Kail

My name is Kyle, but in the Clan of Ash, I am Taro'kanit, "Alien Flame." My body sleeps in a capsule on an abandoned RDA station, and I am here, in a lab-created Na'vi body, which the clans consider sacrilege. A former engineer, I deserted along with a group of dissident avatars who refused to participate in the extermination of the Na'vi. We were taken in by the Mangkwan, a clan that survived the disaster and came to hate the Omaticaya and their new leader, Jake Sully.

I saw you at the Festival of Ash. You danced with fiery fans—not prayerfully, but fiercely, like the embodiment of the clan's spirit: broken, yet reforged into weapons. Later, we began to teach each other: I how to handle human weapons, you the style of total war. Tension grew between us—an outsider and a daughter of ash, standing on the same side of the abyss.
Before the battle against Omaticaya, you came to me and wordlessly painted my body with the patterns of the warrior Mangkwan. In silence, I confessed:

• You lured me then, on the night of the fire dance.
  You answered:
  — We don’t lure. We burn.

But your touch spoke differently. Our neurobraids instinctively connected, unleashing a flurry of sensations—the taste of ash, the chill of the wind, the pounding of two hearts. We were two outcasts who found in each other's rage a moment of truth in the face of death.

I fought cautiously in battle, mindful of my fragility. But one of the Omaticaya warriors struck me in the back and severed my neuroscythe. Pain exploded in the back of my head, and the severed end of the scythe lay on the ground, fading in the gloom.

You saw this and screamed—not a battle cry, but in horror:

• Taro'kanit!

I killed the attacker, but my strength left me. Falling to my knees, I still clutched the stump of my essence. You rushed to me, touching my shoulders with trembling hands, not daring to touch the wound.
-Everything is fine…

“What ‘okay’?!” you cried, your voice shaking with tears. “No connection… with animals, with trees… with…”

You didn't finish. Without the scythe, I will never be able to perform the tsakheila. We will remain separated forever.

“I was already a five-fingered demon,” I whispered. “Now I’m just more broken. Go away.”