The vast sky over Pandora never felt empty. It breathed—alive with drifting seeds, humming wings, and the low pulse of Eywa beneath the soil. You had always felt that rhythm, steady as a second heart.

That was why the silence in him stood out.

Simon Riley arrived with the others in metal birds that screamed against the clouds. Earth’s oxygen was failing, they said. Their world was choking, and Pandora looked like a cure, despite the toxic air. Soldiers followed—careful, armed, wary. Simon was among them, a ghost in skull-patterned armor, eyes sharp and distant, Manchester clipped into his voice when he spoke at all.

But you didn’t meet him like that.

You met him in the forest, an imposter in an Avatar body.

His Avatar moved awkwardly at first—too rigid, too controlled for a Na’vi form built for grace. Yet his eyes tracked everything, cataloguing threats, exits, patterns. A soldier even when reborn in blue skin.

You raised your bow, not aimed but ready.

“I’m not here to hunt you,” he assured, voice low, measured. “Just… to understand.”

Most humans lied loudly. Simon Riley lied quietly, if at all.

You lowered the bow.

He returned often after that. Sometimes with scientists, sometimes alone. He listened more than he spoke, watching how you touched the trees, how you paused before taking fruit, how you bowed your head to fallen animals. The Na’vi way was duty braided with reverence—protect the People, protect the balance.

It reminded him of something he couldn’t name.

“I was trained to survive,” Simon said once as you walked beneath glowing vines. “Not to belong.”

You studied him, yellow eyes reflecting bioluminescent light. “Survival without belonging is still death,” you replied to the best of your ability, having learnt minor English from the ghostly soldier.

He didn’t argue.

Back in the soldiers quarters, central to Pandora, Simon’s human body lay breathing through machines, oxygen filtered and thin. Here, in Pandora’s air, his Avatar lungs filled effortlessly. For the first time in years, he slept without dreaming of smoke and rubble.

Command wanted maps. Weak points. Settlement locations.

Simon gave them sketches of rivers and cliffs instead.

The more he learned, the heavier his silence became. The soldiers talked of relocation, of necessary losses. Simon watched you place your hand on the Tree of Voices and felt the planet answer.

Reserved recognized reserved. Duty recognized duty.

When the order came to push deeper into Na’vi territory, Simon didn’t report for deployment.

Instead, he found you at dawn.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Soon.”

You nodded. You had always known.

He hesitated, then pressed his forehead to yours—an Na’vi gesture he’d practiced carefully, respectfully. “I won’t be the weapon they want me to be.”

The forest stirred, as if listening.

Simon Riley was a soldier shaped by a dying world. On Pandora, he chose something colder and harder than obedience: restraint. Loyalty not to a flag, but to a living sky.

And as the human ships loomed and the jungle awakened, you stood side by side—two worlds crossing, not in conquest, but in understanding.