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The boy was born and soon after had lost both his mother and father.
Both had died in battle with the Na'vi. And they had left the boy alone. When everyone left, he was only three months old.
And nobody knew how to take care of the child properly, nobody was prepared to change diapers and take care of a child properly.
Those left behind made no decisions about Miles other than concluding that he was too young to travel back to Earth.
Jake was too busy living like a Na'vi to worry about an orphaned child and Norm didn't even know how to hold the boy properly, so that's when Diana, the head of the botany department, took care of the child herself.
Diana Monroe came to Pandora with the aim of classifying plants of commercial or medicinal value for the benefit of the human race. But after choosing sides during the war, she became a lonely scientist, the only other scientist in her field was Grace but she had entered a vegetative state and by some miracle was carrying a child still in this critical state.
On the one hand, it was unfair the way an unborn child had Jake Sully and Neytiri visit regularly while there was another child needing care right there.
Diana decided not to think about justice, she was the person who took care of Miles every day, she was the person who had developed breast milk to feed the child who was so thin that he bordered on malnutrition. She would become his mother, and so she did.
One day, Diana was sitting with Miles on her lap, watching Grace's body in the tank. Miles was being breastfed, he liked to be breastfed on the left side and with the lack of stimulation, Diana's right breast stopped producing milk.
Diana needed to stimulate both breasts so that she could nurse the baby, but apparently she only needed to do this on one, as Miles refused to drink milk from the right breast.
Diana looked down at Grace's swollen belly as she cradled the sleepy boy in her arms, she too was humming a tune only the child could hear.
Suddenly, she heard footsteps approaching them and she naturally deduced that it was Jake, from the impact of the Foot on the ground, as his foot was bigger than a human's. But it wasn't Jake, it was Neytiri who was also carrying a child in her belly.
Neytiri would visit Grace regularly, but this was the first time she was going without Jake.
Neytiri stopped for a second when she noticed the two people there, she nodded in greeting and walked over to Grace's tank. "How is she?" Neytiri asked and Diana, who had stopped humming, got up from the chair she was sitting in with Miles cradled in her arms, the boy had fallen asleep.
"She's fine. Well, as far as possible of course." Diana approached Neytiri and noticed that she had her hand in the tank. "The brain activity is active enough that she continues to carry the pregnancy without any problems."
Neytiri looked at Grace, at her own belly and then at the child in Diana's arms.
Diana smiled in empathy, "We just don't know how the child will arrive."
"I want to take the child to our home. In the trees." Neytiri said, "So that they can learn from us."
Diana thought a little, and it really was the best thing to do at that moment, if the child stayed with the scientists, they probably wouldn't learn how to develop properly as one of their kind.
Diana nodded.
"How long until your baby arrives?" Diana asked as she took Miles's mouth off her breast, as the boy had fallen asleep but hadn't let go, he now had his head nestled against Diana's collarbone, and she smiled when she saw the boy.
"It will take a while." Neytiri didn't talk much, and when she did she had a funny accent, but most of the time she just didn't talk to humans. "I think Grace's child will come first."
"The baby will be born soon." Diana said, "We were going to talk to Jake. We don't know anything about delivering a Na'vi baby, we want someone from your tribe to come help us."
"I can help." Neytiri looked back at the tank, and before Diana could say anything in response, Miles woke up crying and took the attention of the two women.
"Oh baby, it's okay." Diana murmured to the child before cradling him in her arms and starting to rock her body with the intention of calming the baby, "Why are you crying? Mommy is here."
But the baby did not calm down quickly.
"Does he always cry like this?" Neytiri asked.
"Yes, he's a fussy baby, sometimes I think there's something wrong with him but every test we do nothing goes wrong, so I conclude he's just like that, fussy and whiny." Diana saw the confusion on Neytiri's face, "Don't your tribe's babies cry?"
"Not often, if they cry for something maybe a predator will come." Neytiri explained.
Oh, survival.
"Hm"
"Usually if a child cries like that the mother is deemed unfit to have more children as she can't take care of one." Neytiri explained further and Diana widened her eyes in disbelief. At that moment, Miles stopped crying heavily and only mumbled inaudibly.
"What? oh no no, on earth it's common for babies to cry like that, after all we don't have a predator for human beings." Diana also explained.
If Diana was going to say something she didn't because after milliseconds Norm and Jake entered the room to observe Grace.
The two stopped when they saw Diana.
"What's it?"
"Diana, you are showing everything." Norm said.
Diana looked down and saw that she hadn't taken her shirt down since Miles had been breastfed.
Yep, it's all in a day's work.
"Mommy! look at me!" Miles said it every time he came back from visiting the Sullys.
Spider came with his body painted blue, and it usually took a long time to get the paint off the boy's body, but it was understandable. That was the way he had found himself inside Pandora.
Spider had earned his nickname because this was his first word, Diana was so happy that she just called him that until he repeated it again, the nickname ended up sticking and soon after everyone knew him like that.
In this eclipse, Diana was waiting for Jake to bring Spider back to the base and while she was doing that, Diana cataloged some blueprints.
Diana wasn't ugly, she was only thirty-four years old, counting the almost six years she spent inside the ship to get to Pandora. She had traveled to Pandora as soon as she turned eighteen, she was the youngest scientist ever to embark.
She had longer hair now that she had let it grow out, but usually she didn't let it go past her shoulders, her black hair was wavy and the waves were hard to tame. She had a normal face, with dark brown eyes, a dry mouth and a thin body. Diana was the definition of normal.
Diana dreamed of having a family on earth, but the unsanitary conditions made her think twice. So she sacrificed one dream for another, and decided to come to another planet to fulfill her professional dream.
While waiting Diana had finished the first part of a project and she decided to wait outside for Jake while she observed the behavior of the regional plants in relation to the eclipse.
Her peace was taken away when she heard Spider cry in the distance, Diana waited for Jake to become visible so she could run to them.
"What happened?" She asked as they rushed to base so Spide could get proper treatment.
The boy was only six years old, and by the way he was, he was crying more from the scare of getting hurt than the injury itself.
When they arrived and Diana was able to see the boy's injuries, she concluded that they were just bad scratches on the knee and a cut on the hand, which would soon heal.
Diana left Spider lying down and Jake accompanied Diana to the kitchen, "What are you still doing here, Jake?"
Jake sat down in one of the nearby chairs.
"It was chaos now, Diana. The kids tried to climb a big tree."
"I still don't see a problem." Diana said cracking eggs into a frying pan.
Jake ran a hand over his face, "Kiri was on top, she lost her balance and fell and pulled Neteyam who was on the bottom, Neteyam fell and pulled Spider, it was like dominoes." Jake said gesturing, he put his hand on his face again. "And I couldn't even laugh."
Jake giggled, "And it was really funny. They fell one by one." Jake sighed smiling, "But Kiri cut her leg badly and Spider broke Neteyam's fall."
Diana smiled.
"Well that's child's play, then it wears off and they'll play again."
"Yes, but Neytiri is furious and I ran away so I wouldn't get scolded too." Jake said getting up, "But it must be over by now, by the way, it was Spider's idea."
"Um, I'll go talk to him." Diana replied, "Are you leaving now?"
"Yes" Said Jake walking towards the exit, "See you Diana."
Diana didn't respond for two seconds but then yelled, "Tell Kiri I wished her well!"
Diana cooked Spider scrambled eggs and brought it over.
Spider was sitting on the bed looking at the now bandaged wounds, he was staining the bed sheets with his blue body paint.
"Mommy!" Spider said when Diana arrived, she smiled and sat down next to him, passing the plate to Spider.
Diana ran her hand through his hair as he ate but it didn't take long for him to finish.
Spider handed the clean plate back to his mother and smiled at her. "Spider, you know what I always say? Not to mess around while you're there?"
Spider nodded in agreement.
"I don't want you to get ideas like that again, you guys are lucky no one else got really hurt."
Spider nodded positively again and looked at Diana.
"Mom, why don't you have more kids so I'm not alone here?"
Diana sighed.
"Because I can't have more kids, Spider." And it was true, there were several obstacles in this regard, the biggest of all was that she had difficulty getting pregnant due to a problem that happened when she was fourteen. "I already told you how you were born, didn't I? You weren't born from my belly like the others, but it's okay because mommy found you and loves you so much?"
Sometimes she wanted to try to get pregnant just so that Spider would have a suitable companion, that is, that the baby and Spider would be of the same species. But the craving came and went quickly.
"I love you too mommy." Spider hugged her and said nothing more.
