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dirtytransmasc · 3 months

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~ Mother Flower — Spider and Sa'syul in grief ~

Spider and Neteyam's ikran grieve their loss together.

Her name is Sa'syul. "Sa" taken from Sa'nok, or mother. "Syul" taken from Syulang, or flower. Name Translation: Mother Flower.

Spider has lost his baby brother, Sa'syul has lost her fledgling, both are everyone's last thoughts in terms of grief, and both seek each other to soothe the pain.

Note: in canon, according to the wiki, Neteyam's ikran is male, but idc about that, I think Eywa would have given Neteyam an older, motherly, female ikran to watch over him and act as a second mother and he would have loved her.

↓↓↓ fic below ↓↓↓

They're both grieving. They're both missing a piece of themselves. Their boy' gone. His baby brother, her perfect little hatchling. Taken by war, never to return.

Sa'syul had stopped eating. She couldn't bring herself to do it, to go out and hunt, couldn't find it in herself to soar the skies or touch the water or weave the odd mangrove forest. Grief consumed her in her seclusion to the dark of the trees, away from everyone else. All but one boy. The human boy. Spider.

Her boy had loved him, missed him, and wanted things to be better. He had been scared to try and approach him after years of being distant. He wanted to fix it, but didn't know how. Now he never would.

Spider found solace in the forest. He had to be strong for his siblings, not wanting his grief to weigh on them, and wouldn't dare mourn in front of Neytiri or the similarly mourning village, he didn't have the right to.

So he went to the forest to be alone, to scream and cry and hit things to try and make the ache in his chest go away. It never did. it just consumed him, like it did Sa'syul, draining him of energy and will and life.

Both hid away in the forest to keen and starve and wallow.

Neither knew what to do with him gone. How was life meant to continue? How were they meant to keep living? How does one live without her bonded? Her fledgling? What about his baby brother?

It all seemed so impossible. How could they just move on as if he was still here?

She watches him, watches him cry, watches him curl into the hollows of trees and sob, watches him punch at the ground and the rocks and the trees till his knuckles bleed.

He had listened to her mourning songs, her grief filled cries, her agonized calls to the sea, calling for her little hatchling to come back to her, to rise from the waves. He watched the skies to see if she would go out and hunt, but she never did, not once since he had returned to his siblings.

They pity one another. It's impossible not to. Both are withering away. Both are alone. No one hears them.

Until one day, the human boy doesn't come to the forest.

Sa'syul didn't hear him crying as usual, she didn't see him curled up in a hollow, didn't smell the blood from his battered fists in the air.

So she goes looking, wanting to know where he has gone? Why was he not here, with her, in the forest, their place of grief and solace?

She finds him lying in the sandy grass, just on the outskirts of the village, basking in the sun, hands mindlessly petting at the grass beneath him, not caring for his risky choice of a resting place.

He hears the rustling of brush and branches from the forest. Part of him hesitates to turn and look at the potential threat, willing to chance fate, but ultimately he knows better, and shifts his head to look at what's watching him from the treeline.

He sees Sa'syul, truly, for the first time in months. He'd caught glimpses of her in the forest, but never sought to look at the hiding creature. He respected her wishes. She would remain hidden from his eyes if that's what she wished.

The last time he'd actually seen her was when he helped Lo'ak tend the ikran after the last raid. Neteyam couldn't do it because he was being tended to. She had preened his hair a bit when he scratched where her harness had been.

Now she was a pitiful sight, coming out of a fortnight long seclusion. Her figure was weak and thinning, eyes sad, posture tired and shaky.

Withered was the right word for her.

Despite this, she's quick to approach him, shuffling forward on her foreclaws, coming beside him without hesitation, nosing at him with her beak, and sniffing him gently, chirping as she inspects him for injury. When she finds him uninjured, outside of the scabbed wound on his chest, she calls to him, wanting him to follow her.

She wants him to go back into the forest, but he doesn't move. She nudges his leg harder, then his side, trying to force him to sit up. When he doesn't, she gets worried and frustrated. This is what her hatchling's body had been like when she saw him for the last time. She knows this boy isn't dead, not like her Neteyam, but why would he get up?

He's not sure what he's meant to do as she stares at him, clicking at him like he was a chick. He shifts ever so slightly so he can lie firmly on his back, a vulnerable position, but one that is solid and secure. He won't risk any sudden moves, especially as he cries and touches become more and more desperate.

After that, he doesn't move a muscle, trying to avoid her eyes, but not closing his own, not wanting to disrespect and anger her, but he won't show weakness either.

When he doesn't move, she decides to settle into the grass with him, unable to hold herself up any longer and giving into his wishes. Maybe the boy just needed time. Maybe he was exhausted like her and couldn't find it in himself to move. Maybe he just needed to see that it was safe.

But she does the unexpected, at least in Spider's opinion. She rests her head against him, rubbing against his shoulder and chin before laying her beak over his chest and arm, careful of the wound there, her wings spreading to soak up the warmth of the sun.

She keens once more. The warmth reminds her of flying. She remembers she will never fly with her boy again. It hurts.

Spider is awe struck. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't even know what to feel. He'd come here for a cry, not having the energy to climb through the brush or up into the trees

— Or the dirty looks every time he came back. No one trusted him, always questioned what he was doing in those hours he spent hidden away —

So he had slumped into the grass and tried to convince himself this was all a bad dream and he had just fallen asleep in the forest, back home, and he would wake up and head back to the village and find all four of his siblings alive and well.

And now he had his baby brother's mourning ikran lying on his chest. He doesn't know what he should do, if he should say something, if one wrong move will get him killed.

Sure he had worked with her before and she seemed to like him, this was different than taking her tack off, she was grieving and starving and who knew how she would react to him.

Ikran were flighty creatures on the best of days and this was not the best of days, so he was erring on the side of caution.

What was she even doing here? With him of all people? He had no idea, but listening to the cries she let out caused something in his chest to well up.

He recognizes them.

He understood them.

If there was one thing he understood about this situation, it was her cries.

They were cries of agony, of longing, of grief and mourning. They were screams of a pain so deep you think it must be killing you.

As her calls reverberated through his chest, they felt like all the ones he had cried himself. She missed him, and he did too.

He can't help the tears that gather in his eyes or the sobs that barrel out of his chest. They're silent at first, part of him terrified to mourn out in the open, but the flood gates open as she begins to keen along with him, agonized sounds leaving her as she slumps into her more and more, clearly exhausted, and silent sobs turn to wails.

He finally moved to sit up, trying to escape the head rush and weight on his chest, taking her with him as he did so, shifting her so her head lay in his lap. She coos at him a bit as she nuzzles into his lap, accepting the change with ease.

He rubs a hand over her beak, up over her forehead, down her neck, and under the edges of her riding saddle — Neteyam never got a chance to take it off, he never would ever again, and no one could get close to her after the funeral. So there it had stayed — scratching at the itch that surely lingered there.

"I miss him too, I miss him so much Sa'syul," he sobbed, peering down into his lap, into her eye, fingers reacting the patterns that danced on her skin, "I want him, I want him to come back, I want this all to be a bad dream"

She cries up to him, lifting her head to nudge her beak into her chin and then his cheek, wiping the tears away, wings fluttering with emotion, tail shifting where it laid on the ground.

"Why did he have to come and save my dumb ass? I would have been fine! I would have gotten out on my own and he would still be here..... it's all my fault," he rubs a hand at his face, a realization hitting him like a train, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. He should be here with you... not me."

The second the words fell from his mouth, she snapped her strong jaw at him, not nipping him, but the sound alone shocked him. She sat up from where she lay in his lap, not straying far, but rising to look him in the eye.

She couldn't speak, but she didn't have to. He bowed his head in respect. He didn't agree with her thinking, but didn't make it known.

Before he can even look up, she's nuzzling him again, breathing warm air out of her vents, bringing her wings in front of her, as if to comfort him and cradle him in her arms. He settles into her chest, letting the tears fall and his heart ache. She does the same. But not being alone makes it feel less all consuming.

As they fall apart in each other's presence, Neytiri will catch a glimpse of them, her first born’s ikran wrapped around the demon's child. She watches as Spider cries into Sa'syul's chest, and listens to the ikrans own cries. A deep feeling of dread forms in her chest. Was it anger? Guilt? Grief? Something else entirely? She wasn't sure.

She just knew she hated seeing them that close, hated seeing how he pet at her head and the bases of her kuru's, feeling that the child should not be anywhere near her son's ikran, should not encroach on that scared bond, should not be taking her son's place… yet, she saw the way Sa’syul clung to the boy, the first person she had approached since being shown Neteyam's body, and she knew that the ikran needed this just as much as the boy did.

She would be cruel to tear them apart, and she should probably feel guilty for even thinking about it, for the way she's treated Spider, so poorly he refuses to grieve in her presence, bottling it up until he can disappear.

She doesn't move to stop them. And when Spider comes back to the mauri hours later smelling of ikran, she says nothing.

After that day, Spider will go hunting for Sa’syul, bringing her baskets of fish and fruits, sometimes meat if he can find something good in the strange mangrove forests he's learning to hunt in. They would sit in the sun at the forest line, leaning into one another, sharing their feast with one another. She'd have her fair share of preening him, nibbling at his salt soaked locs and peeling shoulder, and he'd give her a good rub down, loving on her as much as he could.

They'd even play fight now and then, whether it be a spur of the moment event or a fight over the last piece of fruit it didn't matter. It made them smile.

And te words and calls and songs that would be passed between them were their own little secret, they understood things no one else could, in ways no one else could. They may not share the same language, but they saw each other, and that's all that mattered.

Spider would never be Neteyam, would never be her hatchling, or her bonded, not like her boy had been. But he was a hatchling and he had no one else and he understood her so she would watch out for him. She would love him and care for him and keep him safe, because that's what her boy would have wanted.

And being alone was much worse than being with him. He was good and kind and golden and so much like her boy. He never pushed her or tried to bond with her in anything more than quiet companionship. He brought her treats and scratched all the right places and would cheer when she took to the skies once more. It was like a balm to her aching heart.

and he loved her. She was a warm, calm, wise presence. She did not care that he was human. He respected her and she respected him. she would preen him and he would preen her. Soon they would hunt together in the forest. For once things were a two way street. It was nice.

They made it work. They made the grief tolerable.

#literally going crazy over Neteyam's ikran #I want to know everything about her #and I think her knowing Neteyam wanted ti have a better relationship with his big brother and rhen becoming the inly person Spider could-#truly grieve with would be tragic #they've both lost their boy and now they have each other #avatar 2 #avatar the way of water #spider socorro #miles spider socorro #miles socorro #neytiri #avatar #avatar spider #neteyam sully #neteyam #ikran #avatar ikran #I hate how I ended this but oh well

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