xii. log 12
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"THIS is video log 12. Time is 21:32." Odessa fiddled with the small camera in front of her, her face showing up on the screen beside the said camera. She turned in her chair, looking over towards where Grace was was sitting, studying something underneath a microscope. "I have to do this now? I'm tired, and hungry, and want to do anything other than this."

"No, now." Grace spoke without looking away from her microscope. "When it's fresh."

"Okay." Odessa sighed, turning back around with her lips pressed into a line. "Location, shack. And the days are definitely starting to blur together."

Odessa's eyes dart towards the pictures she had beside her. They're all hand drawn, and well, poorly drawn. There's two blue people, both face to face, a large tree branch underneath themselves.

Odessa and Neytiri sit in front of each other, face to face. Odessa is sitting cross crossed, and Neytiri is kneeling, both are comfortable for each one of them. Odessa was being taught the Na'vi language, or was attempting to be taught.

"Un'to." Neytiri repeated slowly, her hands moving slightly as she did so.

"Un'to." Odessa repeated, trying her hardest to say it right. Neytiri smiled when Odessa said it right, causing Odessa to pump her fist into the air.

"The language is such pain. It's nothing like English, or French, it's new, something that you have to be willing to learn. Repetition, repetition — that's what Tessa would tell me."

Neytiri pointed to her ears and eyes, making Odessa repeat back to her what in the Na'vi language.

"Navi." Odessa said when Neytiri pointed to her pretty eyes.

"Nari." She reminded him.

Odessa opened her mouth, "Nari."

"Nari." Neytiri sighed annoyed, the word coming back out wrong.

"Narrri." Odessa stated with a small grin, thinking that she had it right. It was wrong and Neytiri lightly and smacked Odessa's head with a sigh.

Odessa looks towards a different picture, one where she's standing tall in her avatar with a wooden bow in her hands. "Neytiri is trying to teach me how to use a bow. Their bows are different from any that I've used. She thinks I'm doing okay, but keeps saying that I don't hold it right."

"Txur ni'ul. Stronger." Neytiri stated both ways to help her learn. She inhaled and pointed to Odessa's waist, tapping her stomach.

Odessa took a large inhale and raised the bow again, pulling it backwards with the strength she had. Neytiri walked forward and tapped her stomach once again, feeling it was still not flexed and firm enough to hold the bow correctly. She adjusted Odessa's arm with a roll of her eyes, seeing as that was wrong too. It frustrated her, to a great extent, but things were getting easier over time.

Odessa let her arrow flow through the air, failing to hit the target that Neytiri had kindly set up. She could see that Niave, the person that was teaching Jake, turned to look where the arrow had been shot at. She waved.

"Neytiri calls me Skxawng (scown). It means Moron." Odessa tilted her head. "It doesn't bother me much, I mean, I know Jake struggles when I tell him that Neytiri calls me that. He says it isn't true, but I can't even hold a bow correctly." Her eyed dart towards a picture of her and Neytiri running through the trees, feet pattering on the ground. "My feet are getting tougher. I can run farther everyday. It's like I've finally worn them out."

Odessa and Neytiri run across home tree once a day, sometimes more than once a day. They never stop. It helps to improve Odessa's balance and stealth, so she can be more like a true Na'vi. The two swing across branches, and vines. More often than not, Odessa ends up falling to the surface bellow. She didn't fall this time. Odessa managed to swiftly move like Neytiri had just down before her.

Odessa doesn't give up much anymore. She's realized that not only would her sister want her to keep going, but so does Grace, Jake, Norm, everyone around her that cares. She's doing it for herself too.

"I have to trust my body to know what to do." Odessa tells the camera as she wonders who would see the video how many years later. "If I don't, than I won't make it anywhere — it's like riding the direhorses. If I don't trust myself, than I don't make it anywhere."

"Yeah!" Odessa cheered as she sat on the direhorse. She was doing well, and had managed to steer Pale where she needed to go. "Hey! Look!"

Neytiri laughed, and smiled. The actions had caused Odessa to become destructed, which ended up with her flying off of Pale and right into the mud below.

"Everyday it's reading the trails, the tracks at the waterhole, the tiniest scents and sounds." Odessa told the camera, the words flowing much more naturally now. "She's always going on about the flow of energy, the spirits of animals. Ima fail the final if most of this is on it."

"This isn't just about eye-hand coordination out there, you know." Grace huffed, constantly listening to what Odessa had to say. "You need to listen to what she says. Maybe, try to see the forest through her eyes."

Odessa nodded, looking towards the picture with a poorly drawn rainfall. She didn't actually draw it through what she had seen, but what she believed Neytiri had seen.

A rainy day occurred and it was perfect. I loved those days the most. They were calm. I took Jake through the forest, showing him the trees and explaining the plant life to him. The trails and tracks along the ground.

We crawled through the tall grasses another day, over a knoll to see and hear a family of Viperwolves, letting out hyena like laughs. A mother and her pups playing around on the ground.

Odessa holds up a picture, the last picture. It's from when she fell and crashed tragically to the ground. "Even though I make a fool of myself, Neytiri always manages to take her time and teach me."

Odessa and Neytiri run along the branches of home tree, again, and as they run and run, they make it to a dead end where there's no choice but to go down or back. Instead of stopping, Neytiri jumps over the edge and dove down through the air, using the large leaves below to manage her way safely to the ground. Her body hit the leaves and she bounced from each one, until she lands in a crouch position on the ground below. Odessa had no choice but to jump. And so she does.

"With Neytiri, it's learn fast or die."