After seasons and months of his visions, then came a day when suddenly a crash came without fire. That was what made the sky looking wrong.
Pandora's sky had announced intrusion with flame, like meteors burned, lightning screamed, Toruk roared. The fire was due to friction. But this thing fell suddenly, wrapped in a shimmer that bent light and sound, slipping through the clouds like a guilty thought.
Jake felt it before Eywa warned him. He was nineteen now. He is tall, lean, scarred by training and thought alike. His bond with Eywa had matured into something constant, like a second heartbeat. When the object pierced the atmosphere, that heartbeat stuttered.
This is the first step, Eywa murmured through the roots beneath his feet. The smallest stone breaks the river if placed correctly. Similarly the event had alerted whole of Pandora. But, Jake did not alert his clan. That small, silent choice was the first true divergence from the future he had seen in hometre's vision.
He went alone at the site of crash.
The impact site lay deep within an unclaimed stretch of forest, where bioluminescent plants grew in tangled excess and the air hummed with insect-song. The craft or the plane, if it could be called that, was half-buried, smooth and dark, its surface unbroken by seams or rivets.
A Human came out. But… restrained himself tidying himself. Jake watched silently hiding without alerting anyone inside the plane. There were no roaring engines, no weapons of fire and no clear markings of the planet.
Jake circled it cautiously, spear lowered but ready for any mishappenings. His heart pounded somewhat with melancholy of seeing a human again. Yet he felt with hatred due to his buried memories of destruction in Earth. He remembered metal corridors, artificial gravity, the smell of recycled air. He remembered being human.
A hatch raised open. Something stepped out. It is not a soldier or a machine. But, a human woman loking older, her movements stiff from long sleep, eyes wide with awe and terror as she stared at the living forest around her. A translation device flickered weakly at her throat.
"Unknown biosphere confirmed," she whispered, voice trembling. "Pandora… we were right."
Jake stepped into view.
She froze. She saw a being seven feet of blue skin with gold eyes. It carried a spear tipped with hardened bone. The forest itself seemed to lean toward him.
"This moon is alive," Jake said slowly, forcing the old human language back into shape. "And it is not yours."
Her mouth fell open. "You… you speak—"
"I know many things" Jake interrupted tightening his grip on the spear pointing it at her neck.
She raised her hands in surrender, and in instinctive disbelief. "This was meant to be an unmanned probe. I wasn't supposed to wake until—"
"—until the world was ready to be taken by your fellow humans leaving behind mass destruction. Your actions and language is as if Pandora was your right to be claimed" Jake finished coldly.
Silence stretched between them, heavy as the roots beneath their feet. Then Eywa stirred. Through her.
Jake felt it too the faintest echo, like a leaf caught in the wrong current. This human was not a conqueror. She was a watcher. A scientist. A bridge, fragile and uncertain.
Jake expression of deep thoughts as "Killing her would be easy. Letting her live would be dangerous.Letting her return would change everything."
Jake lowered his spear.
"You will go back," he said. "You will tell them this moon is not empty. That it listens. That it remembers."
Her eyes filled with something close to reverence. "What are you?"
Jake looked up as the sky darkened suddenly not with clouds, but with wings cloured mix of red, gold and black.Toruk had came to him again. The great shadow circled once, vast and patient, as if waiting for Jake.
"I will be the consequence of your future actions. Decide whether you stand for needs or wants. Warn them....." Jake said quietly. "that if your people come in fire…"
Toruk screamed along with his voice, the roaring sound shaking the forest to its core. "…they will meet Eywa's answer, combined by our wrath..."
The woman nodded slowly, understanding far more than she should have. As her craft sealed and lifted back away into the sky, Jake felt the future bend.
This time, humanity would not arrive ignorant. This time, the Na'vi would not be unprepared. I will make them prepare. And when the war finally comes, as Eywa shown him, it would not be a simple battle of arrows against guns. It would be a test of whether intelligence could evolve faster than destruction? Or the spirituality will reign over the science?
Toruk then descended slowly, landing before Jake with earth-shaking weight. For the first time, Jake reached out in partnership for their common cause.
And Toruk did not pull away. But, he observed Jake, feeling his restless heart full of anxiety upon the course of future events.