73 73. The All-Father

"Good afternoon class.", an old man with greying blond hair and rectangular glasses said with a warm smile to a class of kids between the ages of four and seven years old who stopped talking all at once the moment he entered the room.

"Good, if you stay calm, participate, and work well, I might end the class earlier or… Or possibly even give sweets to the most astute one of this group.", cheers were heard after those words.

With a simple hand gesture, all quieted down as he asked, "Today's class will be focused on English but first does anyone want to help my failing memory by graciously giving me the date?"

A four-year-old Na'vi wearing an exopack on his face lifted his hand with palpable excitement, almost jumping from his chair, and with an affirmative nod of the old man he knew he could speak.

He wasn't the only one to have done so, he was just the one that stood out the most in the small group and so he was chosen by the teacher, a female Avatar of roughly the same age huffed in annoyance as it wasn't her chosen, the five-year-old human boy seated next to her swallowed a chuckle at that earning a small glare from her.

"Mister Edmund! It's Friday of Mark hm Marth eight of-of the year 2159… {I think…}", the boy said pensively with a thick accent as he counted his fingers to make sure he was correct and didn't count wrong.

"That is correct Neteyam, bravo.", Edmund praised the son of the Omatikaya Olo'eyktan and before he could open his mouth again the Avatar girl lifted her hand.

"Mister Langford, can I write the date on the holoboard, please…?", Kiri asked almost hesitantly after the teacher acknowledged her.

Many were visibly annoyed that she managed to get it first which made a small smile appear. The human boy next to her, Miles, dramatically rolled his eyes at that.

"Indeed Kiri, you may proceed to do so.", Edmumd said as a large holographic screen came to life behind him, picking up her stylus she began to write on her table.

As she did so her writing appeared in the upper right part of the holoboard showing her exceptionally good penmanship for someone her age some would even say for her species but that they would never say it out loud.

It would bring the wrath of very important people such as her mother, and godfather who for the latter was always listening, always ever knowing each word in the base for him to know.

And so the first class of the day for the four to six-year-old group at the Community Schools began. The English class was around an hour long and done with the interests of the students in mind, kids needed to be interested, and Edmund Langford was very experienced in that domain as he was a father of three and grandfather of seven back on Earth.

After this there was a short pause then Edmund switched the subject to mathematics but it was done in Na'vi orally as being bilingual was not an option but a necessity here.

Sometimes it was in English or sometimes it was in Na'vi. Starting to use both languages from a young age was one of the best methods to make the future generation accept the others better, at least on paper but a start needed to be somewhere.

It was far from easy for the kids but each teacher was chosen specifically for this task after having volunteered and passed a dozen sets of tests made by Grace, she was intransigent on who she deemed possessing the aptitude for this job.

The school was not a building on itself but the revamped inhabited Habmod of Hell's Gate, plenty of plants were added with paint and in general modified to be a cozy area where nobody would feel uneasy or worse trapped.

So when the class ended the entire group of children walked out into the common living space of this mod where many people could be seen from humans to Na'vi wearing exopacks to breathe properly in the recycled air of the base, but the natives of this moon was in the single digit.

Miles followed Kiri who was happily munching on a lollipop and stopped moving as he saw John McCosker, the son of Mary and Nash McCosker being taken into a big hug by his father.

Nash hadn't seen his son in the flesh for the last two months as he passed them hard at work on one of the many mines of the smallest moon orbiting close to Pandora, so the hug for John was almost too strong.

Miles felt a pang of jealousy had the sight, more accurately what it represented but it was very short-lived, he had better he thought. Then he made a brief eye contact with his supposed adopted mother Mary whose gaze instantly shifted up to the ceiling as if in shame of herself.

If he was older he would have seen conflicting emotions in her features and more but he wasn't so he didn't understand. For him… He could but see that she didn't like him, she felt shame in his presence and he was fine with that, he didn't like her very much either.

*CUPLA INQUIRE WITH CONFUSION: MILES.*

A robotic voice snapped him back to reality as he gazed up to see an animal similar in body shape to an otter and as long as he was tall hovering one meter above the ground thanks to a set of rotor blades growing from its metallic back, its head with its head plate flaring out slightly in confusion.

"Cupla!", he shouted in joy, his mood doing a full turn for the better as he ran up to the hovering alien otter, Kiri throwing the lollipop stick in a bin followed after him but her target was the slinger behind.

*CUPLA SAY WITH HAPPINESS: MILES*

The otter declared again, that it was not a sound produced by any of its biological functions, it was through a micro microphone around its neck that used a voice box containing hundreds of words and sentences for many situations.

The otter didn't understand all of them but it was trying its best, it was very smart to the point of self-awareness like all of Liam's tames and Cupla was very high on that list of intelligence for its age.

Considering in the wild its species used tools with its thumbs on nimble hand-like paws, and they were very small, highly social, swift, and agile predators in a hyper-competitive environment it made sense this species was naturally gifted in the intelligence departments, it was their only true advantage over others.

Since Liam adopted and tamed it three years ago it grew both mentally and physically and was cybernetically augmented thereby leading to it being able to hover and breathe here by miniaturized machines functioning in a way similar to exopacks that were added to its operculum and more.

Cupla was the first subject under the Lost Child hands and the All-Mother roots to have been augmented with various inorganic additions for it to live a better life. None of this the otter understood but one thing was for sure it was very happy with the result, it could swim, fly, and crawl everywhere it wanted or needed.

Arvok looking from the side sighed as he saw the two kids fussing over the two abnormal animals he waved goodbye to the other handful of adult Na'vi as they had already finished herding the rudy Na'vi children in a group.

Netyam, one of the last to be 'herded' waved goodbye to both Miles and Kiri which they answered in their own way, one nodded and the other waved back. The firstborn son of Neytiri and Jake was their friend.

The way Na'vi acted was a drastic discrepancy from the humans who stayed together doing small talk with one another. It didn't mean there weren't positive interactions between the two species, the opposite.

It was because the Na'vi didn't have a lot of time on their hands right now, traveling into the jungle when it was going to be nightfall was far from being a good idea.

This was even more the case when it was with a bunch of children who lacked any sense of self-preservation and would not hesitate a second to walk away after having some pretty light that would be the lure of a carnivorous plant.

Infantile death was not common but neither was it considered rare in their society due to Pandora's biosphere, Na'vi were an integral part of the food web, Eywa was fair and saw all lives as a part of the cycle.

{Miles, Kiri, I know you love those two but you can do this when we finish the walk back to my brother and his mate's abode.}, Arvok said with a faint smile this led to his niece stopping fidgeting one of the many trinkets around Daisy's front claw but not Miles from continuing scratching the otter's soft scale.

{Okay Arvok…}{Okay Uncle…}, the two of them said simultaneously, then the human boy climbed on top of Daisy with extreme ease before giving a hand to the struggling Kiri for her to climb.

Cupla followed suit and laid on the slinger's head, its paws gripping the wing-ear on each side like it was a steering wheel, to the slinger head annoyance and this emotion was felt through the link between them and brought the otter's great amusement.

When the small group arrived at the chamber that separated the recycled air of the base from the toxic atmosphere of Pandora the young Avatar girl took a deep breath and gave her exopack to Miles sitting just behind Daisy's back as if one of the most vicious and venomous predators of this moon was but a regular horse.

The march back to the abandoned mine took well over twenty minutes as Daisy would need to wait for Arvok if it moved faster.

During that period, the two kids spent time playing and not in any random way.

They passed it by levitating a small hermetically sealed and malleable sphere full of ferrofluid with two hyper-simplified and safe models of magnetic gauntlets built for them by Liam.

The gauntlets were modified to uniquely work on the sphere full ferrofluid with most of the motions regulated by microcomputers to avoid any accident. He wouldn't want one of the kids to stab themselves or others with for example a random piece of sharp metal.

Their power source was a small generator in the slinger satchel that was held around its necks and where the kid-sized gauntlets were taken out.

They were not given to be simply toys but to be used as a training tool demanding both high cognitive function, concentration, and imagination while promoting those three points only Grace seemed to have grasped them aside from the designer himself.

Those weren't mere futuristic toys using technology with almost infinite potential for warfare and welfare in an equal manner.

Sniffing the air as if she were a dog Kiri jumped off the slinger in excitement as the odor of food getting braised registered in her brain which was soon followed by Miles who ran after her as the tantalizing smell hit him.

They sprinted in the short grass toward a small cottage on the cliff of a lake. It was Grace and she was turning a piece of meat on what looked like a primitive barbecue.

Stopping what she was doing the Avatar crouched down as Kiri jumped in her arms and started to babble about the day.

"-and then Mister Langford said this about how small we are and then with my good answer I got a candy!", she finished with a large toothy smile before being placed down.

"Wow, aren't you my favorite little genius?", Grace said with a smile before she crouched down and affectionately ruffled the shoulder-length dark blond hair of the human boy, "Hello Miles, your day was good from Kiri's words right? Since I knew you were coming I have made your favorite food, one of the very special recipes Liam gave me just for you."

Then she greeted her brother-in-law but before any discussion between the two adults could begin or that she could be her mate Miles asked a question that he had on his mind for quite a few days now.

"When will Da-Liam come back?", he caught himself slipping further in his words but this did not go unnoticed by either Grace or Arvok. It was a complicated subject one neither could speak about now.

But again before both could react Kiri was next to Cupla both eating marinated and grilled hexapede skewers spoke her mind out with no filter, the mention of Liam bringing back what she had been thinking this morning.

"The All-Father! Yeah! He is doing something big!", she blurted out, leading to great confusion, particularly for her mother, Kiri all of it made so much sense but she didn't realize it wasn't the same for others. She wasn't aware of her exceptional gift.

Eywa and Liam were connected with an impossibly puissant bond that seemed to partially meld them together, their 'heartbeats' as she called them were similar, synchronized, slow and powerful and so much more.

Her meager vocabulary in Na'vi and English couldn't even begin to describe those two beings, they were more than them.

They were opposite like two oppositely charged magnets were attracted to each other, at least that is how she remembered magnets working from Miles' clumsy explanation. It was complicated.

Since one was the All-Mother which is how Liam and Eywa bond seemed to hold many nonphysical similarities to the like bond between her mother and father then Eywa was the mother and All-Mother and the post-human was the father and All-Father of the mating pair.

It all made perfect sense so saying it out loud for her was only natural as others must already know, it was obvious to her.

As for the 'something big', she would be correct but she didn't know what it was, it wasn't even something only she knew. It's just recently it had seemed to be ever present in her mind.

A few Earth-Moon distances away deep in the largest and more secure room of the Element Nexus the man that was thought about was staring at something that would change this universe forever more.

His almost glowing silver eyes full of jubilation starring upon a grain-of-sand-sized droplet of a glowing translucent purple liquid falling upon a bowl-shaped piece of extremely pure uranium-234.

*

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