He was not born feral.
As a child, he was quiet — not withdrawn, just watchful. While other Na'vi children leapt between roots and chased one another through the lower branches, he preferred stillness. He could sit for hours with his feet in the stream, watching insects skim the water's surface, memorizing patterns no one else noticed.
The elders said Eywa had given him hunter's eyes early.
His father was a respected tracker, a patient man who taught him that strength was not in how loud you roared — but in how long you could wait. From him, the boy learned how to read broken leaves, bent grass, the subtle silence that meant something was watching back.
From his mother, he learned reverence.
She taught him to touch the forest gently. To thank every kill. To sing softly when blood touched the ground. Even then, scars came early — not from recklessness, but from staying too close when others would flee.
He did not fear pain.
He only learned from it.
They met when they were still barely grown.
Neytiri had climbed too high — as she always did.
She was chasing a bright-winged atokirina', laughing as it danced away from her grasp. The branch beneath her snapped without warning.
He heard it before he saw it.
A sharp crack. A sudden rush of air.
He leapt without thinking.
His fingers caught her wrist as she fell, the force tearing skin from bark and driving both of them into the trunk. They hung there, hearts pounding, tails thrashing for balance.
When he pulled her back onto solid wood, she stared at him — wide-eyed, breathless, furious.
"You are supposed to shout before grabbing someone," she snapped.
He only blinked.
"You were falling," he said simply.
That was the first time Neytiri laughed at him.
Not mockingly — warmly.
From then on, she sought him out.
They trained together as adolescents — bows in hand, feet learning the rhythm of the forest. Neytiri was fire: fast, expressive, emotional. He was stone: steady, quiet, unyielding.
Where she rushed, he steadied her.
Where he hesitated, she pushed him.
They argued often — about paths, about shots, about which way the wind was turning — but they always ended up laughing beneath the branches afterward, sharing fruit and stories as night insects sang around them.
She teased him for his seriousness.
He teased her for never watching where she stepped.
When she lost her sister, he did not speak.
He simply sat beside her for hours beneath the Tree of Voices, his shoulder touching hers, letting her grief breathe without trying to shape it.
That was when she reached for his hand for the first time.
Their bond was not sudden.
It grew slowly — like roots intertwining beneath the soil.
They hunted together. Slept side by side on long journeys. Shared food without asking. When one was wounded, the other tended the injury without words.
The day they became mates, there was no spectacle.
No audience.
Only the two of them beneath the glowing tendrils of Eywa.
When their queues connected, the forest hummed — not loudly, not fiercely — but warmly.
Right.
For a time, it was enough.
For a time, he believed this was the life Eywa had chosen for him.