Chapter Summary: It seems like Moana's been in training to be the next great chief of her people all her life. She can scarcely imagine life without her dad within reach to guide her in the ways of leadership. But that's the thing you can forget about leadership: that the old leader has to go before the new leader can step in. And sometimes, you're reminded that the old leader can go before anyone's ready for them to.
Notes: I am so sorry. This chapter isn't even that long and I'd outlined this (and most of the rest of the series) months ago. But yeah. This series has been exhausting to write from the start and I guess after nearly a year continuously yelling at myself for barely managing to put out anything every 10-14 days why are you such a slow writer I just needed time off. I probably should've considered that it would eventually take a toll to write every day drawing on my own experiences with death and illness and complicated, sometimes unwillingly severed, platonic and familial relationships. So, cue a month or two of absurdly fluffy shenanigans. I didn't think I'd help shed my angst reputation through a Moana college AU Tumblr roleplay of all things but life's what happens when you're making other plans, isn't it. It's been an amazing break, and one I've sorely needed. I'm drawing and designing things again after years fighting off soul-crushing dread whenever I so much as touch a pencil or my drawing tablet. So there's that. But yes, this story needs to finish and I'm back in a good enough place to keep telling it. So here we go.
The fever they're referring to here isn't as common a disease in my research as, say, elephantiasis, tuberculosis, or various unexplained painful tumours, so uh, I guess it could've gone worse for Tui? While it probably wouldn't have been common or endemic on Motunui, further east it does seem to be a problem, though whether or not it's endemic or introduced in that part of the world I'm not sure. As I said, it's a liberty, so I don't even name the fever here. There are also a few other liberties, such as a pretty modern understanding of what causes the fever and how to prevent and treat it. Perhaps Motunui in its hundreds of years of isolation took the time to figure it out.
While I'm here. Pillows back in the day were made of bamboo. There would be a large bit that functioned a bit like a neck pillow to support the head, supported by legs lashed to it. I'm not sure if they're comfortable but Laulii Willis in her memoirs said a lot of people around her preferred them over Western pillows, so there must've been something there. You can see a clear example during Tala's deathbed scene!
Moana's still blinking the sleep out of her eyes when she's greeted with the sight of flowers lined up in a little row near her bedroll, damp and cold from the weather outside, the chill managing to keep them them good and fresh. She yawns and gives herself another few blinks, her arms tingling as they brush up against the mess of tangles on her head she calls hair, and frowns at the grey sky, the water dripping off the roof.
She's more awake now, but barely. The bedroll calls to her like a dear old friend, but its voice is drowned out by the chorus around her, the sky, the birds, the sounds of the day beginning to start. It's dawn, or it's just a little past it. The village is awake, and so she should be, too. Moana nearly groans at the thought of it, not on this beautiful cold morning just perfect for sleeping in.
Nearby her father gently nudges Pua away from the flowers, humming something soft and beautiful under his breath as he passes them by. "Ah," he says to the pig. "Not for you."
Pua stays lying where he is, snorting dismissively. Please, he almost seems to be saying. He knows how it's done by now. There's no need to treat him like a piglet.
The flowers stay untouched, still glistening with water, as Moana considers which to wear today.
"Any preferences?" Dad says, leaning over her shoulder, that slight edge of uncertainty that comes with every time he brings her flowers to wear in her hair. He doesn't do it as often as he used to, but it's always a nice gesture. She doesn't see the need for him to worry she'd do something like knock them out of his hand.
She considers.
They're nothing they could get too far away from the house, nothing Dad would've had to put himself through too much trouble to get. Frangipani, hibiscus, tiare, all good strong safe classic choices.
She stifles a yawn, and reaches for her pick.
"This one."
She can just feel that sentimental little smirk as she holds up the hibiscus.
"I knew you'd pick that," he says, and before Moana can so much as tell him she's heard this already he starts launching into the well-worn story of baby Moana and the bush of hibiscus that blossomed shortly after her birth. "You know," he says, and Moana catches herself silently mouthing along with the words, "the red hibiscus was the first flower I brought home to give to you."
It's so tempting to interrupt him, to say she's heard this so many times she can probably recite it by heart so many times, but he always gets so sentimental at this story she can't bring herself to make him stop.
She puts down the flower and gets up to get her comb. "I know, Dad."
"And your mum, she thought it'd be bad luck," he says, "getting so attached to a newborn. She thought we'd be tempting fate. You were barely a week old. I had to weave it into your sleeping basket."
"Mm-hmm," she says, sitting back down to start the process of untangling.
"But you were just so small and strong and I wanted to—" He stops, and there it is again, the embarrassment, that fond little smile. She can't see it from where she is right now but it's there. "Ah. I've told you this story, haven't I?"
"Every time I pick a red hibiscus, Dad," she says.
He huffs in amusement, lingering for a bit before he steps back. "Yes, well," he says, "you'll understand when you're a parent."
Now she actually does roll her eyes. "You'd probably have to find me some good suitors first."
He tries to say something back, and Moana can think of at least five different responses right now, mostly to do with how she didn't exactly make it easy to announce a search for suitors in the first place, and then once she finally did start meeting with suitors last year the first one upset her so badly she turned into the pickiest person on earth, but it's still barely dawn, and he's never that sharp in the mornings anyway.
Instead of Dad's usual dry wit Moana's instead met with the long-suffering sigh of a man feeling every single day of the last five years searching for someone his daughter could tolerate being married to.
"The things I do for grandchildren," he says.
And Moana smirks, smoothing out another tangle as she allows herself to imagine the decidedly non-magical Mini Maui on her shoulder awarding her a point.
The morning light no longer stings to look at, and she can feel the fog of sleep beginning to lift. Thoughts of bed are soon replaced by thoughts of meetings and unfinished business from the days before, and as the final bits of sleep are blinked from her eyes she almost feels like herself again.
She squints at the dew on the flowers, and frowns at the water still dripping from the eaves and down to the ground. She picks up her gaze and looks up at her father, quietly collecting the rocks keeping the mosquito curtains in place, goosebumps and scratched mosquito bites on his skin under a film of drying water, and then it's back down to the wet flowers, not wet from dew, she sees now, wet from rain.
She puts the comb away.
"Dad," she says, "were you out in the rain?"
He shrugs. "Maybe around the tail end of it," he says. "It was cold. Good time for a walk."
"Dad, it's the rainy season and it's dawn," she says. "The mosquitoes are out. You can't just keep going around when they're biting."
He's still maddenly calm and sentimental as he secures the curtains. "What would I have to fear from the rainy season?" he says. "The rainy season is a happy time, Moana. The rains bring life. The rains brought you."
"Dad."
"They did!" he says. "You were born at the start of the rainy season, Moana."
"Mom said they came a month early that year."
"So you brought them, then," he says. "Even less to worry about."
"Daaaaaaaad."
Sometimes she wishes for siblings, just so he'd have other people to fuss over.
He chuckles something low and quiet, deep in his chest, and nudges her up. "Don't take too long with that," he says. "You're leading today's council. You'll want to do a bit more than just get the tangles out of your hair."
Seriously? Council again? She knows how to lead the council by now, there isn't much point in still training to do it.
"Do I have to?" she says.
"I can't do it forever, petal," he says. "Besides, when I die—"
"You're not gonna die, Dad," she says, and the best he can do is a shrug and a noncommittal little noise by way of response.
The water continues to drip off the edges of the roof, and when she finally brings the hibiscus to wear in her hair she finds it cold, and fresh, and still wet with rain.
The council meeting is nothing outside of the usual concerns. The breadfruit, banana, and mulberry trees are coming along nicely, work continues on the village roads, and the precautions for the rainy season seem to have held up well, not as many issues with drainage or flooding as there were last time around.
"But as a precaution," Dad says, "I say we stop the quarry work, at least until the weather clears up. We already have enough surplus to get us through the first few boats of the next trading season. If we need more we can get more, but right now it won't hurt to give the workers a bit of a break."
Moana blinks before she gathers herself enough to ask around the rest of the council, taking in their nods and completely unsurprised reactions of agreement, before the decision is made to halt quarrying for now and they move onto the next order of business.
She'd forgotten about the quarries. She shouldn't beat herself up over forgetting they were still operating, since this is kind of the whole point of being in training to take over as chief, but she should've at least had that in the back of her mind somewhere. The quarries may be around the outskirts of the village but they're one of their most vital resources for trade. Without them in working order, her village would lose out on so many resources, especially in these early years when they're still growing some of their vital trees and plants. How could she overlook the quarries so badly, after all they'd done to help?
No, no, now is not the time. She's a grown woman and the next village chief. She can't just crumble in front of her people over something her father solved anyway.
She pushes aside the doubts threatening to take up all her thoughts, and asks for any more issues while they're all still gathered here.
"Palolo season is coming," Silifono, a newer member of the council, says. "We'll need more nets if we want more catches this year."
Vete, a distant relative of Moana's and one of the oldest council members, reluctantly agrees. "Oh, yes," he says, and it nearly physically pains him to be seen agreeing with the upstart council member he famously butts heads with, "not enough nets last time. Such a waste to see so many of those delicious sea worms go free."
"Okay," Moana says. "So does anyone have any suggestions for what to do about this? Can anyone suggest people who might be free to make the nets?"
Nearby her dad coughs, raising his eyebrows meaningfully in her direction. Moana frowns. Oh. Oh, she's forgotten something again. It shouldn't be this easy to forget something. Think, think—why is staying in one place so much more of a challenge than spending nearly three years risking your life voyaging and fighting monsters?
She stops.
Palolo season.
Of course.
Rainy season just started. So that means—
"We won't need many people," she says. "Not at first. The season's not for a few weeks and we have enough nets for a harvest but not a surplus. If we have more urgent business right now, that's gonna have to get priority. If we don't we can all get that over with right now."
She tries not to visibly sigh in relief when Dad nods in approval, and she tries not to smile too hard at Mom giving him a look saying to watch it, you can't just keep coaching her like this.
Tema, another one of the oldest members, clears her throat. "Well," she says, "now that you mention it—"
Moana turns to her. "Yes, Auntie?"
"Pepeu's roof collapsed during that storm the other day, the poor dear," Tema says. "Oh, she's fine, she and Teiki are staying with her sister right now, but she'll need help rebuilding. We could assign a few people to fix the roof, and have the quarry workers work on the nets."
She catches herself. "If that's what you and the chief think we should do, that is."
Moana's eyes go back to her dad quicker than she can exercise any self-control. She's leading the council, she should be the one making decisions. This is probably exactly why her father's been making her lead the council more often.
Mom's eyes widen as she registers the unspoken little communication between the two, and she nudges Dad, a gentle but firm look of warning all over her face. Dad turns back to Moana, shrugs a helpless little shrug, and gestures to Moana to make the decision herself.
Moana turns her attention to Tema and nods. "It is," she says. "We've just finished some maintenance on the dock. We should have enough free builders to fix her roof."
Tema smiles. "Thanks, Moana."
There isn't much else to discuss. Someone suggests a check of the coconut plantations to check for parasites (approved), someone else informs the others the musicians will need new instruments for palolo season (approved), and another person brings up the idea of building a guest fale closer to shore in case of numerous or suspect outsiders (not denied so much as set aside for now). It's a quicker meeting than she'd expected, though with this being their third year on the island Moana's glad this just means there's enough of the village built and established that there are now some things that can take care of themselves.
Once it's clear no one else has any new business to bring up, Moana decides it's probably time to make an announcement of her own.
It's a struggle all its own to keep this general, and not just spend the whole time looking in her father's direction.
"Before we end this for today," she says, a very deliberate sweep out towards everyone gathered, "I just want to ask if everyone has mosquito curtains for the rainy season. Are there any parts of the village that might not have them?"
A brief moment of mental inventory among those gathered and a few checks with those seated next to them just in case they missed something, but the answers come back fine. Everyone in the village, as far as they know, has mosquito curtains for the season. The trade agreements brought enough tapa that the village even has a little extra in case of a bad typhoon season later this year.
Something uncoils inside Moana at the news, and despite the sense of wet still hanging in the air it's become easier to breathe. The memory comes unbidden to her, of the dancer boy Teiki's liveliness and mischief almost extinguished in the ravages of the fever, but the memory dissipates as quickly as it appears, leaving behind only a shapeless feeling of dread she can thankfully now combat. They have the materials to prevent this now. They have the healers and the training to treat this if it does happen.
She is not losing anyone here.
"All right," she says. "Well, the usual precautions, then, I'm sure you all know them by now."
Nods and murmurs of agreement from those gathered around. In the distance thunder begins to roll.
Rainy season indeed.
Moana summons up all the collected knowledge she has on how to make a decent Warrior Face, and uses it, as she so often does these days, to serve the village. Instead of a menacing scowl a calming smile, instead of a fearsome presence a voice of reason. It's a harder face to pull than one of battle, but in the years since she's cultivated this face it's one she's learned to wear it well.
She smiles.
"Good," she says. "Let's keep it up, everyone. The fever hasn't taken anyone yet and we're not going to let it start now."
And she sits pleasantly amid the cheerful goodbyes and the small comments of congratulations on yet another productive council meeting, trying not to think of the thunder in the distance and the smell of rain still lingering in the air. She keeps her eyes on Tema as her grandchildren help her down the steps and Silifono as he saunters out and in the direction of the houses of the quarry workers, and decidedly not on the mosquito bites her father's had for days and is still having a hard time resisting the urge to scratch.
Dad's quiet, nearly shy, when he asks Moana if she could help him down the stairs as well. "My knees seem to be acting up," he says. "Might've overdone it yesterday with the road work."
Moana winces at the wet stone stairs, still dripping with the last bits of rain coming off the edges of the council fale roof. "Anything wrong, Dad?"
He shrugs. "It'll clear up," he says, and she thinks nothing of it, until they've reached the bottom of the steps and he nearly flinches.
Mom's Warrior Face doesn't so much as budge for even a second.
"I knew the council was holding something back when they arranged this marriage," she says, as she links his arm with hers. "Look at him, ageing before my eyes, while I'm cursed to stay young and beautiful. How's that fair? I thought I was supposed to be marrying up." Dad's smile softens as it so often does around her, and it's an extra second before Mom turns to once again regard Moana. "I'll take it from here, Moana. Your father and I will go to the builders. You go talk to the quarry workers."
And Moana, despite her stomach beginning to coil and the shapeless dread coming back as if to say it wasn't done, nods, and smirks just as convincingly as her mother does.
Mom's right, she has to remind herself as she watches them head off. Dad's just getting to that age now, and joint pain runs in the family. That's it. That's all. That's it.
She's worrying over nothing.
"Halfway!" Moana crows, grinning at the bounty of flowers in her basket: night jasmine, small and beautifully fragrant flowers best picked at night and which in the light of tonight's moon seem to almost glow softly white. She wipes off the sweat from the night's work in smothering humidity and breathes in the flower scent with a wicked glee. It smells sweet. It smells of victory.
From nearby, a sound nearly muffled by the sea below and a rush of harried rustles. It's Dad's little grunt of frustration, small but audible, as he struggles to keep apace in their little flower picking contest.
Moana looks up in his direction, grinning. "And what about you, Dad?"
The rustling stops, and she giggles at the glare she can nearly physically feel piercing through her.
She grins harder, her attention back on the bush of soft white flowers still waiting to be picked. "I didn't hear an update."
His little humph is one of indignation and outrage. "You will take pity on your poor suffering aged father, Moana."
"So," she says, "five flowers, then."
"How did I raise a child capable of such cruelty."
She stifles back the flood of laughter threatening to bubble and burst out of her.
"No, no, you're right, you're faster than that," she says. "Ten flowers."
And there is a brief silence before there is a resigned little huff of laughter, and the rustling continues.
Moana wipes off more of the sweat, and snaps off a couple more blossoms.
"C'mon, Dad," she says. "How much of your basket? You've picked flowers off volcano peaks, there's no way I'm winning already."
There is the sound, over on his end of the little clearing, of a flower sluggishly picked from its stem.
There's a response caught somewhere between being a grumble and a sigh."Maybe that's a job for a younger man, now."
Moana rolls her eyes.
"Dad," she says, "you can totally still pick flowers off volcanoes. Don't feel bad just because I'm winning."
"I don't," he says. "I'm just—"
He stops, and he yawns, and whatever else he had to add to that sentence is gone.
Moana puts away her basket—about half a small basket's worth is good enough for their needs right now anyway—and makes her way towards her father.
"All right," she says, "let's head on home. You're tired, and I'm not taking a win unless it's a fair fight."
When she does reach his end of the small patch of night jasmine crop he's blinking, and tired, and it's hard to make out the finer details in his expression but this is definitely not the look of a man engaging in one of his favourite pastimes with his only child.
She wishes the moon were fuller. She wishes she could see with her own eyes that he's all right and she's just being paranoid.
She clutches her basket tighter. "Dad?"
His sigh is laboured, nearly shuddering. "We don't have to stop for me," he says. "It's cold tonight. That's probably what's throwing me off. Look, it's made my fingers all stiff."
No. No no no no—
"Dad," Moana says. "What do you mean, cold?"
Dad rolls his eyes as he takes a deep, shivering breath. "Come on, Moana, it's freezing," he says. "You're a wayfinder; tell me you can't feel that wind."
She can't.
The wind's usual desperate howls and swirls are little more than a suggestion of a breeze right now, and the air even up here in the hills by the sea is heavy with hot humidity, slowing it down even further. If anything she's sweating.
Her stomach coils and twists in on itself, finding a way to sink to the bottom of her, ready to just fall out any second now. As she steps closer she swallows, despite the dryness in her throat, and tries not to remember the image of Teiki, pale and shivering on his bedroll, his mother holding his hand as she choked back tears.
"Dad," she ventures, barely brushing against him as she bids him to put down his basket. He almost shudders at the touch, and it's all she can do not to give into the urge to panic right now. "Dad, are you feeling okay?"
It doesn't take a wayfinder's trained eyes to see he's the furthest thing from it right now. He begins to nod, only to stop, and rub at the space between his eyebrows. "Maybe we should call it a night."
"Dad?"
She has to reach up to touch his forehead, and when the thing just near scalds her she winces and brings her hand up to touch his forehead again.
This can't be happening. Not with Dad. Not now.
The second time that forehead threatens to incinerate her she can swear she feels the pain go straight to her heart.
"Moana?" he says. "What is it, petal?"
She swallows, despite the dryness in her throat. The baskets balance precariously in the crook of one arm while her other arm links with his.
She tries not to think too hard about the goosebumps against her skin, the shuddering breaths and the unsure footing of his steps.
"We need to go back home."
Mom's the one who has to keep them all calm, as she tends to be whenever the two of them start getting carried away with anything. When they arrive back home, Dad nearly swaying from lightheadedness and Moana's arm and shoulder nearly sore from leading him all the way uphill, whatever alarm there is in Mom's eyes isn't there long enough for any of them to see. The Warrior Face is on as soon as she sees what's going on, and she's got the bedroll out and the extra sturdy pillow down while all Dad's attention goes into not just flopping onto the plain stone floor and all Moana's attention goes into keeping him awake.
It's a focused, fierce determination when she checks Dad's temperature, a deliberate detachment when she asks, "How long's he been like this?"
Moana has to shake her head to get back into the moment. "Not long," she says. "Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, including the walk back up from the jasmine crops. He was fine until a few minutes until we had to leave."
Dad, holding back another shiver, groans. "I can still talk, you know."
"Moana, help your dad onto bed."
She does, although the size difference does make it easier said than done. Dad just about wilts as soon as bed is a viable option, and Moana is suddenly grateful for all those adventures with Maui keeping her from being completely useless as she navigates wobbly legs and a vulnerable head down to a safe lying position. She'd seen Maui bleed, she'd seen him poisoned, and she'd seen him cursed. Not to mention, as part of the family of the village's highest chief, she had visited countless villagers in their time of sickness, some of them with the fever. None of this should strike her as anything even vaguely new.
But as she gently places her father's head into the groove of the bamboo pillow and double-checks to see if its legs aren't on anything too wobbly, she can't help but feel something about her world shift the slightest bit, enough that the off-kilter rhythm made everything strange and almost unreal.
Dad squeezes her arm in thanks, and she's barely finished placing a tapa blanket on him when Mom tells her to go get water and fetch the healers.
Moana's hand refuses to let go of her dad's. "But Mom, I can't just leave him."
"I know, minnow, I know," Mom says, softness in her voice for the first time since they came back, "but someone has to go. You're faster, and you get around better at night. Besides, this just started. No fever works that quickly. He'll be here when you get back."
It hurts to nod and agree, even if she is completely right.
She shouldn't still find so much comfort at the touch of Mom's hand cradling her face.
"Your dad needs to stay hydrated, Moana," she says. "I'll stay here and keep an eye on him. It might not be the fever but it's still something we need to keep an eye on, do you understand?"
"It's not the fever," Dad groans, holding the blanket closer to him.
"He's sick, he's not thinking straight," Mom says, and turns back to Moana. "Go."
It's all she can do to keep from staring at the mosquito bites on her father's skin. It's all she can do to fight back the image of him in Teiki's place, growing weaker and more lifeless as the fever takes hold, the cold and the wet from the rain doing everything they can to stack the odds even further in death's favour. It's all she can do to hold back a sob. "Mom—" she says.
"Go."
There's one last squeeze of her father's hand, the barest hint of a hongi, before she's bolting out of the house and towards the medical fale, as quickly as her feet can take her.
As daughter of the chief, Moana had probably been on visits to every sick person in her community, both in her old village and in her new. It was the thing among her people, though not surprising for a people isolated for so long. Everyone looked out for everyone else, and royalty visited the sick with some food and words of encouragement in their time of need. So sickness was nothing new to her, and enough time spent overhearing the healers as they did their work meant she wasn't completely clueless by the time Maui had started her training on handling illness during voyaging.
That never meant it wouldn't still upset her every single time.
Teiki was—Teiki is—one of the village's most promising prospects for the future of the artform of dance. Born the son of a drummer and a dancer, it came of no surprise to anyone when he took to the artform at an early age. It was even less of a surprise that he was good, managing to keep up with the advanced dancers and even making up strange new moves and routines all his own. He had a bit of a trickster streak, and as he grew older a bit of a habit of flirting with everyone he met, but overall he was a good kid, always willing to tutor those who had trouble with their routines and always the first person to try to lighten up a bad situation. It hit Moana harder than it should when he came down with the fever.
If it happened on Motunui it would've been a shame but it would've been just another instance of the fever making its rounds across the village. They would curse at fate and curse at their misfortune but they would do what they could and hope for the best. But it happened on their new island, in their new village, and despite everyone's insistence that it was just bad luck Moana knew it happened because she didn't think to bring enough tapa for spare mosquito curtains for the village's first few years.
The trees needed to make tapa needed humans to spread. She knew that from her years travelling with Maui. They also took years to grow. She knew that from her entire life spent around the plantations. She knew. She knew. And she should have planned.
So when the fever struck during the village's first rainy season, when she arrived at Teiki and his mother's little fale to find small pools of water all around and a distinct lack of mosquito curtains in the rafters, all she could see was the preventable death of one of the village's youngest residents.
The fever works quickly, announcing itself as soon as it begins to take effect. It's the one kindness it gives, before you sit and watch helplessly as it does its work. Only the truly unlucky die from it before the fever itself kicks in.
Teiki, unfortunately, was nearly among them.
There are times, rare times, when the fever starts its attack before you have a chance to know what's going on. Symptoms that would otherwise be treated right away are shrugged off as the effects of the rainy season. Sluggishness tended to come with the humidity and the pleasing cool that came afterwards, it was nothing to worry about. Aching joints could simply be overindulging in certain foods, or the effects of age. A lack of energy? Could really be anything. The thing that tipped you off, that let you know what you were up against was the fever itself, and when it did its work in silent, when it scouted ahead and cleared the land before declaring its presence, by the time the patient's temperature rose it was too late.
Teiki had complained lately of pains during dance rehearsals and lessons, but as a dancer that was just part of the job, made all the more common thanks to his love of seafood and cooked pig's blood. No one thought much of it until one day, in the middle of a remedial lesson for some of the older but less skilled dancers, he collapsed.
Water and healers came right away, and soon enough he was shivering in bed, clutching as many blankets as he could close to him as he gazed out into nothing.
The fever had barely announced itself by the time Moana was sent to offer the support and well wishes of the chief's family. Teiki's mother Pepeu, barely a year after losing her husband to the flu, could barely move to acknowledge Moana's presence and small offering of food, distracted as she was by Teiki's slips in and out of consciousness.
"How is he?" Moana asked, placing the basket to one side as she sat beside Pepeu.
The hongi was quick and half-hearted.
Pepeu had swallowed, blinking back tears as she smiled. "The fever's hit. So that's good, right?"
The smile didn't stay long.
"He's—" Pepeu said, "It means now it's just rest and hydration. He can start to recover."
Moana had opened a drinking nut from the basket to help him drink. Pepeu held his head up.
"It's the best we can hope for," Moana said. "I'm sorry about this. The chief's family would like to extend their best wishes for his recovery."
She swallowed again as Teiki sluggishly took in the water, wiped off the excess liquid with a shaking hand. When Moana could finally summon the strength to really look and see how her former dance student was doing, the near silence of the room was broken by a stifled sob.
Pepeu shook her head, stroking her son's hair out of a lack of anything else to do.
"Are you—?" Moana hated these visits, she really did. "Would you like me to leave?"
But she continued like Moana hadn't said a thing.
"We should've stayed with my sister," she said. "She had a mosquito curtain. We could've shared until the end of the season."
As right as she would've been to just tell Pepeu this sort of thinking won't do anything to help the situation as it was, she couldn't do it, not when she was there regretting almost the same things. If she'd thought to pack more, if she'd thought to suggest larger extended households for now until they'd had enough supplies to allow splits into smaller family groups, if—
Not that any of that could help Teiki now. But what else was there to do, other than make sure he got rest and liquids? Worrying and regretting at least made it feel like you were doing something, and right then she felt like doing something. After all, what else was there to do?
She visited every day with food. Some days he would be almost normal, talking to her, and if he was feeling especially good maybe a bit of courtesy flirting, letting Moana know if she ever changes her mind about traditional marriage and political alliances the offer's always there.
"All I want to lead's the dancers," he'd say, his voice cracking spectacularly as he'd deliver a masterful wink. "You got no coup coming from me."
It'd be funny—adorable, even—to watch her former student, still just a kid with so much to look forward to, propose over and over and only partially as a joke. She'd roll her eyes and laugh and let herself see this as a sign of hope, but then a new wave of fatigue would take over, and he would lay back down, wincing as he'd hold his blankets closer to him, his mother's heart breaking as she would check his temperature and find that the fever was still as high as it ever was. The first three days that tended to happen whenever the fever hit, and then the next day, and the next day, and—
She forgets how long it was exactly, but she does remember it was raining the day his temperature finally dropped, and raining again a few days later, when it looked like they were going to lose him.
The fever's final little trick, the cruelty to make up for the usual courtesy of announcing its presence right away, was to make the lowered temperatures the most terrifying stage of the illness.
The fever leaving meant recovery. It could also mean death, and that your body was finally too weak to bother fighting anymore. And you would never know until it was too late.
Moana arrived to find Pepeu and her sister sat next to Teiki's sleeping form, his breathing so slow she could barely make it out at all.
He had been too tired to talk or move the past couple of days. One of the most energetic people in both the old and the new villages, and now even breathing had become a challenge.
Neither woman noticed Moana greet them or enter the fale, so engrossed they were in the pale, nearly deathly still boy lying before them. Pepeu had held his limp hand, trembling as she'd gently stroke at the soft curls on his head. Her sister held her close, for all the good that could do right now.
Moana had gently placed the food and water in a nearby space in the rafters and was about to leave when she heard it.
Her voice shaking through the imminent tears, Pepeu asked her son to let go.
"You can rest now, my heart," she'd said, "if you want to." And for all the anguish in the sharp sob that followed Moana could hear a smile in Pepeu's voice. "You tried so hard. You don't need to fight anymore if you can't."
The last thing Moana could remember of that visit was the lack of mosquito curtain in the rafters, and the sound of rain dripping off the eaves.
It rains the night her father falls ill. It's barely a drizzle when the healers arrive to check on him and it's pouring by the time they leave with the usual instructions to wait a few days and keep him rested and as hydrated and fed as they can manage.
For the first time in years Mom sleeps on a separate mat from her husband, sharing Moana's mosquito curtain as Dad shivers alone in his own separate curtain. One of the usual precautions. You kept the infected away from the mosquitoes that could spread the disease even further.
Not that he has it. It could be too early to tell.
But just in case.
Moana doesn't feel the almost overwhelming heat that comes with sleeping protected by a mosquito curtain. She doesn't take any comfort in the usual sound of Dad snoring gently into his bedroll.
But she does hear the rain outside, and the drip of water along the sides of the fale.
She doesn't sleep that night.
The coiled, uneasy feeling that had taken residence in her stomach ever since the day of the council had still, despite her repeated attempts to remove it, yet to vacate the premises. As a result the rest of her coils in around it, and she's staring off into nothing, hoping in vain that the darkness around her would at least bring the feeling of a dreamless rest. It doesn't, and she loses count of the number of times she closes her eyes and tries to force sleep. Her chest tightens, her thoughts muddle into a shapeless, nameless dread, and she's not sure how long her world has been a dark fog, but she knows it's too late to try to get some rest when her mother stirs beside her, and opens the mosquito curtain.
The breeze wakes her up enough to clear some of the fog. Moana stretches out to find her muscles more tensed than she'd expected, and blinks to find her eyes more sluggish than she'd thought. There's a silent yawn, and quick reassuring stroke along Pua's sleeping head before she forces herself up.
Mom doesn't comb her hair the way she tends to do whenever she wakes up, her treasured bit of alone time before her husband and daughter awaken and complain about how early life in the village starts. Moana would catch her sometimes, quiet and peaceful, usually on the outer steps watching the stars begin to fade.
But today she heads straight for Dad's mosquito curtain, striding with purpose as if she'd been awake for hours. The tapa is pushed aside with ease and she doesn't even blink at the scattered stones formerly keeping the curtain in place. Those are in a neat pile before Moana can get up to help her, and before she knows it Mom is sitting beside him, checking his temperature.
She's about to get up and ask when Mom announces it anyway.
"Still high, if you were wondering," she says, loud enough for Moana to hear.
Moana's wincing when she draws back the curtain to join her.
"How'd you know I was awake?" she says.
Mom doesn't look at her as strokes back his hair, double-checks his temperature. "Your hair's not a mess," she says. "You didn't sleep last night."
She can't even find it in herself to pretend to be shocked at her mother's powers of observation. It was stuff like this that made people wonder if she was some sort of secret demigoddess.
The pillow is shoved aside, as it tends to be, as Dad had sometime in his sleep decided he was much more comfortable with his face planted firmly in the weave of his bedroll. There's a hint of a smile as Mom strokes back some of his hair, shaking her head at his choice in sleeping position, before the Warrior Face is back on.
"He'll need water," she says. "Bring some of the drinking nuts over here, will you, Moana?"
She does.
"And you're going to have to help me bring him to the toilet fale before you leave for the day," she says. "Remind me to call your Auntie Tafi over to help watch him."
What?
"I," she says, "I thought maybe I could just stay here today. Since he's sick."
She shakes her head, and looks up for the first time since she'd opened the curtain. The Warrior Face doesn't slip for a second, and she's smiling, the very vision of sage reassurance. She gestures for Moana to come closer, and when she does Mom's hand is cradling her by the side of the face, and Moana finds herself fighting a tightness in her chest and the urge to blink back tears.
"It's the first day," Mom says. "This could still just be a regular fever."
Moana wishes she could believe that. She wishes she could get the memory out of her head that his joints had started aching before his temperature rose. How long ago was the council meeting, two, three days ago?
"But Mom," she says, "what if it's not?"
Mom's eyes dart back to him, and it's back to the vision of calm and reassurance.
"Someone still has to run the village," she says.
And the nameless, shapeless dread finds a way to curl around Moana's heart, as she imagines the pillow set aside forever, the bedroll permanently replaced with one that can accommodate one person, a necklace of whale teeth reverently placed around her neck for the first time as she finally loses her title as daughter of the chief.
She lays a tentative hand on what of her father's forehead she can touch. Barely a second touching him and it's still so hot it's almost scalding. She winces.
No. It's fine. It's fine. It's still the first day. No need to jump to any conclusions.
"He's trained you for this your whole life, Moana," Mom says. "You can do this. It'll just be today."
Moana swallows, before she gives a slow nod.
She hopes it is.
This being the people formerly of Motunui, Moana's not surprised to find that the news spread fast. Those who don't avoid her gaze give their sympathies and well wishes as she passes them by, all hope that it's nothing serious and that the chief will be back on his feet in no time. They mean it, she knows they do, but she's had a Warrior Face of her own long enough that she can spot one when she sees one. The smiles of reassurance do nothing to stop her noticing that the village has gone quiet, and the usually busy area near the main entrance of the chief's home is deserted, the usual way of things whenever a chief would be gravely ill or expected to die.
It's a courtesy, she has to remind herself. He only fell ill last night. They just want to give Dad some quiet so he can rest. It's not the custom of keeping clear the entrance to a dead chief's fale.
She readjusts her headdress and enters the medical fale to talk to the healers, trying not to think of how none of its flowers were picked by her father's hands.
Barely three years ago they had landed on a brand new island freshly pulled up from the sea, struggling to merely build the bones of a village. Moana swears she's blinked and suddenly they've not only built everything, they're not only trading, but they've now built so much and gotten so good at the trading that their second trade hall now needs an expansion. Or it seems to, according to those most familiar with them.
The dock workers shift in front of her, a couple of them fidgeting, a few glancing at the piles of stock and surplus, a few even daring to look at Moana directly as they wait for her answer.
The glance to her side is unconscious and a bad habit she's been trying to grow out of anyway, but it stings nonetheless to find no one there.
She gathers herself.
Her parents trust her to run the village without them. Now is as good a time as any to at least get the hang of it before she has to do it for real.
She sets her jaw, and turns back to the dock workers.
"Trading season is over," she says. "There aren't any more imports coming in until next year. What we have for now will do until we have enough free builders for an expansion."
The dock workers glance at each other, worried.
"But I'll bring this up at the conference next year," she says. "Chief Mori would probably appreciate freeing up his weavers from making so many sails. We'll find something else to trade. What do we need more of?"
There's more shifting, a little more fidgeting and a few more glances, before one of them speaks up.
"We could do with more hibiscus skirts," he says. "Bit hard to keep up with the demand now that we've got these new villagers coming in."
Moana nods. "Their village has those. I can get approval from the council to change the agreements. That'll be quick; they don't usually argue much over the trade deals. You're welcome to come to the next council meeting to make your case," she says. "For now, we can move the spare sails to near the boat sheds."
The dock workers glance at the sails and consider it. There's a brief moment of discussion before they turn back to her and nod. "We can do that," another says.
"Good," Moana says, and watches as they make their way towards the tall piles of sails. "Oh, by the way, can someone make sure to bring some water over to my dad?"
"You got it, Moana!"
Okay.
Okay.
She can do this.
It's just one small task of countless small tasks, but this is a good start.
For the first time in days, something uncoils in her stomach, and she breathes with ease.
The fishermen report a boat sunk on the reef. One of the trainees, they explain. The kid still needs to get his head around the very simple concept of not capsizing the boat during a simple turn. Moana can't bring herself to punish him for something she herself did so long ago so she decides to let this one go.
"We can make another," she says. "I'm just glad to know you're all okay."
There's a spare mature breadfruit tree they can use for the hull. In the meantime they'll have to sort out a rotation on their existing boats. If they still need any more boats after that the village is going to have to trade for them next year now that the rains have come and trading season is over.
They're barely done thanking her when word reaches her that the coconut groves near the boatyard need her attention and she's hiking her skirts and thankful she chose hibiscus instead of tapa today as she tracks through the mud to see what the matter is now.
"Coconut worms," Silifono is none too pleased to report.
Apparently his request to check on all the trees turned up something: the telltale fat, wriggling larvae of the beetles that make it their mission to devour the most vulnerable coconut trees from the inside. These beetles usually laid eggs in already sick trees and seemed to come in to finish the job, and once there were no more sick or vulnerable trees to eat, move onto the healthier crop. Not just any tree, they preferred the coconut specifically. Her people's food, their weaving material, their kindling, their temporary roof thatch, the source of all those and so many more things. If she didn't control this soon these little worms could ruin everything she worked so hard to build.
She did not break a goddess's curse just to watch her people be defeated by a parasite.
Silifono has a husker show her a small basket of the writhing, wriggling things just in case she doesn't believe them.
Moana frowns.
"How many trees?" she says.
"Three so far," Silifono says. "All sick, no signs of them in the healthy ones. But it's the rains. They speed up any rot problems. If we don't curb this now they're going to be eating their fair bit of the grove."
"Can they be saved?"
"It's in the early stages," the husker says. "Once we clear the worms the trees should be able to make a full recovery."
"Okay," Moana says. "Hand out the worms to anyone who wants to eat them and keep an eye out for any more. I'm not losing this grove."
"Yes, Moana."
No sooner is she done with that when Silifono asks, "How's Pepeu's roof coming along, by the way?"
Her eyes widen and there's a soft "oh no" at the realisation that she completely forgot, and before she can even let this decision sink in she's excusing herself to run all the way back to the village proper to check on just that.
It's exhausting. She's exhausted.
Leaving home around dawn wasn't enough. Sprinting from place to place wasn't enough. Skipping her daytime meal so she could check on the progress of the roof wasn't enough. She could've been a demigoddess with unimaginable powers helping people constantly without sleeping and there still would've been something more to deal with, some conflict that needed defusing, some new problem that would haunt her until it was fixed. She has no idea how her parents did it while also raising a child. She has no idea how her parents could've kept up with this pace if there continued to be no one to help share the load.
How did a village that's already built find a way to get even more hectic after the ordeal that was its construction? It's almost enough to make her just pick the next suitor who comes by and pop out a few heirs just to spread the work out a bit more. By the end of the day her skirts are filthy from mud and her feet ache from being in constant use, and she's pretty sure her brain's gone to sleep well before she has any plans to.
But she's not spent, she's not drained, until she trudges up the main road of the chief's family compound, and she sees the lights of home.
She's been taking care of Dad, sure, in what capacity she can. She's sent someone back home every couple of hours to bring over more water. She's asked everyone she's helped if they've heard anything new in the past few hours, any updates on his condition. The healers were the first people she visited before she went on to check on the village in general. She wasn't homebut it's not like she wasn't helping.
She was.
She is.
She doesn't just … leave people she can help. That's not right. That's not her.
So why does the thought of going home make her need to find some new problem to deal with instead?
Her stomach coils in on itself as she reaches the entrance to find it still clear.
And she steps inside to find Mom and her older sister Tafi sat next to Dad's sleeping form, his breathing so slow Moana can barely make it out at all.
It's the fever.
The healers confirm it when they come to check back in on him at dawn. It's the fever, and by the looks of it he's had it at least since the last council meeting. It could've been longer. If the fever had chosen to show itself even a day or two from now, it would've been too late to get him any treatment. They're lucky it spiked when it did.
Moana fights back a tightness in her throat and the sudden urge to scream. There needs to be something to blame. There needs to be something to fight. The rains, the fever, Dad's insufferable, reckless need to be out in picking flowers at dawn. There needs to be something she can actually do to help, to fix this. Now.
She didn't cross the sea, she didn't clear it of monsters, to watch her father taken down by the rains.
She can't watch him the same way she watched the fever nearly take Teiki.
Auntie Tafi, Mom's older sister who had stayed the night, lets her eyes slip shut, and it's like she's felt every hour she's been here, watching Dad, and helping Mom stay strong.
Mom barely even flinches at the news.
Her jaw sets and her eyes harden when she asks, "Is there anything else we can do?"
Tiale, the senior healer, shakes her head. "Rest, fluids, and food, I'm afraid. There's not much else outside of the waiting," she says. "But you've been wonderful, Sina, really. All of you. Chief Tui couldn't ask for better carers. He's in good hands."
Mom nods, determined as ever. The lamp light flickers on her skin as she strokes back the hair from Dad's face.
"There's been no complications?" Tiale says. "No bleeding in the gums, no rapid breathing?"
Mom pauses, before she continues stroking his hair. "No," she says. "He vomited a couple times, though. He said his head hurt."
"That's normal," Tiale says. "We'll be by to check on him tonight."
Mom nods.
"Thank you, Tiale," she says. "Before dinner, if you can make it."
"It's no problem," Tiale says. "We'll show ourselves out."
The hongi goodbye are quick and impersonal, and as soon as the healers leave Mom is back to check on his temperature as if they'd never come at all.
Moana's about to ask if she's okay when Mom just says, "Moana, go fetch more water."
"Mom—"
Auntie Tafi lays a gentle hand on Moana's shoulder, and on her face is the gentleness Moana had missed in her mother the past couple of days. "He'll be fine, Moana," she says. "Your dad's a fighter, he's not gonna let a little fever get him."
A fever, no, Moana wants to say.
But this is not just any fever.
She wishes he weren't such a late riser. She's not sure she's spoken to him since the night his temperature rose.
"I know, Auntie," she says instead.
"Moana," Mom calls from Dad's side. "You heard the healers, minnow. He needs to stay hydrated."
Moana yawns, and nods. "Okay, Mom."
Auntie Tafi can't do much more than shrug and shoot her a private smile. Your mom's worried, it's saying. Don't take it personally.
"Your aunt's helping me watch him today," Mom says. "Can you handle running the village again?"
Moana pauses.
Can she?
The sun is rising. It almost feels too late to get started on the day's work. Can she handle all the village's little problems, can she handle making all its big decisions, without her parents or her best friend and all his thousands of years of wisdom to help guide her?
But it's not exactly her choice to make. Someone does have to run the village, and this wasn't a request.
She nods. "I can handle it."
"Good," Mom says, and begins to once again stroke back his hair.
If Mom's the voice of reason at times like these, her sister is the voice of comfort. Auntie Tafi's hand is back on Moana's shoulder, and her gentle smile is almost enough to fight off the cold of the morning breeze.
"It'll just be one more day," she says.
And Moana wishes she could believe them.
She steps outside to find the entrance to the chief's fale still left clear, and quiet, water dripping off the eaves and in the distance, even the birds not as active as usual.
She doesn't just leave people she can help. But there's … not much she can do here, is there? There's nothing she can fight, there's no quests she can take, and there's only so much she can do to help watch him. She can help her dad by dealing with the things he can't, just like she helped her grandmother by going on the mission she couldn't do.
That's how she could fight this, right? That's how she could do her part?
She'd expected to feel worse when she's far enough that home is little more than another house in the distance.
Instead her stomach settles, the tightness in her throat and the sob in her chest fade, and it becomes easier to breathe.
One more day turns into another, then another, and Moana's not sure exactly how long it's been but she does know it's long enough that it's lost all sense of being anything even remotely new. It's just how things are now. She checks up on Dad, helps out a bit, and then it's out just after dawn to run the village, asking for Dad's condition and sending over water and food the whole time, until it's time to head back home to bring even more water and gather some of the boys to cook dinner. It's normal. It shouldn't be, but it is.
In practice, being chief isn't that different from the duties her parents had gradually eased her into. She's solving a lot of the same problems, resolving a lot of the same arguments, and presiding the council in much the same way she'd presided over it for maybe six years now. It's fine. It took a bit of adjusting but it's fine. The village isn't falling apart. In many ways it's the same as it's always been. In fact she might actually have the hang of being chief. She can do this. She can lead.
But then a problem would pop up that she can't make a decision on right away, or a detail would come up that she'd forgotten about, and she'd glance to the side in an infuriating force of habit, and find no one there.
And her stomach would coil, and the cold of the rains would snake her way down her spine, and she'd remember why she's leading alone. She remembers she will return to a clear entrance to her home and that one day she really won't have anyone to make sure she's making the right calls.
She learns to keep her eyes on the people before her. It's easier that way.
Which is just as well, because as rewarding as this is, it's hard enough without having to worry about … everything else going on.
In her time leading Fa'anui alone, she had overseen the repairs of a few broken pig pens, personally climbed the diseased trees of coconut grove near the boatyard to make sure they had cleared every tree of coconut worms, gotten a fair number of nets made for palolo season, negotiated a rotation of fishing boats to make up for the loss on the reef, and set up a council on what to do about the trade halls. Among countless other things.
The work never ends. It piles in on itself faster than she can hope to finish it all and everything, everything, is urgent.
And yet, she has to admit, quietly and just to herself, it beats staying home and just … sitting there, watching, wishing she could do more to actually help.
It's Teiki who relays the message this time, sidling up to her to lean casually as he can against a house post as Moana checks on the progress of his family's roof.
"You can probably guess, can you," he says.
She can. It's been an uncannily appropriate messenger each time, one that just so happened to have something to do with whatever she happened to be working on near the end of the day.
She sighs. "Mom wants me home?"
There's an apologetic shrug and smile. "'Fraid to say," he says, his voice just starting to settle down from the spectacular cracking of the years before. "Sina says he's been looking for you, too."
Moana swallows. "And his fever?"
"Still high," Teiki says, and then winks. "Though that never stopped me proposing to you, eh?"
Any other subject and she'd have rolled her eyes and smiled, wondering how long he'd wait this time until he proposed yet again.
"Go talk to him," Teiki says. "We can handle ourselves a couple hours."
She looks back up at the shrinking hole in the nearly repaired roof, all the better to keep her Warrior Face from slipping.
There needs to be something she can do. There needs to be something she can fix.
"I'm going to go check on the tapa stocks," she says. "You two need a new mosquito curtain."
Even from her peripheral vision she can feel Teiki's casual lean dissolve as he looks back at her in concern.
"Moana, that can wait, can't it?" he says. "We're staying with my aunt. We won't need a curtain until this roof's done."
But she's already on her way to the nearest storage room. "It'll just be a few minutes. I'll be over to help with dinner."
"Moana—"
"Tell Mom I'm sending over more water, okay?" she says. "Been making sure the healers do their thing."
She hates the rainy season.
The winds die and the storms come. The sea she had only just started started being able to explore once again becomes off limits, lest she invite a lost boat or two and at least a couple lost lives. The air when it isn't freezing cold and biting with the whips of the winds from over the hills is hot, and wet, hanging over her like an eternal mist that threatens to drain her of all her sweat. Mosquitoes hang thick in the air, trees grow fuzzy with fungus and black with rot, stagnant water begins to crust over with a green film that makes the water unfit for drinking, and always, always, the mud, when it's not the floods. The rainy season is miserable, and deadly, and it smells of the decay and death that tends to come with it. She has no idea what her father sees in the worst time of the year.
Moana shifts, trying to focus on Pua's soft breathing and not on the sound of rain outside the house, softly falling into shallow puddles and drumming gently onto their roof before dripping off the eaves.
She tries covering her ears, for all the good that will do.
It's just hard to block it out with the mosquito curtain—
Open.
Moana blinks at the breeze coming in and rolls to the other side to find that, yes, it does look like the curtain's open, pushed aside as it is so it looks like Mom—Moana peers into the darkness, and finds no one else in the curtain with her—and Auntie Tafi can check on him.
It doesn't feel like dawn yet. Did Dad need to go to the toilet fale in the middle of the night?
Moana gets up to step outside and—
His curtain's secure. They've put the rocks back on the edges to keep it shut, and there doesn't seem to be anyone inside. She strains to adjust to the moonlight when she spots figures seated at the entrance, Mom's silhouette hunched over as Auntie Tafi lays a tired arm over her shoulders.
Is—Is Mom crying?
"This could be a good sign, Sina," she says. Moana can't see her face from here but there's a smile in her voice that doesn't ring quite true. "His temperature falling could be good."
Alone with her sister, there's no one Mom needs to be strong for. The Warrior Face is set aside for now, and the detached monotone of the past few days is nowhere to be found.
Mom speaks with a quiet shakiness Moana hasn't heard since the night she left to restore the Heart.
"But what if it's not, Tafi?" she says.
There's a sniffle and a shaky breath and all it does is invite even shakier breathing, and soft, barely stifled sobs.
"What if I lose him?"
Auntie Tafi shuffles closer, and holds Mom like she would one of her kids, stroking her hair and hugging her tight. Mom melts against her, and the sobs flow freely, muffled by the rain. Auntie Tafi shushes and soothes her, whatever soft words of comfort she has too soft for Moana to hear over the rain and the tears.
Moana fights back the sobs threatening to come up in her as well. She fights back the memory of watching her friend's mother break down into tears. She fights back the need to actually go out and find something to physically fight.
Because she has to do something. She has to help. She's about to step in and join them when Mom's breathing eases, and she wipes her face.
"Don't—Don't tell Moana, okay?" Mom says. "I don't want her to worry."
"Of course, sis."
She sniffles, and leans against her. "Thanks."
The sisters sit in silence, leaning against each other the way Moana imagined they did when they were younger, before marriage and family and life came in and made everything more complicated.
And Moana retreats back into the mosquito curtain, listening to the rain continuing to pour, seemingly without end.
She has to sleep. She needs the comfort of the void before she wakes up to face another day of … all this, some time to forget that the morning will see a clear entrance, and the return of Mom's Warrior Face, and a headdress with flowers she's picked herself.
She hates the rainy season.
The easy period could only have gone on for so long. No sooner does she fix one problem than more pop up. Another tree is sick and the worms have come back, not just in the newly sick tree but in the ones that were sick before, the rains coming in and doing everything they can to speed along the rot. One of the roads is flooded, and the way down without it is slippery and dangerous. They'll lose access to a farm plot if they don't come up with an alternate route soon.
She's squinting through the rain and trying to find anywhere with flatter land and fewer rocks, but it's pouring, and no sooner can she describe the route to the farmers than one of council member Vete's sons comes up and asks where the nets are.
"Palolo season is coming, Moana," the son, also called Vete, says. "Dad just wanted me to remind you."
She tries not to panic when she realises she's completely forgotten.
"Vete, we're a little busy here."
"I know, I know!" he says. "But it's still coming, Moana, and if we want good catches this year we need nets."
"I know."
"Not long until the full moon."
"I know, Vete," she says. "How many more nets, do you think?"
"Than the ones you've already made? Five, seven more?" he says. "When you have the time, Moana. I just needed to remind you."
"I'll see what I can do," she says, and as he leaves she almost wants to laugh.
Time. Like she has any to spare.
Like anyone else does.
Maybe she can't do this yet. Maybe she's not ready.
She's soaking through and trudging to find another dress to wear when word reaches her that another grove has started seeing coconut worms. And on the way to that grove as she passes by the healers and asks about Dad's condition the conversation turns to them discussing a new case of the fever in the village proper: Huali, Moana's most skilled navigator. And not just her, someone else seems to be showing signs of coming down with it too. Not to mention the coughs starting up near the coast.
There are problems. There are always more problems. And the rains are doing nothing but making it all worse. They're all getting sick, their most vulnerable crops are infested, their roads are flooding and their people are tired, and just when she's checking on Pepeu's roof repairs the message comes back from Teiki, swaggering and apologetic as he smirks and leans against the most convenient pole.
Moana barely stifles a growl as he shrugs and asks her to guess what it is this time.
"Mom wants me home?"
Another helpless shrug.
"He's up," he says. "He wants to see you."
She's soaking, she says. And there's the food to prepare to visit Huali and the water to check on and the drainage ditches she needs to check up on, and—
"And you haven't talked to him in twelve days," Teiki says.
Twelve days? Has it been that long? It feels at once like a blink of an eye and a whole lifetime.
Moana swallows, and curses at the coil in her stomach and the tightness in her chest. "How is he?"
"Oh, no, no reports for you this time, my love," he says. "Sina's orders. You need to see him to find out."
He pauses. "Tell you what, though," he says, "let you know if you take me up on that proposal."
"Teiki."
He sighs. "Worth a shot."
Moana rolls her eyes.
"But Teiki," she says. "The village—"
"Your dad is part of the village, Moana," he says. "Maybe he should get a visit, too."
She stops.
She hates that he's right. She hates that the sun's been out long enough that her only enemy would be the mud. She hates that the number of pressing issues has grown to the point where so many things are urgent that nothing is urgent anymore. She hates the idea of going back to the lights of home and finding the entrance clear, and her father still in bed.
She hates that there's no reason for her not to go.
"It'll help him get better, you know," Teiki says. "Does you good to get visitors when you're sick."
She hates that he's probably right about that, too.
"I know your visits helped me," Teiki says.
And Moana smiles, despite everything. Whether she means it or whether this is the Warrior Face, even she's not sure anymore.
"Fine," she says. "But only because I can't take another proposal."
Teiki grins. "That's my girl."
She can do this.
She broke a goddess's curse. She cleared the eastern waters of its dangers. She planned and built a new village from scratch. She negotiated peaceful trade agreements between the islands. She faced off multiple rejected suitors as they hurled insult after insult at her for her rejections.
She can sit at her father's side for a few hours, and talk with him before the fever makes him go back to sleep.
It's not hard.
And anyway, she's been taking care of him all this time.
She has.
She is.
She can do this.
Moana trudges up the hill to find the lights of home, the entrance clear and the trees silent, the cold of the winds whipping up from up beyond the hills and down towards the sea.
And Dad, barely breathing, asleep again as Mom holds his hand and tells him to hold on. It's just a little longer. He can make it through this. They've been through worse. They'll go through worse. She's not going to let a little fever take him.
"Just hold on," she begs, smoothing back his hair as he sleeps, and Auntie Tafi draws Mom into a hug.
Moana fights back a tightness in her throat and the sudden urge to scream. There needs to be something to blame. There needs to be something to fight. The rains, the fever, Dad's insufferable, reckless need to be out in picking flowers at dawn. There needs to be something she can actually do to help, to fix this. Now.
She didn't cross the sea, she didn't clear it of monsters, to watch her father taken down by the rains.
She can't watch him the same way she watched the fever nearly take Teiki.
And for once, the thing that comes unbidden to her isn't despair, or a painful memory.
The thing that comes to her is an idea. One that, now that she thinks about it, should've been obvious from the start.
Her jaw sets.
There is no way she is going to just watch.
She's not going to lose anyone here.
She is Moana of Fa'anui, and she once saved the world. And if she can save the world, she can save one person.
She turns, and heads out towards the forest.
Maui never really did cover how to summon a god.
Be summoned by a god, sure, he taught her the basic protocols and gave tips for dealing with a few of the individual gods, but gods went where they pleased, and barring easy to find deities like Te Fiti, your chances of finding any particular god tended not to be that great.
"Besides," he'd once said, "if they wanna talk to you, they'll talk to you."
He'd grimaced then, probably at some distant memory. Or a recent memory, the way he'd been talking about his missions lately. "Trust me, the less you have to deal with them, the better," he said. "Once they decide they like you that's it, that's all your free time gone."
She'd rolled her eyes and elbowed him, making some smart remark about how only Maui could live for thousands of years and still complain about not having enough time.
Though now that she thinks about it, maybe it was never himself he wanted more time for.
She gets that instinct now. She wonders if he felt this way about all the mortals in his life.
As far as she knows, the tallest tree on the island is deep into the forest to the east of the chief's compound. She and Maui had found it one day as they scouted the further outskirts of the village, looking for anything of use or any danger zones her people would need to be warned of. It takes longer than it would without the help of Maui's giant hawk form, but Moana gets there in a respectable amount of time, the light still dappling through the leaves as she climbs over a rotting log and into the clearing where the tree stands proud.
It's beautiful, even more so in the symphony of the light of the sun just about to set behind her. Strong and tall, and wide enough to maybe carve an entire head voyaging canoe out of alone, this was not a tree she could see felled by the rain or eaten by coconut worms any time soon. Maui may have pulled this island from the sea but Moana wouldn't be surprised if Tāne-matua himself planted this here as a reminder of his presence.
It's a good, long moment to soak in its majesty before she has to remind herself why she's here.
Moana pulls out a pigeon from a basket—still alive, for what it's worth, just weak and sluggish—and kneels to place it at the base of the tree, muttering a short prayer of offering as she does so, a prayer that slowly grows longer and less dignified as the sun continues along its path behind her.
"It's not much," she says. "It's not immortality. It's not the breath of life. I just—"
Moana swallows, and strokes the poor pigeon's head in apology.
"—I'm just asking you to spare him just this once, just from this," she says. "Please, Tāne-matua. It's not his time yet."
And the sob that had been building up in her since the night he fell ill finally comes out, knocking the Warrior Face right off her before she can realise what's going on. She embraces the coil inside her and the ache in her chest, letting herself bend forward to lean her forehead against its bark, and the only thing she can think of to anchor her right now is Maui, beside her, keeping her together the same way Auntie Tafi seems to be the only one who can keep Mom together in times like these.
Moana wipes away a few of the tears, tries to pull herself together, even as the thing she'd been trying to avoid thinking about begins to take root.
He's going to die. Dad is going to die.
And there might not be anything she can do about it.
"Please."
The pigeon stirs beneath her, a last gasp of breath before it's gone.
Moana's eyes widen at the sight of the dead bird. Did it work? Did he accept the offering?
She looks up and around in search of the god's giant frame, the flutter of movement from the birds that constantly hover around him, and instead finds herself met with the sight of the sun growing dark and red as it makes its way towards the horizon.
It's a couple of blinks to get the glare out of her eyes, a quick turn back towards the tree to recover from the sight, and just as she starts to wonder if this worked at all, she hears a voice behind her.
"And what is it you seek, my child?"
But, deep and dark and soothing as this voice is, this is nothing like the one she can still remember from the forests of Motunui so many years ago. Instead of rumbling so low she could feel it in her bones, this one darkens the world, taking all the heat and light and humidity around her and mellowing it to an overcast day, or a cool afternoon, just as the sun is about to set.
Moana turns towards the sound of the voice behind her, to find a woman sitting on the dead log.
She's beautiful. Tall and gentle, with pale skin that speaks of a life without the sun and soft hands that speak of a life without the earth. Soft, dark hair that falls like a cascade of waves, tattoos that fill her lips and spill out in swirls and points down her chin in a delicate, deliberate little dance, and this bearing of knowing, and calm, that she knew all that you'd gone through, and she was ready to help you be at peace with it.
Her smile is soft, gently lit from behind by the sun beginning to set, and Moana doesn't know what it is about her but suddenly all is right with the world.
Moana kneels, and lowers her head.
The woman speaks.
"My presence doesn't disappoint you, I hope," she says, and her voice at once sharp and chilling and soft and warm. "You may rise, Chosen One. I think we may be past such formalities. Look if you want to. I don't mind."
Moana slowly gets up onto her feet, head still lowered, wracking her brain trying to think of all the goddesses this could be. She's in human form, with no animal companions to give away any animals she might be in charge of or any symbols of any particular trade or domain. In this form she looks like a normal human woman, albeit one with the definite air of a goddess.
It's when she takes another look at the face that Moana begins to put it together.
The goddess's eyes flash back at her, pupils dark and streaked with red, and there's a hint of a smile when she sees it dawn on Moana just who this might be.
"You wonder who I am," she says.
The sun is blazing and streaking the sky in reds and golds and purples as it continues tracing its path behind her, bathing her in the glow of the day's brilliant and spectacular end.
It's not even a blink of an eye when the human-looking woman disappears, the dark hair replaced with waves of seaweed, the pale skin replaced with the finest, smoothest obsidian, and the eyes, two polished stones of jasper glinting back at her.
She smirks. "Better?"
Moana lowers her head again. "Hine-nui-te-pō," she says. "Goddess of Death."
The laugh is soft, and gentler than she would've expected for a goddess even Maui tends to avoid.
"No need for you to announce me, dear," she says. "I know very well who I am."
She pats the blank space beside her, a more solid part of the log Moana could comfortably sit on. "Sit, Moana of Fa'anui," she says. "I am not here to welcome you to my realm. Not today."
Moana can feel her toes digging into the ground, weight shifting to the balls of her feet, just ready to run.
And finds herself instead taking a step towards the log.
It doesn't chill her to sit next to the Goddess of Death, as she thought it would. Moana would've thought, death, sadness, families torn apart and lives ruined, and that the ruler of this domain would be just as cold and terrifying as the concept she personifies. She would've expected the freezing bite of the winds near the ocean, and a dread in her heart that would drown out her thoughts. She would've expected everything around her to grow black and die.
Instead she finds peace, and rest, this loss of control that … for some reason she can actually welcome.
The hands that grip along the sides of the log slowly loosen their grip, and Moana takes a moment to appreciate the soft moss cushioning her seat.
"If I recall correctly," Hine-nui-te-pō says, "when the gods asked if you would take a reward for your restoration of the Heart of Te Fiti, you said you would have none."
Moana swallows, and nods. "Yes."
"And now you would like to change that answer."
Her hands come to grip at her hibiscus skirts, still damp with the rain.
She swallows again.
"Yes."
The goddess takes a moment to consider, and the look Moana can feel on her isn't one of anger, or offence, but like a look into her soul, and an understanding of what exactly it is that she means.
Her hand comes to cradle Moana's face in hers. It's smooth, and comforting, and shouldn't be enough to bring Moana back to the brink of crying and yet here she is, feeling every stinging tear threatening to spill out of her and every little hitch in her breath threatening to send her back into sobs, as the Goddess of Death looks on, sad, and knowing.
The hand slowly comes away, but her gaze doesn't.
"You ask for your father's life," she says.
Moana swallows the sob that she barely keeps from escaping her mouth. "Yes."
"And for how long?"
It's like being woken from a dream.
Moana blinks herself out of her thoughts, takes a moment to find her bearings.
"I'm … I'm not sure I understand the question," Moana says.
She's met with an intense gaze, and the slightest tilt of the head.
She asks again, soothing, and dark, with the air of someone who can already predict what she's going to say. "How much more time would you like for him, Moana?" she says. "How many years?"
It's the running of the village all over again, but tenfold. How many years? Could she even be trusted with a decision like that?
Hine-nui-te-pō gives it another try.
"Or months," she says. "Days. How much longer would you like your father to live?"
She doesn't— She can't even begin to try to answer that question. Days?
But her head tilts further, and her gaze grows more intense. The pity becomes mixed with … she's not sure. Curiosity, maybe. Fascination. Something occurs to the goddess, lighting up her jasper eyes, and her eyebrows raise up for a second, so close to her seaweed hair.
"Or would you like to transfer your gift to him?" she says. "Would you like for him to become a demigod, and have him assume the position you could have taken six years ago?"
Dad, a demigod? Cursed to live like Maui and all those others, doomed to watch everyone around him die while he stays on, and on, and on, fighting every day to keep from forgetting them?
She doesn't feel the tear rolling down her face until it drips down onto her skirt, and by the time she's wiping it away it's only joined by more tears, her chest coiled so tight she can almost feel it threatening to burst.
"No," she says, "no, that's not what I'm asking."
The goddess takes another moment to consider.
"Then what are you asking for, Chosen One?"
And she's not sure.
Moana's hands grip her skirts, before they slowly let go.
"I guess," she says, "I'm asking you to spare him from this death. Let him die naturally some other time."
"And when would you like this natural death to be?"
How could she even ask—?
"I don't know," Moana says. "When it's his time."
"I see," Hine-nui-te-pō says. "And you are certain that this time is not his time?"
Yes.
No.
She's not sure.
Moana swallows. "Please," she says. "I can't lose him, not now."
"And why is that?"
Why is—? She's the Goddess of Death. Of all people she should know how death affects those left behind. She should know why people mourn, why they beg for the lives of their loved ones. Has no one ever asked her this sort of thing before?
Hine-nui-te-pō rises, and stands before her, bathed in the light of the setting sun, every inch the major goddess she is.
"Would it be better if his death came once you learned how to run the village?" she says. "Would you prefer to lose him after he finds you a husband, or after you give him the grandchildren he's always wanted?"
"I—" she says, "I don't know."
"When will you be able to lose him, Moana?"
"I don't know."
"Then why did you think this was something you could ask of us?"
The tears flow unbidden, and before she knows it she's choking back sobs, wiping uselessly at her face, which refuses to dry as more tears come in to fill the void, endlessly falling and falling and falling like the rains that had tormented her the past few weeks.
Hine-nui-te-pō's hand tilts Moana's head to look upwards, and towards her, and suddenly the heat inside of her is gone, replaced with the calm of a cool afternoon.
Her tears stop.
Something inside her uncoils, as it suddenly becomes clear.
"I … just wanted to help him," she says. "I just wanted to stop feeling like the only thing I could do was watch."
And the gaze is once again replaced by the warm smile, and the blazing scarlets and oranges around her almost seem to soften again, to the regal reds of royalty, and the soft yellows of the hibiscus by the beach.
Her hand comes away again, and she moves to sit back where she was before.
There's a faraway look at some distant memory, and the Goddess of Death smiles at something in private before turning her attention back to Moana.
"It is indeed one of the kindest ways I've been asked to spare a life," she says. "I wish my own father were worthy of such effort."
Moana nods. She knows the twisted story of Hine-nui-te-pō's father well enough.
"But," she says, "I have the feeling that none of this is what you truly want."
What?
Moana looks up.
"What I truly want?"
Hadn't she said it already? Didn't she come all the way her to beg Tāne-matua to spare her father's life? Wasn't that the entire reason she came here? What more could she have wanted?
Those jasper eyes continue to look over her, searching, sad. Moana is reminded of those long evenings spent talking with Maui, or her mother, when they sensed something was bothering her and forced her to talk.
She's not sure the last time she had one of those talks. It could've been a few weeks ago. It could've been a few months.
Hine-nui-te-pō's gaze softens, and there's another sad smile before those jasper eyes look out towards the tree.
"There are questions you would like to know the answers to," she says, "more than you would like to save your father's life. These are the questions that keep you from being at his side as we speak."
Moana follows her gaze to where she left the offering, the dead pigeon, stiff and cold and already beginning to be eaten by ants. Her stomach coils at the thought of it swelling up, and breaking down, rot by the rains and eaten by the forest until all that is left is its scattered bones.
"Ask me what you need to know, Moana," Hine-nui-te-pō says. "I will do my best."
Moana winces at the ants swarming thicker until she can barely make out the feathers, and she takes a breath.
"Will it hurt," she says, "when he dies? Did it hurt for my gramma?"
There's a search before something dawns on her.
"That's right, you did not actually see her pass," she says.
"No, I didn't."
Come to think of it, Moana hadn't actually seen anyone in her family die in front of her.
Or outside the family for that matter.
Mom's parents died just before she married Dad. Grampa died when Moana was a few months old. And Gramma … Well, Moana would've been there by her side if she had any choice in it.
Right?
Was it a mistake to not at least wait until after she passed? Would she be this affected by Teiki's near death, and her father's condition, if she were around to watch someone die whose death she had been prepared for for years? Would she be at his side now if six years ago Gramma had just told her to take the boat after, instead of right before her death?
Hine-nui-te-pō watches the ants the way anyone else would a sunset, or the stars beginning to rise.
"The pain before the crossing is beyond my control," she says. "I can predict it no better than you. What matters is that, for people like Tala, and Tui, the pain will end when life does."
"Will my dad be okay?"
"If I can save him from Whiro's hunger," she says, "yes. He will be cared for, as you all now care for him."
Moana swallows, as she thinks back to Pepeu the day his fever went down, and Mom the night Moana caught her crying. She thinks back to the village full of neverending work, and the duties piling up so high she had forgotten maybe half the things to do now. She thinks of the day she will have to put away Dad's pillow for the last time, and the necklace of whale's teeth, reverently placed around her neck as she finally loses the title of daughter of the chief.
It's going to happen. Sooner or later, whether she's there or not, whether she can do anything or not, whether she's prepared or not, Dad will die, and she will have to run the village on her own.
She asks the question.
"Will we be okay?"
And it seems to be the one Hine-nui-te-pō's been waiting for.
"At last," she says, and those jasper eyes turn back towards her. "Moana, how you will fare after any death is up to you."
She indicates a part of the log they sit on, her dark fingers pointing towards a part of the log that had sunken in. "Some people hold it inside, and let it rot them from within." And on to another part, where parasites had started from the outside in. "Some people strip off their dignity bit by bit, and leave themselves exposed."
And then she looks at Moana. "But you," she says, and takes a moment to consider her next words. "Tell me, would you say you continued with your life after Tala came into my care?"
"I guess," Moana says. "I guess I did."
"Then this is something you've had experience with."
Moana swallows. It's the part of the story Maui tends to skip over, the part where her parents brought her to the place they left Gramma's body, the part where she spent weeks getting used to Gramma's empty fale, and the sight of the shore with no dancer.
"Yeah."
"Moana, death is something that needs to exist," Hine-nui-te-pō says. "Without it, we would not have this log to sit on. These trees and fields would have nothing to fertilise them. Your people would have no need to go out and live their lives. And your grandmother would still be in pain."
Gramma was in pain, by the end, wasn't she. She'd grown slower the year she died, more prone to wheezing and joint pain. And by the end …
"Why did you reject a divine life, Chosen One," Hine-nui-te-pō says, "without sickness, without death?"
Moana shrugs. "I don't know," she says. "Because it didn't feel right for me."
"And now, now that you know how this life has affected your Maui?" she says. "Is that a decision you've come to regret?"
She thinks of the families he outlived, the families he forgot. Names, and a detail or two, and not much else beyond that.
"No."
"Then it does no use to fight what is meant to be," Hine-nui-te-pō says. "Death will happen to all of your kind, my child." She lays a hand gently on Moana's shoulder, and in her voice is the story of countless deaths she had seen, and countless deaths she will see in the future. "It is the rest after a life well lived. Sometimes it is better to accept that all you can do is to help ease the way."
"You're right," Moana says. "You're right. I should've been visiting. I should've kept him company. I was just … afraid, of watching him die."
Hine-nui-te-pō nods, as if she'd been waiting for her to say this.
Moana takes a shaky breath, just as the oranges deepen to red and the reds deepen to purple. "I'd like to ask something now."
"And what is that?"
"I'd like to ask it be made official," she says, "so I'm not tempted to use it again. The gods owe me nothing. I'm on my own."
The jasper eyes flash with the slightest hint of surprise. "You would have no reward?"
"Only the same one I asked for the first time the gods approached me," Moana says. "That I live with my people, as one of them, for the rest of my days."
The goddess takes in this petition, stands up, and beckons Moana to stand before her.
She never would've believed it if anyone ever told her that a hongi with the Goddess of Death would feel like the breeze just as the stars come out, that it would take away the sting in her eyes and the coil in her stomach. She never would've believed it if anyone ever told her that she would come away from it breathing easier, and feeling lighter, and for the first time in weeks, thinking clearer than she ever had.
And yet, here she is, finally at some sort of peace.
Hine-nui-te-pō smiles, lit softly as she is by the light of the fading sun.
"Uncle Tangaroa chose well when he chose you," she says.
Moana breathes in the cool of the sunset breeze, and lets her eyes slip shut to just … feel this, this lack of fog.
She can handle this. She means it this time.
Someday he will be gone. Someday either he or Mom will go to bed knowing the other one isn't going to be there beside them. Someday the entrance will be clear for the death of a chief and not out of politeness or a watchful caution. Someday Moana will lose her title, and gain his, and that someday might come sooner than she's ready.
But she'll step up. She'll carry his memory in her heart and she'll keep everyone else going.
For his sake.
She'll make him proud.
Life gets sad, Maui once said, but life goes on.
She opens her eyes to find the sun blazing red behind them, the sky painfully vivid as the day finally draws to a close.
"Hine-nui-te-pō?" she says.
"Yes, my child?"
Moana lets herself look out and away from the sunset, and towards the direction of the village.
"Is it his time yet?"
The Goddess of Death places a gentle hand on Moana's shoulder. "That, I cannot tell you."
"But when it will be," Moana says, "will you take care of him?"
Her voice is a warm fire on a cold night, a cool afternoon after a punishingly hot day, and Moana doesn't know what it is about her, but suddenly all is right with the world.
"As I take care of all of you," she says, and to Moana's surprise, brings her into a hug.
Moana stifles one last straggling sob, and hugs her back.
"Thank you."
Moana looks over him again, just to be sure.
It's an overcast morning, but just light enough to see without any need for a lamp. His breathing is steadier, she notices, steadier now than she'd observed since the fever went down. No splotches on his skin, no bleeding that she can notice, no sweating, no waking up to go vomit, none of the usual signs that this could all go downhill.
Moana bites back a smile as she finally lets herself believe, maybe he's actually getting better.
Beside her Teiki grins. "Told you a visit would do him good."
"Shouldn't you and the boys be cooking?" Moana says.
"Pfft," he says. "We gotta make sure he's even hungry enough to handle food yet, my love, there's a method to this."
"If by method you mean excuse to spend time with me."
"It can be both," he shrugs. "So the chief's finally coming around, is he?"
Another quick sweep of his clear skin, his limbs stretched out freely and without any more pain.
"I'm waiting on the healers to confirm," Moana says, "but it's … better. Better than yesterday, anyway."
"Good," he says. "Be a shame if our kids grew up without a grampa, eh."
"Teiki."
He shrugs again. "Just saying," he says, "you ever change your mind about royal marriage—"
Moana fights back a smile, shaking her head.
In front of her Dad stretches, giving out a little yawn against the mattress before he rights himself and rolls to face the ceiling instead of the floor.
He blinks up at Moana, his eyes still adjusting to the morning light.
"You're not Sina."
Moana's hugging him before she realises it, revelling in the sound of his voice. After about two weeks of leaving home before he wakes up and coming back after he's gone to sleep, finally, his voice.
She's a voyager. She's gone months without hearing it before.
Still. She'd begun to fear she'd never hear it again.
She hugs him tighter.
Dad yawns again. "Morning to you too."
And Moana giggles against him before she breaks away.
"Mom's out with Auntie Tafi," Moana says. "Thought I'd take over for a bit."
Teiki smiles from his end of the mat. "How's the appetite today, Chief?"
"Starving," Dad groans. "The fishermen back yet?"
Teiki grins again. Weakness and loss of appetite were other signs to look out for after the temperature finally fell. "I'll get the bonito ready."
"Good lad," Dad says, and blinks back the last few bits of bits of sleep as he watches him scamper off to the cooking fale.
He turns to Moana. "I don't suppose you'd consider him for—?"
"No, Dad," Moana says.
He huffs. "The things I do for grandchildren."
She stifles another giggle.
It shouldn't be this good to talk to him again.
Pua looks up from his position curled up at Dad's feet, and as if noticing he's awake, moves to curl up next to his stomach instead, to which Dad gives a long-suffering sigh and scratches him behind the ear. "Your pig's been doing this ever since I got sick."
Good. Good Pua. "He's trying to keep you warm, Dad," she says. "You'd need it in this weather."
"Don't see why." He looks out onto the cool of the grey morning, and smiles at the morning breeze. "I love the rainy season."
Of course. It's making them all sick, it's making it hard to work, it nearly killed him, but no. He insists on loving the worst time of the year.
"Can you sit up?" Moana says. "I got you something."
"An apology for your cheating while jasmine picking, I hope."
"Better," she grins. "Look to your left."
He groans and makes a whole show of rolling his head over to look where she's pointing, when he spots it, and begins to smile.
The closest post to him, covered in vines and red hibiscus, just bloomed this morning, still wet from last night's rain.
"Teiki and I spent the morning making it," Moana says. "You like it?"
He reaches his hand over to hold hers. "It's wonderful, petal," he says. "Thank you."
Moana squeezes back.
Thunder starts to roll in the distance, and the air grows heavy with a hot, invisible mist, and just before the sky darkens enough Moana notices the growing amounts of grey in her father's hair, the greater number of lines on his face. His smiles and worries have made their mark, and soon those joint pains will be more than just a temporary thing.
She needs to be even more serious about learning to run the village. She's not exactly ready, but … then again, who really is.
She wonders if this is how he felt, when it was clear Grampa wasn't coming back from the sea.
She's thinking of coconut worms, and mud, and drainage ditches and trade hall expansions and fever precaution measures, when he asks her what's wrong.
Moana shakes her head. "I was just wondering."
"About?"
"Dad," Moana says, "what was it like when you had to become chief?"
Dad blinks in silence for a second, and then squints at her. "Moana, am I dying."
"You're not dying, Dad."
"Moana, you need to tell me if I'm dying," he says. "Your mother can't be trusted. She's too optimistic and she's too good an actor."
She laughs, just as the rain begins to fall. "Dad. You're not dying."
Dad's squint only barely softens when the shower falls gently on their roof, and water begins to drip off the eaves and into the beginnings of puddles outside. Nearby she can hear the birds of the forest, louder now than they've been for days.
"Fine," he says. "I'll believe you. For now."
It shouldn't be this good to hear his jokes again.
"Why do you need to know about your grandfather?"
Moana shakes her head. "It's nothing," she says. "It can wait."
Dad squints at her again, suspicious, when he notices something in turn, and breaks into a knowing smirk. "Being chief is hard, huh?"
Moana's tired again just thinking about going back out there. Palolo season. Quarry maintenance. Council meeting coming up soon with a focus on the duties of the lesser chiefs. And she's sure she's missing out at least five more things. "Now I get why you're so grumpy all the time."
"You're supposed to be making me feel better."
"And here you are," she smirks back, "smiling."
He lets out a huff of amusement, lets his eyes slip shut for now. "Shouldn't you be checking on the village?"
Moana smooths back his hair. "They can wait," she says. She holds his hand in hers as she watches the rain drip off the edges of the roof. "Besides. It's raining."
Dad shifts again, all the better to see the hibiscus-covered post, and his beloved rain.
He squeezes back. "Thank you, petal."
And she smiles, revelling in the sound of his voice, the sight of his chest rising, and falling, and rising again. He's going to be fine. At least for now, he's going to be all right. And from now on, she is going to treasure every moment they can share together, while they can still have them.
"I love you, Papa."
They watch the raindrops fall off the edges of the roof, and fall into puddles at the entrance, the birds in the trees nearby, and Moana lets herself notice for the first time, just how green everything's become, just how many flowers have begun to bloom.
Notes: Dancing Kid (called Teiki in this series) shows up in the film almost immediately when Moana comes back to to Motunui and he's on her voyaging canoe at the end of the film, so I headcanon that he becomes a dancer by profession but he's close to Moana's family so will take time off to help out if needed. There's a woman who appears near Sina a lot that I like to imagine as Tafi. You can see her in the scene where Heihei tries to sit on the earth oven and near Sina when they're presenting her ceremonial dress for the first time.
Palolo as it's eaten is not exactly a kind of worm so much as it is the segments of a certain type of reef-dwelling worm shed during its mating season. Apparently it's an acquired taste and its flavour is rather like caviar and seaweed. Hardcore people will just eat it raw as they catch it, but these days you can do things like have them on toast or fry them with eggs. The timing for getting a good catch is crucial. If there aren't that many on the morning they actually are expected then they might show up again shortly after the next full moon, but if there are good numbers on the first night then that's it, that's your only chance for the year.
I see some wonderfully creepy portrayals of Hine-nui-te-pō in fic and thought it'd be nice to try out something more like Te Rangi Hiroa's interpretation. From his 1929 book, The Coming of the Maori: "Though referred to as the Goddess of Death for her rightful slaying of Maui, [Hine-nui-te-pō] was really a kindly deity who was friendly to the descendants of Tane when they passed through the portal of the Underworld."
This chapter was supposed to be about 4000-6000 words. Whoops.
Anyway, so the final chapter for this fic is Moana's Bad Call (not the actual chapter title). No promises this time about when it's coming out. Writing a thousand words a day sounds fun until you realise you're dredging up painful memories every day for months while constantly stressing out over word counts and research and real life responsibilities. I don't want to overextend myself again but I do intend to finish this, so from now on the series is going at my own pace. I hope you understand.
