Blood and Water | Neteyam

Our Coming of Age Has Come and Gone ∼ 29

"Man, I really like Norm and Max, but I am never doing them a favor ever again," Lo'ak huffed as he strode down the beach, Tcelia by his side. She rolled her eyes but muttered in agreement.

Earlier that day, Tcelia and Lo'ak had found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both of them had woken up later than the rest of the family then scrambled off towards breakfast, only to arrive just as water was being splashed at the already dying embers in the bonfire.

They had stuck their heads together, grumbling something about not understanding why Lo'ak's family hadn't woken them up, then gone to the storage pod, scavenging for any sort of food. Settling down back in their Marui with two Spartan fruits each, still mad about not having been woken up, they had eaten quickly, eager to find the rest of their friends.

Still licking off the fruit juice from their sticky fingers, they had emerged from the pod and bumped into Ao'nung who had pointed them in the direction of the rest of the group.

Tcelia and Lo'ak had been making their way towards Neteyam, Kiri, Tuk, Rotxo and Tsireya who were out in the water, when they heard Norm shouting their names from the edge of the forest. Raising their hands to greet him, they had jogged over to him.

Norm had asked them for a favor and Tcelia and Lo'ak had been quick to agree. Something they regretted hours later when they were still preoccupied with said favor.

Apparently, the thermometer that the two scientists had developed had started malfunctioning. The device was also very heavy and had been designed to burrow itself in the ground at the bottom of the spring so that it could not be removed from the water or swept away in a current.

To make it even more problematic, the hot springs contained some sort of chemical compound that was toxic to humans, so Max could not dive down and see what had caused the device to malfunction.

Norm explained that he would have done it himself were it not for the fact that someone had to stay back at the base to restart the system from within. Max, being the one who had actually developed the thermometer, was the only one who knew how to fix it, so it had to be Norm who needed to reboot the system.

Tcelia and Lo'ak's job had essentially been to dive down and find the thermometer, with Max standing at a safe distance from the spring, shouting instructions at the teenagers on how to fix it. Then they had to follow those instructions carefully, so that they wouldn't accidentally short circuit the device and fry themselves in the process, resurfacing every minute to receive the next instruction and then dive back down again to perform said instruction.

It had been an excruciatingly slow process and Tcelia and Lo'ak had started to grow irritated at each other when they accidentally got in each other's way or when Lo'ak had accidentally ripped out the wrong wire, causing the system to shut off, and ending with them having to restart an hour's worth of work.

At last, as a small green light had flashed on the small screen, the two teenagers had dragged themselves up on the edge, looking at Max hopefully. He had his finger pressed to his ear, where Norm was communicating with him through an earpiece.

After a few minutes, Max raised his hand, giving Lo'ak and Tcelia a thumbs up, shouting at them that it had worked. Tcelia and Lo'ak had breathed out in relief, hurrying away before they could be called back in case they had done something wrong, or if Max and Norm needed something else from them.

As they had worked, the sky had darkened and taken on a uniform, almost monochromatic appearance, as the clouds seemed to blend into each other. The clouds hung low on the sky, pressing down on them and rain had followed shortly after. Fat, cold raindrops now rolled down Tcelia and Lo'ak's bodies, making it impossible for them to dry off after their many hours in the hot spring.