When Jake was 8, formal training began quietly, without ceremony. There was no announcement that Jake had reached the age where playfulness slowly turned into responsibility. The incident started one morning, Teyrìk, his father, simply asked him to follow. They descended from the higher platforms of Hometree before most of the clan had fully woken, the forest below still wrapped in silver mist. Jake felt a familiar flutter of anticipation, the kind that came before lessons that mattered. He had learned that important things often arrived without spectacle.
They stopped at a wide root clearing where the ground was firm and alive beneath bare feet. A few other children were already there, including Ralu and Eyna. Notable mentions like Neytiri was also present. Their expressions mirrored his own curiosity. An elder named Karyu, whose hair had silvered with age and whose posture remained effortless, stood waiting. He carried no weapon. His hands were empty, relaxed at his sides. When he spoke with a soft voice that the children leaned in instinctively.
"Strength," Karyu said, "is loud."
The lesson that day was balancing the body. Not climbing, not speed, but stillness. The children were told to stand on a single root, narrow and uneven, and remain there as long as they could. At first, it seemed easy. Then the forest shifted. Insects buzzed close to ears. A breeze nudged leaves, casting moving shadows that tricked the eye. Muscles tensed. Ankles wobbled. One by one, the children stepped down, laughing or groaning in frustration. Jake lasted longer than most because he softened his body. He remembered something from another life: tension wasted energy. Stillness conserved it.
Eyna surprised them all by outlasting even Jake. When she finally stepped down, her face was serene, eyes unfocused as if she had been listening to something beyond sound. Karyu nodded at her approvingly saying "you hear more when you stop moving". Jake felt a quiet thrill—not of competition, but recognition upon his friend. He was not alone in sensing the deeper rhythms of Pandora's Eywa.
As days turned into weeks, training became a regular part of the children life. The children learned to observe everything before acting and to feel the ground before stepping, to sense one another's presence without looking. There was no sparring yet, no combat. This was preparation of a different kind for our protagonist. Jake found these lessons resonated deeply with him. They echoed the philosophies of balance with nature. Like Buddhism which he had once studied. Those traditions that emphasized breath, center, intention. He never spoke of this with anyone. Instead, he let the familiarity guide him gently, shaping his movements without overt control.
Friendships deepened in this shared discipline. Ralu struggled at first, his impatience obvious, but Jake stayed beside him, offering encouragement rather than correction. When Ralu finally managed a moment of true balance of his body, his grin was radiant. "I did it," he whispered to Jake, as if afraid to break the spell. Jake felt pride bloom in his friend's persistence. Eyna became a quiet anchor for the group, her calm presence easing tension whenever frustration rose. The three of them formed an unspoken triad with each of their unique radiance i.e, energy, awareness, and steadiness.
There were setbacks too. Jake once pushed himself too hard, trying to hold a stance long after his muscles began to tremble. He fell, hard, the breath knocked from his lungs. Embarrassment burned hotter than pain. Karyu helped him up without comment, only saying later, "Your use of force is loud, even when no one hears it." That night, lying awake, Jake understood. Mastery was not about proving anything, not to others, not even to himself. It was about alignment.
In the quiet moments that followed training, Jake sometimes felt Eywa more clearly as a resonance— standing between two tuning forks vibrating at the same frequency. When he centered himself, the world seemed to respond. Leaves stilled. Sounds layered more clearly. It was subtle, easy to miss, and entirely voluntary. Eywa offered no approval for success, no disapproval for failure. She simply reflected what was already there.
One evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the forest in amber and violet, Jake sat with his friends on a high branch, legs dangling. They spoke of small things on future hunts, imagined adventures, who would climb the highest when they were older. Their laughter carried easily through the air. Jake listened more than he spoke with warmthness settling in his chest. Whatever he had been before, whatever he might become, this was real. This mattered.
And for the first time since his rebirth, Jake understood that stillness, balance and silence was not emptiness. It was a place where bonds formed, where his purpose for the future waited patiently to be discovered.