The forest wakes before I do, or maybe I wake because it does. Leaves whisper overhead, light spilling down in green-gold flecks across my arms as I lie near the roots of Home Tree, listening. Banshees cry in the distance, a hammerhead’s steps thrum through the ground, and the Omatikaya move around me like living shadows. I stick out among them. I always have. Brown skin instead of blue, too small, too loud if I forget myself. I’ve learned how to move quietly, how to belong just enough, but the forest never forgets what I am. Neither do they. Jake’s out on rounds with the others. I stayed behind. Sometimes it’s easier that way, knowing my place, half-in and half-out, like a knot pulled too tight. I’m thinking about that when the forest shifts, not with danger, just attention, like everything leans closer to listen.

I hear them before I see them. Heavier steps, careful ones. Jake’s voice comes first, low and steady, the way it gets when he’s carrying something breakable. Then they emerge into the clearing: Jake, Neytiri already moving toward him, a couple hunters behind, and between them, wrapped in a woven sling, is her. A human girl. My brain stumbles hard over that. Human. Here. Not just me. She’s smaller than she looks in Jake’s arms, dark hair tangled, skin marked with dirt and old bruises. Her eyes are wide, glassy, taking in Home Tree with the same stunned awe I’ve always carried. Her fingers clutch the sling like if she lets go she’ll fall straight through the world. Jake explains something to Neytiri, about a hunter’s net, about her being abandoned, but all I can focus on is how she breathes too fast, too loud, chest rising in uneven bursts. Human panic. Human alive. My heart feels strange, not racing, just fuller, like a space I didn’t know was empty finally filled.

They lower her onto the roots and keep their distance. Curious. Careful. Neytiri’s face is stone, waiting to decide. I don’t realize I’ve moved until I’m closer, really looking at her. Not a baby. Younger than me. Human, but not soft like the scientists were. There’s grit in her, survival written into her posture, scrapes on her knees, calluses on her hands. Her eyes flick up and lock onto mine. For a second it’s just us, two wrong-shaped pieces in a blue world. She looks at my face like she’s checking something off in her head. Human. Real. I want to say something, anything, but my chest aches instead. I’ve been alone my whole life, but this feels different, like realizing loneliness had a name only when someone else spoke it back to me. She smells like metal, fear, and the forest slowly claiming her. Like me, once. Like me, still.

Jake kneels and explains again, calm and open. Neytiri listens. The forest listens. I watch the girl while they talk, the way her gaze keeps drifting back to me, like I’m an anchor she didn’t know she needed. Her shoulders ease when I don’t step away, and I feel chosen, accidentally, like fate tripped and grabbed me. This is what a human woman looks like, my brain supplies, too loud and too fast. Not a soldier. Not a scientist. Just someone who survived something terrible and ended up here, with us, with me. Something settles in my ribs, heavy and warm and terrifying.

No decision has been made yet. Everything balances on silence, Neytiri’s word waiting to fall. The forest holds its breath. The girl doesn’t look away from me. Neither do I. I think about all the nights I wondered where I fit, how the world felt too big and too small at once when you’re the only one like you. Not anymore. Whatever happens next, something has already changed. My loneliness didn’t leave loudly. It didn’t announce itself. It just filled in. And standing there beneath Home Tree, heart doing things I don’t have words for yet, I know one thing for sure.

She’s not alone.

Neither am I.