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“Ma olo’eyktan!”
Jake turned toward Ka’ani’s voice, eyes following the young hunter’s pointed finger to see a large object blocking a nearby path.
“What are we gonna do about that?”
“Hmmm,” mused Jake, creeping closer to inspect the strange object. A vaguely unpleasant smell rose from the dark scuffed surface, some combination of dirt and burnt rubber.
It was, apparently, an abandonded tire.
Craning his neck, Jake spotted a dented old RDA vehicle a little way uphill, covered, like most of the RDA’s abandoned equipment, in an assortment of creeping vines, fallen leaves, and other grime. The vehicle sat at an odd angle; it must have been tossed around during the great battle nearly six years ago, crushed under the feet of rampaging ‘angtsìk. It would’ve been sitting broken in the forest ever since, collecting dust, rust, dirt, and debris. The tire must have recently broken off somehow and rolled down the shallow bank to its new position.
“Leave the vehicle,” he decided. “Eywa’s clearly claiming it, let her. As for this thing…” he prodded the tire with his toe. What should they do with it? They couldn’t just leave it in the middle of the trail…could they? Or should they move it back to the vehicle? Try to destroy it? Toss it off to the side and let Eywa claim it away from the path? Or maybe…
A small smile began to form on Jake’s face, slowly spreading as the idea took shape. The tire was quite large, it could probably—
“Y'know what, don’t worry about this,” he said, nodding toward Ka’ani as he brushed a bit of dirt off the tire’s surface. “Just leave it to me…”
“Ma yawntu, what in the world is that?”
“Uhhhh….well, I’m not sure how to say it in Na’vi, but back on Earth we call it a tire swing,” Jake said with a toothy grin, showing off his little project to his family.
The old tire, washed clean(ish), now hung flat, suspended from a high sturdy branch by an assortment of strong vines.
“Tire swing?” echoed Neteyam, tilting his head to the side. “What does it do?”
Jake grinned wider.
“I’ll show ya,” he said, beckoning his son over. When Neteyam got closer he scooped the boy up, setting him down on the tire like a big suspended chair, feet dangling through the hole in the middle. Instinctively Neteyam grabbed hold of the vines on either side, eyes wide with curiosity and mild apprehension.
“You sit here,” explained Jake. “…and then…” He slowly pulled the tire back with Neteyam on it, “…we do…..THIS!”
He let go of the tire with a shove, sending Neteyam rocketing forward. The boy squealed with a mixture of surprised and delight, decaying into giggles as the tire swung back and forth, slowly loosing momentum.
“I want a turn, I want a turn!” gasped Lo’ak, bouncing up and down in excitement.
“You bet!” said Jake, holding out his hand invitingly. Lo’ak ran over as fast as his little legs could carry him and let Jake sit him down next to his brother. Jake glanced up before pushing the swing, extending his hand once more. “Kiri?” The tire was quite large, it would be able to fit all three easily.
Kiri glanced up Neytiri, hesitating as she saw her mother’s brows furrow unsurely. One more look at her father and brothers’ beaming faces, however, and she made up her mind, trotting over and letting Jake place her on the swing.
“Ok,” said Jake again, voice only slightly strained with effort as he pulled the swing back with all three kids on it. “Here…we….GO!”
He released the swing with a mighty push. The kids shrieked and laughed as they flew through the air, back and forth, back and forth. Jake laughed with them, continuing to push the tire as it swung back towards him again and again, keeping the momentum going.
He turned back toward Neytiri with a brilliant grin, but his smile fell a little when he realized his wife still looked troubled.
“Y’know what, kids, if you swing your feet and pull the vines just right, you should be able to make it go without me having to push it,” he said, giving the tire one last shove. “Why don’t you see if you can figure it out?”
“Ok,” gasped Neteyam between giggles, but Jake had already turned away, trotting quickly over to his mate, reaching out to place a comforting hand on her upper arm.
“What’s the matter, baby?” he asked softly, not wanting the kids to overhear.
“Ma Jake, that thing is tawtute garbage,” murmured Neytiri, quiet but blunt. “It reeks of them still, the smell is…is unnatural and…wrong,” she scrunched up her nose. “I do not like it. Our children should not be playing with those demons’ old tools,”
“Aww, come on, now,” soothed Jake, “Yeah, I guess it does smell a little funny, but there’s no harm in a tire swing. My brother and I had one when we were kids, hung up from the rafters of some old deteriorating building not far from our apartment…we loved that thing.”
“You are not on Earth anymore, ma Jake. Remember the Three Laws of Eywa? ‘You shall not use the turning wheel’—”
“Technically, we're not using it as a wheel.”
“I…suppose,” huffed Neytiri. “But still. I do not like it.”
Jake’s ears drooped slightly, and Neytiri’s eyes widened apologetically, realizing the mild hurt her words caused.
“I am sorry, ma yawntu,” she said quickly, reaching up to stroke his cheek with her thumb. “I know you worked hard on the…the swing, and I know how excited you were. It is just…the Sky People took so much from us. I do not want to use their old trash, if we can help it.”
Jake sighed.
“I…guess I can’t fault you for that,” he admitted. “But look at them.” He turned to the children, still laughing and playing as they swung their feet around and tugged at the vines, experimenting with how to make the tire twist and sway and bounce, then back to Neytiri. “They’re having so much fun. The Sky People took so much from us, why don’t we take this little thing from them?”
Neytiri still looked a little unsure, so he continued.
“Look, Ka’ani and I found that thing in the middle of a hunting trail not far from the old battlefield. It'd fallen off an old trampled RDA vehicle, left over from the fight. The vehicle was covered in dirt and plant growth. Eywa was reclaiming it, as she has been with all the other old junk they left out there. Why don’t we reclaim this? Put it to good use, give our kids a good time?”
Neytiri thought it over, watching the kids gleefully bounce around on the swing, squabbling about who needed to pull where to make it swing higher or faster. She took a deep breath and held it for a few moments, then let it go.
“Oh…alright,” she relented. “I suppose they may play on it, then, now that it is here. But you can do the pushing. I still do not wish to touch it.”
A small smile returned to Jake’s face as he relaxed.
“Fair enough.”
It didn’t take long for the kids to learn to propel themselves on the tire swing without needing Jake there to push them—and to get creative with its use. Soon they were not only swinging back and forth, but also twisting the vines to spin like a kenten, jumping off the tire and the height of its arc to fly through the air as far as they could (bonus points for a cool landing, of course), or else bouncing erratically on one side of the tire to try and unseat whoever was sitting on the other.
Neytiri often grimaced to herself when the kids came home with various minor bumps and bruises after playing on the swing. It was no worse that the bumps and bruises they might obtain playing any other game in the village, but knowing that it happened on that peice of tawtute waste bothered her. Still, the way her children’s faces always beamed after a day on the swing…as long as the injuries remained minor, she would hold her tongue and let them play.
Just two days after Jake introduced his kids to the swing, Lo’ak invited Spider to join them on it. The human boy loved the new toy just as much as his Na’vi friends did, and it quickly became apparent how unnaturally good he was at balancing on it, as well as at climbing the vines that held it aloft. Lo’ak and Neteyam began holding competitions to see who could stay seated the longest while Spider jostled the vines from above. Neteyam invariably won, and, getting frustrated, Lo’ak gave up—opting to climb up the vine with Spider and shake his brother down any way they could. Neteyam put up a good fight, riding out the world’s strangest rodeo for quite a while…but eventually he succumbed as Lo’ak and Spider gave the vines a particularly strong yank, bucking the boy from his seat.
“You guys just got lucky,” grumbled Neteyam, wiping the mud from his face as he pulled himself up off the jungle floor.
Lo’ak stuck his tongue out at him.
Spider quickly became the champion of how-far-away-can-you-land; being only half Lo’ak’s size despite being two years older, he was small enough to be able to fly much farther. Needless to say, it quickly became his favorite game and he instigated competitions quite often—until one day he landed badly and cracked his mask. The crack was small and he was otherwise unharmed (albeit a bit shaken up), but he had to race back to the lab as fast as his legs could carry him (“I told you to bring a spare,” grumbled an exasperated Norm as the boy burst inside, panting.)
Lo’ak, determined to eventually beat Neteyam at the rodeo game, also lost a baby tooth when he faceplanted while "training" with Spider. It had been a rather stubborn tooth, refusing to fall out even after having been loose for weeks, and Neteyam was rather perplexed when Lo’ak ardently refused to tell him how he’d finally lost it.
Kiri occasionally joined Neteyam, Lo’ak, and Spider’s shenanigans on the swing, but often became overwhelmed by the boys’ increasingly ridiculous competitive stunts. She preferred a calmer swing experience, and on some pleasant summer evenings would ask Jake to take her down to the swing and just push her for a while, enjoying the gentle breeze on her face and the steady rhythm of her father’s hands as he kept the swing moving.
In fact, she very much wished he could do so right now. She had done her thing again today—wandering out into nature, entranced by Eywa’s call, relishing her surroundings…a few kids back in the village had poked fun at her for it. Being the cheif’s daughter, albeit adopted, none of the Omatikaya kids bullied Kiri, exactly—but she knew they thought she was strange. She didn’t have many friends there…at least, not many close ones. Frankly she preferred to hang out with Spider, who was also weird and different in his own way…when he wasn’t challenging her brothers to stupid competitions, that is.
But Spider had already returned to Hell’s Gate for the night, and Jake was busy mediating a clan conflict. So Kiri sulked by herself, curled up in the corner of the marui, nose to her knees and tail wrapped around her as she stared out into the forest.
It was that way that Neytiri found her as she entered the marui not long later, setting down the basket of freshly-gathered fruits she’s been carrying and moving over to kneel next to her daughter.
“Ma ‘ite,” she murmured softly, reaching out to tuck a strand of Kiri’s wild loose hair behind her ear. “What is wrong?”
“The other kids in the clan think I’m a weirdo,” admitted Kiri.
“You are not a weirdo,” Neytiri assured. “You are a little different, but it is not a bad thing. You have such a beautiful connection to the forest, to the animals, to Eywa herself. You are unique, and such a gift to your father and I. Ma ‘ite, that is a very good thing.”
Kiri didn’t respond, but Neytiri felt her heart ache as a single tear rolled down the girl’s cheek.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Kiri opened her mouth, but did not speak at first, avoiding her mother’s gaze. After a moment she seemed to make up her mind, though she still kept her eyes fixed on the distance, away from Neytiri.
“Can…you…push me on the tire swing?”
Neytiri hesitated. The last part had come out in a rush, as if Kiri knew that Neytiri would dislike the idea. And she was right, of course. It had been a few months now since Jake had built the swing, and in all that time Neytiri had scarely gone down to see the thing, let alone touch it. The very thought of making contact with that harsh-smelling rubbery material still made her skin crawl. But…
She sighed. If this is what it took to cheer Kiri up…perhaps she could deal with it this one time.
“Oh…all right,” she conceded. Kiri finally turned to look at her, mild surprise flashing in her golden eyes.
“Really? You hate the tire swing.”
“If pushing you on the…the tire swing will make you feel better, that is what I will do. Now come,” Neytiri got to her feet, reaching a hand out to Kiri, who accepted it and let her mother gently her up. “Eclipse is nearly upon us, and we ought return home before then.”
The walk between the marui and the swing was a relatively short one. Kiri settled onto the tire with practiced ease, lightly gripping the surrounding vines for support.
Neytiri hesitated again. This close to the tire, its acrid stench filled her nose, albeit overlaid with the dirt and sweat it had accumulated from months of use. She held her breath and gingerly pushed the tire with tentative fingertips. The texture felt strange and unnatural against her skin and she suppressed a shudder, but Kiri only swung a few inches forward, and Neytiri knew she would have to press harder.
She took a deep breath. She was doing this for her daughter.
It took a few tries to find just the right push for a comfortable swing, but before too long Neytiri had found the right rhythym. Neither she nor Kiri spoke as she gently pushed her, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
The warm light in the clearing dimmed as the sun inched its way behind Polyphemus, allowing the blue and purple bioluminescence of the surronding plants to being flickering to life. They really ought to return soon.
The tire still felt strange on Neytiri’s hands, and its smell was still unpleasant. She would still prefer not to touch the thing.
But as she studied her daughter’s peaceful face as the girl swung gently to and fro, sanhì glowing bright and beautiful as the sun dipped away, she could not help but think:
Maybe this “tire swing” is not so bad after all.