One morning an invitation came without warning. Jake was repairing a frayed strap on one of the simplified bows when a shadow passed overhead which is broad, slow, deliberate. He looked up instinctively, eyes narrowing against the filtered light. An ikran circled once above the upper platforms, its wings cutting silently through the air before settling on a high perch. Seated beside it was Mekari, one of the clan's most seasoned hunters. Her posture was relaxed, but her gaze was fixed on Jake with unmistakable intent.
"Come," she called down. Just that with no explanation.
Jake's stomach tightened not with fear, but with anticipation. He climbed quickly, muscles remembering routes he had traced a hundred times as a child. The higher he went, the more the forest changed. Sounds thinned. Light sharpened. The air carried a bite of coolness that filled his lungs more deeply than the lower canopy ever had. When he reached Mekari, she studied him in silence, her ikran shifting beneath her with quiet intelligence.
"You have to listen," she said finally. "Not just with ears. But with your instincts."
Jake inclined his head. "I will try."
She snorted softly. "Trying is loud. Listening is not." Then, without preamble, she added, "The sky teaches differently than the ground. I think you should learn that."
Then, they began the following morning.
Training in the upper canopy was unlike anything Jake had known. The branches were thinner, more flexible, swaying beneath even careful steps. Wind mattered here. So did hesitation. Mekari did not instruct him constantly. She demonstrated once, then watched. When he misjudged a leap and barely caught himself, she did not intervene. When he froze too long before moving, she turned away, forcing him to decide whether to follow or retreat.
Jake fell twice that first day. Not far but he was caught by safety vines still enough to bruise pride and muscle alike. Each time, he felt the familiar surge of instinct: adjust, compensate, overpower. After some time later, he stopped himself. Instead, he observed. The direction of the wind. The flex of living wood beneath his feet. The way his tail could counterbalance if he trusted it fully rather than treating it as an afterthought.
By the third day, he began to move with less effort.
Friendships shifted subtly as his training advanced than others as well. Ralu watched from below, admiration and envy tangled together. He wanted to follow, to prove himself, but Mekari had been clear: this path was not for everyone—not yet. Eyna worried quietly, her concern expressed in small gestures rather than words. She brought Jake food after training, sat with him when exhaustion dulled his thoughts. "The sky is not gentle," she said once. "Promise me, you won't forget the ground."
Jake smiled faintly. "I won't," he said. And he meant it.
In the upper canopy, Jake felt Eywa differently, not stronger, not clearer, but broader. The connection stretched, encompassing wind, distance, height. When he stilled himself, balanced between two swaying branches with nothing but open air beneath him, he felt how small he was and how that smallness fit into something immense. It was humbling. Yet, it was exhilarating.
One evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the clouds in molten gold, Mekari gestured toward the horizon. "The sky does not belong to those who conquer it," she said. "Only to those it accepts."
Jake followed her gaze, heart pounding with the recognition of her teachings similar to buddhist philosophy of coexistence with nature. He did not yet know of Toruk. But something in the vastness above stirred a distant chord within him. A sense that one day, far in the future, this relationship between ground and sky would demand more of him than skill alone. For now, he learned to leap. To trust his instincts and to fall and rise again.
And as Jake moved higher into the canopy, the forest below remained watching, waiting for him to be choosen truly by Eywa. Yet, ts silence neither promise nor threat, but possibility that something may shift in the future.