We got our first official look Peylak, olo’eyktan of the Wind Traders who are known as the Tlalim clan!!
I have some thoughts about an au where Neytiri decides to adopt Spider, but with a twist. Neytiri starts off with a cold, calculated plan to mold Spider into her weapon against the demon who destroyed her family, only to genuinely bond with Spider over time and see him as her own.
-) From the moment Neytiri laid eyes on the squirming, pink-skinned demon, she felt the fire of hatred coil around her heart. He has his father’s face. The same features, the same blood in his veins—Quaritch’s legacy, staring back at her with wide, unknowing eyes and a gummy smile. Instinct screamed at her to cast him away, to have him banished to her mate's former planet, to spare her home from the cruelty of yet another sky demon. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
-) Instead, Neytiri shoved her hatred into the deepest, coldest part of herself and made a choice. She would raise him. Not out of kindness. Not out of pity. Certainly not out of any foolish maternal instinct. No, she would raise him as a weapon. An instrument of vengeance.
-) Quaritch had stolen everything from her—her father, her sister, her brother, her home, countless lives of her people. And now, she would take everything from him. She would mold his son into something unrecognizable, shape him into the very antithesis of the man who sired him. Spider would walk like the Na’vi, speak their tongue, fight with their weapons, and live by their beliefs. He would forsake the demon blood in his veins until nothing of Quaritch remained. And when the time came, she would watch the fear dawn in the demon's eyes as his own flesh and blood struck him down.
-) There are times when Jake watches her with wary eyes when she helps Spider take his first steps, when she shushes his pitiful bleatings, and when she cradles him in her arms and holds his little hand in hers. There is an unease in Jake’s stare, as if he sees the shape of her plan but does not know how to stop it—or perhaps, deep down, does not want to. It does not matter.
-) Neytiri is resolute. She has a path, and she will walk it to the end. She will strip away every trace of Quaritch’s legacy, reshape him, teach him to hate the sky people, to despise the blood in his veins. He will not be human. He will not be Omatikaya. He will be a blade—her blade. He will be hers. And one day, when the time is right, he will drive that blade into his father’s heart.
-) But like all well-laid plans, this one did not go as intended.
-) Neytiri had expected wariness. She had expected grudging respect, perhaps even a smidgen of pride that he was picking up her lessons with eagerness. What she had not expected was love. Spider is eager, desperate to prove himself. As he grows, he stumbles, falls, bleeds—but always gets back up. He grins at her when she corrects his stance, laughs when she gently tugs at his hair in reprimand, glows under her approval.
-) It should not matter. He is a means to an end. And yet, somewhere along the way, the pretending stops. She began to see him. To feel warmth towards him.
-) Not the reluctant duty of a mentor or the cold satisfaction of a hunter circling its prey, but the aching, unbidden love of a mother.
-) Somewhere between teaching him to string a bow and scolding him for climbing too high, between pressing healing paste to his scraped knees and watching him giggle as Lo’ak and Neyteyam drag him into trouble with Kiri chasing after them and Tuk toddling along, something in her heart shifts. She no longer sees Quaritch in his face and instead sees Miles—a boy as unpredictable and beautiful as the forest, as fierce as any warrior, as stubborn as herself. A child who saw her as a mother.
-) And when the day finally came that she looked at him and realized she could not bear to lose him, Neytiri understood the cruelest twist of fate:
In trying to make him her weapon, she had made him her son.
I just watched Avatar: The Way of Water and came up with this bittersweet time-traveling au where Spider chooses to go his own way and practice self-care instead of staying where he is not wanted.
Imagine.
Spider’s last memory is the cold bite of Neytiri’s blade against his throat, her amber eyes filled with fury and grief. Then—nothing.
Yet, death does not claim him.
Instead, he awakens beneath the bioluminescent embrace of the Tree of Souls, his body weightless, his soul adrift. Eywa’s presence is everywhere—vast, ancient, and sorrowful. She tells him that his life was taken before its time, that he has honored her ways, and that she has always loved him. Eywa wants him to live again. To see the world beyond the forests and accept her blessings. He was meant for more.
And so, she gives him a choice: fade into the great cycle, or return.
Spider wakes gasping, his lungs—his human lungs—filling with Pandora’s air as if he had been born to breathe it. His mask is gone, yet he does not choke. Beside him, a presence stirs—an ikran, its sleek form rippling with twilight hues, its golden eyes locking onto his. It was his. Bonded. A gift, not tamed but chosen. Eywa's final gift.
Spider does not return to Hell’s Gate. He does not return to the Omatikaya. He takes to the skies, his ikran, his brother, carrying him over endless oceans and floating mountains, through mist-laden valleys and deep, untouched jungles. Spider becomes a phantom, a whisper in the trees, a shadow glimpsed soaring across the moons of Pandora, a traveling hermit always quick to spin a tale or offer advice.
Stories spread—of a lone human who flies Eywa’s skies and walks her lands without fear, a human who rides the largest ikran ever seen and calls it "brother," a human whose love for Eywa was so strong that she blessed him. Some call him a myth. Others, a ghost. The Na'vi speak of him in hushed voices, wondering if he was a sign of Eywa’s favor or her weapon against the humans who seek to corrupt her world.
Spider never sought out a home, but wherever he went, Pandora embraced him. Not as a human. Not as a stray. But as himself—the human who chose Pandora, and whom Pandora chose in return.
I adore my eccentric herbalist💚
Okul my beloved