance. And being in the water more often won’t make your grip stronger either. Rumi doesn't have the same experience outside as Mira.

Rumi can see Zoey’s eyeroll. Teasing and dramatic “But I can still climb trees. She’ll be fine.”

Mira seemed more focused on making sure that Rumi is fit to climb than conversation. Too focused to respond to Zoey. It makes Rumi’s heart skip a beat. It feels strangely intimate, the way that Mira is holding her. She seems to be trying to figure out the best way to hold a hand with one more finger than her own. Rumi allows herself to focus on the feeling. She would bet that not many humans have come in close enough contact with the Na’vi to know what it's like to have a four fingered hand hold your own. She manages to see how the patterns on Mira’s hand fade into her palm, how she can see the faint dots that she knows glow in the later hours. She wonders if she would ever be this close to her hands again. If she would be allowed to be this close again.

She wonders why she’s allowed to be this close now. She wonders why she wants to be this close again.

“We can go to a lower platform for now. Your grip should still be strong, even if it’s different from mine” Mira says after just a moment too long. “It shouldn’t hurt your hands too much. And the climb is worth it. I promise”

Rumi’s hand is given a slight squeeze before Mira lets go, turning her head towards Zoey. She nods in a direction that Zoey also seems to know. The girls have a non-verbal agreement that that seems to be the right path before they both smile at Rumi. Zoey’s smile is wider, the curl of her lips matching the excitement in her eyes. Mira’s eyes hold the same excitement, if not more, while her smile stays more reserved. It doesn't mean that she cares less. Maybe Zoey just smiles more.

Rumi has learned that she likes both of their smiles.

“We’ll go that way,” Zoey nods in the same direction Mira did "There's a lower platform that still has an amazing view. Mira likes to take me up there when we want to be higher but don’t want to work too hard to get there.” There's some humor in her voice as she says that. A slight lift paired with her smile changing subtly into more of a smirk. Like an inside joke that Rumi isn’t quite in on

“I’ll lead,” Mira says as she starts in that direction “I’ll try not to go too fast, but tell me if you need me to slow down. Zoey will go behind you, she’ll be able to catch you if you fall. Not that you will fall. But if you do, you might want someone to catch you” Mira continues to walk towards wherever she’s taking them and seems to just expect Rumi and Zoey to follow her.

They both do, so at least her expectation was correct.

Mira is faster than both of them. The way that she moves through the trees is almost like a dance. She is able to effortlessly lift herself onto the next branch, at times pulling herself up with only one arm. Her feet always find purchase when they need to. Her tail helps her stay where she needs to. Never once does she slip.

Rumi is not as graceful. She abandons her shoes fairly quickly, realizing that they are only getting in the way. Her arms are not as strong as she would like to think that they are. She has to fumble with every step to make sure the area that she plans to put her weight on is solid. She hits her tail on branches at least 5 times in their climb and all of them hurt more than she thought that they would. Her movements are unsure and cautious in a way that is not seen in Mira.

Turquoise hands are never far behind Rumi’s. For all their talk, Zoey is a good climber. Maybe not quite as graceful. Her tail is less suited for balance in the trees, but it still works well enough. Her hands are sure of the path, even if Rumi isn’t exactly following the one that Mira sets. She's helpful. Guiding Rumi and telling her to be careful. Rumi learns that when she says “be careful” she really means “if you grab that branch it will break”.

Mira is constantly checking to make sure that both of them are following her. Even if she is far ahead of them, she’s not leaving them behind. She smiles at them every time she looks back.

Rumi had never climbed this high before. It’s still not very high, a fall from this distance likely wouldn’t even hurt thanks to the lesser gravity here. But Rumi also didn’t want to test that particular theory when she was alone. Getting hurt from a fall and having no one around to help has to be the least productive way of getting hurt here. If she's going to get hurt, she could at least be doing something overall helpful for everyone else.

As they go higher and higher into the trees, Rumi tries to take in all that she can. She notes how the bark feels similar under her hands as a camphor tree and some berries that she hasn’t seen before that look a bit like julttalgi. She notes that she can still smell the ocean from here, and the scent only seems to be getting stronger. She notes the breeze on her face, and what direction it's coming from, how much of a crosswind she would get if she were to try to fly something right now.

She notes how patient the other two seem to be with her. She doesn't know why they’re helping. She knows that she's slowing them down. They really have no reason to be waiting for her. No reason to be helping her. Rumi tries to catch whether or not either of them are annoyed at her pace, at her relative clumsiness, at how she's clearly more out of shape than either of them.

She doesn't catch anything. Anytime she looks, she’s met with only kindness.

The same thing that she finds any time that she looks.

Rumi is silent the whole climb. In part because she’s focused on not making a fool of herself. In part because she doesn't know how to respond to patience. She’s never known how to respond to their patience.

Mira and Zoey don’t talk much either. Well. Mira doesn't talk. She’s too far ahead of the other two to really hold a conversation. Zoey talks in Rumi’s direction. She tells her more about the trees they climb, about the last time that she and Mira were up here, about how she thinks Rumi will like it. She doesn't expect a response, but Rumi tries to nod along anyway.

It isn’t a long climb. Not at all. Maybe 5-10 minutes before they get to a small platform of branches. It looks like it was cultivated to be there, rather than constructed. But it’s old enough that it was likely here before Mira and Zoey were. It lies in the higher branches of some of the water loving trees. It’s much easier to see how the water is shaped from here. Rumi can see a small inlet that connects the area that she had been studying to a larger body of water. It’s still a cove, but it seems like Rumi had just found a private little offshoot of the larger cove. The water is deeper over there, and more directly connects to the ocean.

Rumi stops to admire before she is even properly on the platform that Mira has already settled onto.

This view puts into perspective just how much Rumi still has to learn. She’s spent weeks studying such a small area. She hasn’t even seen any marine animals larger than a well cared for goldfish. There is so much more for her to see. So much more to learn.

Rumi wants to see all of it. She wants to know all that she can.

The light reflects off the water like a promise. It reflects like a challenge too. Like a beckoning hand and like a warning sign. It promises more than what she's doing, more ways to help people.

She lost track of what she was doing. She forgot that Zoey was even behind her as her mind rushed to take in all that was laid out in front of her.

Rumi feels a gentle hand on the small of her back that becomes an anchor as Rumi almost falls out of the tree from the sudden contact. Zoey tries (and fails) not to giggle from just behind her.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Zoey asks her after she is stabilized again. All Rumi can do is nod, the motion beginning a small smile to Zoey's lips “I always like looking at the view from up here. Come on.” Zoey moves forward to sit with Mira on the platform. The two of them fit together like it’s muscle memory. Zoey settling into Mira’s side, her head resting on Mira's shoulder. Mira’s head falls to rest atop Zoey’s. The daylight filters through the leaves and dapples their striped skin. It’s easy to see their differences when they are close together like this, how much longer Mira’s hair is, how Zoey is a bit more visibly stronger than Mira, how their patterns compliment each other. It’s easier to see how the two seem to fit together like puzzle pieces.

Rumi tries not to stare.

She moves to join them on the platform. She sits next to Zoey in the small space that shes been guided to. The two girls’ shoulders brush, and Rumi hopes that the flush on her cheeks can still be excused as a result from climbing. The other two are kind enough to not comment. About Rumi’s blush and about her lack of stamina when it comes to climbing trees.

They sit in silence for a few moments. Talking in the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the rustle of the leaves around them, the quiet groans of the trees when a particularly strong gust of wind hits.

Mira breaks the silence first. “I tried to teach Zoey how to dive from up here. It’s a good ledge to learn from”

“She says that like it didn’t take me days to learn how to do it” Zoey says as she turns her head to face Rumi.

“Well I still don’t know how you manage to dive with such little space between you and the water. You don’t have any time to move where your body is before you’re already in the water. You just have to jump and already be in the right position.”

“Well yeah. But it’s also less time to be interfered with by the wind. It almost makes me glad that I can hunt from the water. I have no idea how you manage to dive off of Sussie so perfectly”

“Wait. You dive off of your Ikran?” Rumi can feel her tail jolt, as if the very idea is enough to throw her off balance “From the air? You dive into the water?”

That makes Mira chuckle. She tries to hide it with a cough “Yes. I dive from the back of Sussie, through the air, into the water. That’s how the Tayrangi people hunt. Zoey helps guide me from the water and makes sure that I won’t dive into anything dangerous.”

“I have no idea how she sees anything while going that fast in the air. Especially on bright days where there's glare on the water” Zoey says “I prefer the Ilu anyway. Mawuptsyìp is amazing at seeing, so I can just trust him to know where he’s going. It’s easier to keep eyes on Mira that way”

“How do you see,” Mira turns her head properly towards Rumi now “In your aircrafts? Everything is so closed. And you don’t seem to feel anything that's happening either, or your pilots would be more careful.”

Rumi shrugs and starts to answer, before pausing to find the right words. “We can only see forwards, not in any other direction. We have lights to tell us if the aircraft has been hurt, but we do not feel if it's been hurt unless it’s been hurt bad enough to be of deadly danger to us.” Rumi is looking out at the water as she says it. It’s strange to say it like that, but the lack of direct visibility has it’s trade offs in security.

There's a long enough silence that Rumi looks over to see what the other two are doing. She sees that Zoey’s head has lifted from Mira's shoulder and two sets of eyes look to Rumi with confusion and mild horror. Rumi would laugh if she wasn’t so confused. What was so wrong with what she said? She just said the truth.

“How do you feel safe like that?” Zoey asks after a beat “You can only see forwards? What if something comes at you from the side? Or from above? Or from anywhere? What about your friends that are at your side?”

“You can talk to friends with these” Rumi taps her throat mic “and you know where your friends are, you just can not look at them with your eyes” Rumi was not going to try to explain radar with her current vocabulary. Or any of their other observation tools. “So if there are bigger things nearby, our flying people will know. We just do not actually see them”

“are… are you a flying person, a pilot?” Mira asks cautiously.

“No!” Rumi answers quickly “no, I just think of things for them to fly. I do not fly the things”

There is a beat of silence, the two girls relaxing back into their earlier postures, before Zoey speaks “How do you think of things for them to fly?”

Rumi pauses “I do the thinking before it flies. I make sure that it can leave the ground, and come back to it without breaking. I make sure that it can hold everything that it needs to. I make sure that once it is built, it will work. I work with others, one who makes the shape of the aircraft and gives it power, one who builds it, and one who says what it needs to hold and connects everything” It's a better explanation than she thought she would be able to give, but still not great. She’ll have to see if the Na’vi language even has half the words that she wanted to use.

“I can show you. Later. If you would like” She was used to explaining what she does, offering was second nature. And paper airplanes are fun for everyone. Using them would make explaining everyone's job easier too.

Zoey nods “I would like that. It sounds interesting” she gives Rumi a shy smile “The way that you think is nice. I’d love to learn about it”

Rumi smiles at her. It takes her a bit to fully understand the compliment. It’s not really something that you would say to someone from earth. But Zoey seems to regard it as a very personal compliment. Mira is smirking at Zoey as well. A look that suggests that Zoey said something deeper than what Rumi heard.

“You like the way she thinks?” Mira says, a teasing edge on her words She opens her mouth to say more before Zoey swats her arm.

“Not like that” Zoey hisses.

“Not yet anyway.”

“Mira!”

“Oh but when you want to know what I think-”

“Ignore her! She doesn't know what she's talking about and she’s twisting my words. I meant that I like how you seem to think through things and I would have fun if you told me how you think through things. Not literally-” Zoey cuts herself off, gesturing as wildly as she can without hitting Rumi (she has less care about “accidentially” hitting Mira at this moment) to her own head, her braid, and Rumi’s head “learning what you’re thinking”

Rumi is still confused for a moment. Zoey said that as if she could actually, literally, read Rumi's mind somehow.

Well…

Rumi comes to her conclusion just a few moments too late. After a beat of her silence Zoey drags her hands down her face, her face that is now flushed to be almost as dark as Mira’s skin, and quickly says “I’m actually tired. I’m gonna go. Take a nap! I think it’s naptime. I’ll be,” she points down towards where they came from “Down there. Sleeping. Bye” Zoey hastily climbs back down the tree, leaving Rumi and Mira alone.

Rumi manages a small wave at her before she descends. Once Zoey is out of sight, Rumi turns to Mira. Mira is looking quite pleased with her teasing. A glimmer of mischief rests in her eyes, pleased that she was able to fluster Zoey so much.

“Was she-” flirting? Rumi points down towards Zoey “When she said-” she likes the way I think. She wants to learn more “Did she mean-” connecting our brains directly? Actually knowing my thoughts? “Isn’t that-” Extremely intimate? Allowing someone to see into your being? Letting yourself be completely known? The most extreme version of their phrase “I see you”? An honor and trust that she has not earned in the slightest?

And after all of that wondering, all that she does not have the words to voice. She settles on one complete question. One that she can voice fully “Not yet?!”

That makes Mira laugh. The mischief in her eyes slowly shifted into something lighter with each of Rumi's flustered fragments “I was teasing her. She finds beauty everywhere, and I’m sure that she's found it in you. She was probably meaning to say that the way that you analyze things is cool. The way that you explain them, even though you don’t know all the words that you need is admirable. And that she would like to get to know you better. But she phrased it that way, so I couldn’t resist teasing her at least a little bit”

“Is that a frequent way of saying…”

“No, not really. She just says it to me a lot because she does want to know what I’m thinking”

That makes Rumi flush a bit “Oh… Good to know.”

“She’s just affectionate. She wants you to feel welcome so that you don’t run off again. She's curious. It threw me off too at first. She asked me so many questions when we first met. She means well, and I think you two will really get along”

“I hope so,” Rumi says as she looks back out at the sea “I like sharing this space, I like coming here to see you two. You make it feel less empty”

“What about your people? Have they not seen this area?”

“No. I wanted to keep it… away from them.” Rumi’s voice was quiet. Unsure of the way to properly phrase it “they are more. Messy than I am.”

Mira nodded “You wanted to keep it clean? Or safe?” She suggested some words to make sure that she understood Rumi correctly.

“Safe. They have many accidents. It hurts them more than anything else but. I wanted this place safe.”

“That’s nice of you.”

Those words aren’t usually said with the sincerity that Rumi hears them with. As if Mira wasn’t fully expecting the kindness of keeping this place safe.

“Your new aircraft” Mira continues “Zoey said that it would be quieter. Is that quiet part of keeping the land safe?”

Rumi is learning that Mira doesn’t like to wonder. She likes knowing just as much as Rumi does. She’s just much better at asking questions directly.

“It is.”

“Will your aircraft be easier to see out of?”

“No. We need the space to be closed so that we can breathe. And making it all clear makes it hard to put together” as cool as an all clear plane would be, it would be almost impossible to assemble and it DEFINITELY wouldn’t stand up to the pressure that it needs to. Or the stress forces. Or the shear forces from connection points. The more that Rumi thinks about it, the more horrible of an idea that it sounds.

“So you can’t see out of it, you can’t breathe outside, you can’t feel if it’s damaged, and you can’t connect to it at all. It seems really hard to fly these things.”

“It is. People have to learn a lot. It takes years to learn how to fly without dying. But I think it would be as hard as flying an Ikran”

Mira’s lips quirk up at that. Pride shining in her eyes “it’s not easy. But it’s probably more fun. Nothing can compare to it. The open air around you and flying with your companion. It’s one of the best feelings in the world”

“I’m sure it’s much better. But we have no other way to fly. And walking everywhere would be bad, " Rumi joked. “We need these to explore. So that we can move above the trees. We have no other way.”

Mira seems to consider saying something. “You could.” She says after a moment. Her voice quiet, hesitant “one day. When you’re better at climbing. You could see if an Ikran would choose you. You could fly.”

She said it like it was a casual suggestion. Like she didn’t suggest taking Rumi to one of the most important places to her. Like she didn’t suggest showing Rumi one of the most important rituals in her culture. Her body language betrayed her, her shoulders held higher than normal. Her eyes fixated on one point in the distance, trying not to flit around. Blush already spreading across her cheeks.

She expected Rumi not to know the full meaning of what was suggested. Expected Rumi to brush it off, to not know the weight of the door that Mira opened to her.

And maybe Rumi doesn't fully know that weight. She's still learning about their culture. Still doesn't know how important some aspects of their culture are. But she knows when Mira is opening up. She never wants to close a door that Mira opens.

But there’s a nagging voice in the back of her head. Because Rumi has only ever known humanity. Has only ever known people to trick, and lie, and give false hope.

A hope of being open. Of having people know her. It’s a hope that Rumi abandoned when she was young. Even after knowing Mira and Zoey these past few weeks, after learning a whole language for them, after spending any moment she can with them. She never let that hope fully back in. She’s still only shared surface aspects of herself. Scared that they won’t like what they see of her and that Rumi would taint the space that they had found first. That they wouldn’t come back one of these days.

She doesn't know why they let her in so easily. They’ve shared so much of themselves. Of their culture. Of their space. They’ve shared so much, when Rumi hasn’t. When Rumi's people are already starting to cause problems for them with their machines and stubbornness and greed. Who are already damaging the life here just like they did on their own planet.

Rumi doesn't think that she deserves it. She hasn’t done anything to earn this.

But she doesn't want the door to close either.

“I would like that. But. Why? Why would you take me there? I’m not from here. I don’t know how important it is.” Rumi wants to know. Desperately. She wants to feel what Mira feels on the back of Sussie. She wants to feel the wind against her face and she wants to know the path that the Tayrangi people take. But she also needs to know why she would be trusted with this. Why Mira would trust her with this. Why she would include Rumi in her cove. Why she would include her in her culture. Why she would share all of these moments from the last few weeks with her. Why she would share her laugh and her smile.

Why would Mira trust her?

“Because you want to know” Mira answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world “you have always listened to Zoey and I. You have been nothing but gentle. Kind. You were coming to the cove for so long. Zoey and I didn’t even notice anything was different until we saw you. You respect everything here.

This place is not kind. It trips and bites and hurts people who wander too far or are too reckless. The animals attack almost anyone who comes too close. The trees are hard to climb and food is hard to gather. But you’ve been patient.” Mira pauses a moment “I want you to see more of my home. I want to be the one to show it to you. If you’d let me”

Pandora has not been unkind to Rumi. But she has seen how it seems to treat people who don’t respect it.

Celine taught her better. Rumi learned everything that the RDA had on the culture and environment of Pandora before they were ever stationed out here. Celine had some notes from a college that she refused to name. Evidence that everything was connected to everything else somehow. A network of a moon that everything was a part of. She taught Rumi to step lightly. To thank the land and not take any more than she needed. Said that it was mostly superstition, like how Americans don’t whistle in the woods or not putting “welcome” on a doormat.

So Rumi steps carefully. She thanks the land and animals at every opportunity. She mimics how Zoey and Mira act when it comes to Pandora. She learns which animals are territorial and which aren't. She gives anything space until she is sure that it wouldn’t hurt her. She lets the land welcome her first before she barges in.

If you get too close too fast you’ll get hurt. She’s seen it. Researchers getting too close to animals in order to learn more about them. They get hurt fast. They get hurt badly. If you reach out to Pandora before it’s ready, you’ll be shown that it’s not ready.

Rumi has even seen her peers make mistakes. Less fatal mistakes, but still. A time where someone used a tree as target practice and almost had a branch fall on them. Another time when someone found what looked to be a baby cat-ish-thing and decided that it was the cat distribution system. Rumi is still unsure how she survived the encounter with the mom.

So Rumi is always cautious. Always gentle. Always kind. She knows that her kindness will not replace all of humanity's crimes. But goddamnit she will try.

“I want to see. I want you to show me” Rumi is still looking out towards the water. Shes looking at the light that has just passed it’s highest point in the sky. At the animals and plants that she hasn’t yet seen up close. She wants to see it all. Everything that she can. Everything that Mira and Zoey care to show her.

Mira is only looking at her. At the far away look in her eyes. At the wonder written across her face. At the way her patterns stretch over her body. At the girl that she wants in her life so badly.

“We should go to Zoey” Mira said as she stood “Make sure that she didn’t die of embarrassment."

Rumi huffs before standing as well “Yeah. Let’s go.”

The two descend the tree. Mira is, again, much faster and has much more grace than Rumi. She descends almost as fast as she climbed the tree. She falls with grace onto branches that Rumi was sure would break.

They never do. The branches only ever bend under Mira’s weight. The way that she is so sure of where she is going, of where she’ll land. The soft thuds and rustle of branches anytime Mira makes contact with them. She is able to shift her weight in a way that Rumi hasn’t seen before. Now that she’s not so far ahead of Rumi that it's hard to see her, Rumi allows herself to watch for a moment.

Just a moment.

A moment that ends when Mira sees her watching and gives her a look that almost makes Rumi lose her balance.

She focuses more on actually getting back to the ground after that. She tries to keep as many points of contact as she can at all times. Never having more than two limbs not in contact with the tree. She already had one slip up and she did not want to fall onto Mira. The bark was still rough against her hands. It felt rougher when she had to catch herself, and she was becoming more and more aware of the rawness on her palms.

They get back to the cove. Zoey has found a spot bathed in light to lounge in. She looks like a content housecat. Mira easily fits beside her, the taller girls fingers gently combing their way though the other girls shorter hair. A small smile on her lips as she openly admires Zoey.

Rumi walks over to where she kept her bag. Grabbing her notebook and pencil, she leans against the cave wall and continues her work. She was never the best at relaxing. Working just came easier to her.

She opened her notebook where she was working out yet another center of gravity- aerodynamic center balancing act because someone decided that the wing needed to be a different shape now. Because apparently it's too much work to tell their aerodynamics person that they’re changing the wing shape and easier to just tell her to “figure it out”. She doesn't have any of her books, so she’ll just have to write down what she knows for sure and apply it to equations later.

The silence stretches for a while. Just the sound of the waves against the rock and the scratching of Rumi’s pencil as she works. A short rest from their adventures and their stories.

With her fingers still buried in Zoey’s hair, Mira hums a few notes into the silence.

It’s a new sort of ritual that the three of them do.

Rumi was humming to herself one day before the other two arrived. She’s still not the best at knowing when they arrive, so she didn’t notice them listening. Not until Zoey started humming with her, that is. Luckily Rumi has gotten better about startling whenever something sneaks up on her, so she didn’t falter too much.

That was the day that they taught her about songcords too. She got to see both Zoey and Mira’s. She doesn't remember all of the things on them, but she remembers that Zoey’s has a bead that looks like a turtle for the first time she rode an Ilu, and that Mira’s has an obsidian bead for the time she bonded with Sussie. They both have beads for each other as well. Early on in their songcords for when they first met. A piece of the rock spires near the Tayrangi clan to represent Mira on Zoey's cord, and a piece of reef on Mira’s to represent Zoey. They both mentioned needing to update theirs. Promised to sing them to her when they do.

Now though, when one of them wants to fill the silence with something that isn't words, they sing. They’ve found that they sing well together. It’s a bid for attention.

So of course Rumi hums back. The two falling into a sort of song. It resembles more of a lullaby, probably because they’re aware that Zoey is sleeping. Rumi harmonizes with Mira as they fill the silence. They’ve gotten better at learning where the others will guide the song. Rumi finds it’s good practice to make sure that she doesn't forget harmonies. She likes to hear the notes that come naturally to the other two, and they like to hear what comes naturally to Rumi.

“If I didn’t know your voices by now, I would’ve been worried that I was one with Eywa” Zoey mumbles sleepily as she wakes.

“Good morning, paskalin. Sleep well?” Mira asked. Zoey nodded as she blinked the sleep from her eyes.

“I really needed that. It was a good nap” Zoey stretched and smiled lazily at Rumi “Hope you didn’t have too much fun without me.”

“Never.” Rumi assured her with a smile of her own.

Zoey moves over to rest with her feet dangling in the water, picking up her project from earlier. The three of them chat about whatever comes to mind. About other places the two of them want to show to Rumi, about what Rumi is working on, about the latest gossip in the Ta’unui clan.

All too soon, Rumi is called back to base. Celine insisting that her human body needs food too.

All too soon, Rumi has to leave this place. But they already have plans to meet again tomorrow evening after Rumi’s work is done for the day.

Rumi learns that tomorrow can’t come soon enough.