When she was about four years old, Moana and her eight friends; four boys, four girls, all of them with black hair, eyes as brown as their skin, each wearing an individual piece of cloth on the lower half of their bodies; were invited to a one-woman drama narrated by her father's mother, Tala.
Tala did not look a day over seventy five, for she still had her black hair that began to lighten into the shades of white that came with her age. Sharing her granddaughter's pink frangipani worn on the right side of her head by her fornix, she wore the red and tan dress of landscape patterns and an orange armband on her right elbow to establish her station as a dowager chieftess. As the wife of the first chief who passed on six years ago, she had a great habit of telling stories to abide the ways of tradition and to ensure that all legends survived into an age of preservation. She told her stories through words and scrolls that she herself had illustrated. Even with the scrolls that told the story in an illustrated form, a picture was forming inside Moana's head as she sat in front of the other toddlers, her grandmother's voice building up a powerful story of origin, avarice and hope.
"In the beginning, there was only ocean…until the mother island emerged! Te Fiti! Her heart held the greatest power ever known—it could create life. And Te Fiti shared it with the world. But in time, some begin to seek Te Fiti's heart out of lust, jealousy and desire. They believed if they could possessed it, the great power of creation would be vast. And one day, the most daring of them all voyaged across the vast ocean to take it. He was a Demigod of wind and sea. He was a warrior. A trickster. A shapeshifter who could change from human to any kind of animal with the power of his magical fish hook. And his name was Maui. But without her heart, Te Fiti began to crumble into dust, giving birth to a terrible darkness. Maui tried to escape, but was confronted by another who sought the heart: Te Kā, a demon of lava and fire. Maui was struck from the sky, never to be seen again. And his magical fish hook and the heart of Te Fiti, were lost to the sea. Where even now, 1000 years later, Te Kā and the demons of the deep still hunt for the heart, hiding in the darkness that will continue to spread, chasing away our fish, draining the life from island after island until every one of us is the bowed by the bloodthirsty jaws of inescapable death! But one day, the heart will be found by someone who would journey beyond the reef, find Maui, deliver him across the great ocean to restore Te Fiti's heart and save us all."
Now holding a scroll of Te Kā in her right hand and giant crustacean on the left with its claws raised, pinching for a star that represented the heart, Tala finished the story by spilling her tea onto the scroll depicting mountains surrounded by a tan ocean. The liquid blackened the scroll and with two strong hands she ripped it away to reveal a face that frightened a girl on Moana's left and a boy fainted dead away on her right while she was the only one who clapped. The others were just frozen, unsure of what to make of this. Her face smiled with inspiration at the very end of the story and her head directed itself to see her father, Tui Waialiki, who wore red trousers, a necklace of shark's teeth and a headdress of red feathers with two additional teeth on either side giving the near appearance of devil horns.
"All right, metua vahine, I think the children have had enough for today."
He said this as he clapped twice into the hut, his arms reaching out for his beloved baby girl.
"Metua tane!"
Moana's arms hopped up, hoping to hold onto her father's face before Tui had picked her up and her bottom was now in the formed cradle of Tui's right arm.
"I should mention to all of you that no one goes outside the reef."
And his eyes shot a look of dismay at his mother, who crossed her arms, visually dissatisfied with her son's complacency.
"We are safe here," Tui expressed his love for Moana by rubbing his nose against hers. "There is no darkness or monsters…"
But he stopped just time to let his left knuckles collide with a pillar made of coconut bark, an 8-foot roll of a scroll revealing the drawing of a hideous beast with fourteen spikes on his back and ten sharp teeth in his open mouth. In fact, it seemed as though that method was the only way for Tala to store and preserve her scrolls by hanging them from the roof edges and rolling them up, if not to create a dramatic effect of fear to upstage her audience. The toddlers, overpowered by that fear, gave a chorus of screams and ran the same way they came out.
As the chief rushed out as well, hoping to pacify the children, Moana's eyes turned to the water glittering in the sun. Once her father had lowered her onto the floor, Tala followed after him out of a habitual need for assistance and this provided an opportunity for Moana to be alone with what she thought had in store for the many things she had yet to learn in life.
The sunlight shining through was calling her to the ocean, her feet carrying her body through the trees and bushes until she reached a clearing, revealing a beach that was peaceful and quiet with no one else around. The pink hibiscus embedded on the right side of her head shone in the sun as she stepped away from the leaves and felt the sand stemming into the pores of her bare feet. Waves crashing and the sounds of birds filled the air as she skipped merrily to that one body of large blue liquid that had never felt before. There was nothing out ahead of her but the ocean itself and perhaps even six smaller islands in the distance. What came first to Moana as a likely gift from the ocean was a tan lace murex shell with a pink interior and shades of it surrounded the exterior. So beautiful in the sparkling water of the sunlight, it shone in her eyes, somewhat preventing her from picking it up until the shine had faded. Then she proceeded to pick it up.
She giggled at the beauty of this strange object until there was a crow. A crow that signaled the approach of three black furred with red bellied members of the falconidae family swooping over a baby turtle from a chelonioidea clan. Somehow, he had wandered off from his mother and father and now felt like was trapped in a cage, fearful of the birds preparing to eat him. Moana seemed to know this from her grandmother's teachings and had to find a way of getting him back to his natural habitat.
Placing the lace murex ten feet away from where the water could take it away from her, Moana'a tiny right hand reached for a palm leaf and her trusting eyes to the baby turtle allowed her to view the human as an escort back to the sea, with the leaf being an equivalent of an ancient umbrella. Moana could have simply picked him up with her hands, but along with a fear of the birds attacking her, she perceived the turtle being too heavy for her to carry.
The alternative came when she began shouting "shoo!" to one of the three birds, waving her left foot at it's beak and using the leaf as a shield for herself, allowing the second bird to hold it's mouth onto the turtle's tail for three seconds until Moana flapped her arms in a horrific imitation of a bird in her own mind and went back to cup her hands into the sand, lifting the baby off the earth and carefully lowered him into the water.
Watching the baby turtle swim off, Moana seemed happy and satisfied with the job done. And then, the true valor of a senseless act came through into the endless drops of the ocean and it almost sounded like the gods, goddesses and sea creatures of the deep were chanting her name.
Moana….
Moana heard it, mystified by the body of water forming a dry path for her, revealing a smaller version of the pink and tan shell she had recovered earlier. This one was a busycon spiraltum, also known as a pear whelk. The water dissipated even further to reveal an even smaller shell; a scaphella junonia. The colors were similar but the shape presented a sign of inferiority. With now two shells in her hands, Moana went further at the dry path of sand opening up for her, having gone at least eighteen feet and as she progressed, the wall of water was about nine feet above her head, giving her a clear view of the underwater life. In it, she could see some families of fishes staring at her, others minding their own business and others running off in plain fear while assuming that this human girl had penetrated their habitat.
A large turtle who might have been an octogenarian drew her attention, with his son, the baby turtle following his father seven inches away from his tail. His right eye noticed Moana and he turned to wave thanks and goodbye from his left fin.
As the big and small turtles disappeared in the haze of blue, Moana's ears heard a flow of water rising upwards and what had come with its edge nine feet above her was an innocent spirit which took the form of a still wave. The wave almost appeared to be a human hand fused together, perhaps even a smile when Moana tiled her head three degrees to the right and he did the same. This spirit of the ocean, or goddess as some would view it as, was just about as innocent as the girl before it.
Setting the shells down, Moana's right hand reached for the tip of the wave, who seemed to be curious enough to get close to her. Sure enough, when her right index finger made contact with the tip, it leaked like blood pouring out of an easily pierceable body, dousing her eyes. Moana giggled and unintentionally let the water consume her hair, creating an internal tornado that fused every strand she had into a large cowlick, the carnation perched on the edge of it.
Then suddenly a bright green oval came through into the wall of water and Moana first saw it coming straight toward her. Her right hand reached into the wall and she removed it, entranced by its beauty.
The oval looked like a piece of jade and had been carved with a single spiral path in the center. Above the spiraling path were carefully round shaped bumps surrounded by squares, at least three of them, with some triangular bumps under the spiral and the other side was pretty much the same when she had inspected it.
"Moana!"
Another voice, a masculine one belonging to her father came into her ears along with his entire body. Moana quickly walked back to her father, still carrying the jade and she had made it just in time to get back on dry land. Tui picked her up and carried her over his right shoulder.
"Moana, what are you doing out here? You scared me half to death."
Moana's arms reached for the water that was far from her grasp.
"I wanna go back."
Tui held Moana to face her.
"I know, I know," her father reasoned. "But you must not go beyond the reef. It is very dangerous and frightening."
"Why is it dangerous?"
"Well, for one thing; there are sharks who like to eat people, barracudas who can rip off your limbs and octopuses that can squeeze you to death. Now what do you say me and you go back to the village?"
Moana could only take a final look at the water that she had interacted with, questing her ability still clutching the jade in her hands very tightly and not willing to let go until she was able to put it in a safe place back at home. The shell she had admired earlier was also fading from view. She would get it back the next day.
Tui and Moana were joined by the chieftess Sina, whose thin figure of brown skin and black hair were as beautiful as the flora of the island. She wore a tan dress covering a longer one with a light mauve on the right leg and magenta with floral patterns on the left leg. The rim of her top was blood red and she also wore pink carnation on the left side with a headband made of teeth. The sight of seeing the woman who gave birth to her was enough to make Moana happy enough to run into her arms and hug her.
"You will do wondrous things my little minnow."
Tui turned the two women back to the village.
"But first, you must learn where you are meant to be."
As five men raked the fa'atoaga far before them, Moana, riding on Tui's back as he shouted while motioning his hands to "Make way Make way!" as he planned introduce her to a vast knowledge of the village she grew up in and first lesson was a dance. Her mind, targeting the ocean, toddled towards it. No one but an old woman in orange saw her leave, waving casually as she did before she saw her chieftess running up to grab her. The second dance lesson took place in front of the fale fono, with Tui, Sina and three men with long hair and lower clothing of tan and black performing the Hula Kahiko and because she was so good at it, a trio of older men gave her three crowns of purple leis, red carnations and white Tahitian gardenias, which she would later grow into.
Next, Moana learned how to draw using paints made from amaumau and horu, her first drawing being that of a raft at sea. In spite of the approval and disapproval of her parents, they also thought her how to wave baskets from coconut palm tree leaves. She was introduced to a sextet of roosters led by Tui's loyal pet called Hei-Hei. With wide eyes, head of red, a neck of yellow to orange and a slender body of blue and green feathers, he was very cocky, aggressive, proud and judgmental, at the same time making him look stupid as Moana had observed his behavior getting him into tripping over a small, stone rock, beak-first. She followed the roosters on tip toe one time which lead her to the beach, igniting her excitement at wanting to see more of the ocean.
"I wanna see!" she told her father once he had reclaimed her from setting foot in the water.
"Do not walk away and stay on the ground where you belong."
And that was all the reprimanding she needed from Father for the day.
About a year later, it was during a not-so-mild hurricane which made the ocean angry for no reason other than a growing death count of fish, mostly performed by humans for the sake of food. Most of the villagers were cuddled up into blankets in the maota tofa, safe and warm from the high winds that threatened to tear down the huts. Moana's brown eyes peered through the curtains forming as a wall, which were carefully tightened down to prevent the storm from ripping them off. Thinking she could convince the storm otherwise from laying waste to her village, she bravely set her right foot onto the dampened sand and forced her five-year-old body straight to the beach.
She shouted "STOP!" on a rock that almost seemed to be as high as her voice. The rock, located on the water seemed to be above the level it was currently at, but it rose when the sea did not heed her words and in a sense of blind rage, pushed her into the water. Moana could only gasp for breath, avoiding the oncoming surges of water that seemed to come into her mouth at all directions. Her feet were about an inch away from the sea floor and if she could not rise any further, she would drown immediately. Any chances of trying to turn back only hindered the progress of her trying to turn back to the sea.
Tui, who had been looking for Moana the moment he realized she was missing, only had one explanation. He had seen her falling from the rock and he rushed just in time to pull Moana out of the water before she could be swept off into the sea by another wave. He turned counterclockwise back to his wife and mother who were just about equally worried as they were.
"This is what happens when you let her think the ocean is something you can control!" Tui reprimanded the two women.
But his mother had other ideas.
"I'll go talk to her."
Using a blanket to dry her hair once they were back inside, Moana could only feel the disappointment of her grandmother's words and her inability to put the ocean under her command.
"That was dangerous, do you understand me?"
"Yes," Moana wept quietly.
Tala continued.
"The ocean is not your pet, nor is it your slave. It is a force of a nature that we must use in order to travel on our ships. There comes a time where it does not always want to play with you and when in a mood like this…it does not always follow orders."
Her heart melted at the sight of Moana's tears and the following hug did not stop for no more than three minutes. In addition, there were two things Moana learned that day: her grandmother was not the kind of woman to be too angry at her and that she had to be gentle with the ocean. In the end, her grandmother quelled her fears by telling her she had brave eyes and that it would be her duty in life to become a brave warrior just like Maui.
It around the time she was six when her father first told her more about the reason as to why he did not let anyone go beyond the reef in search of other lands. The entire conversation took place on a raft while the two were fishing. Moana was lying on her abdomen, looking down at the water, while her father brimmed the sail and checked the baskets for fish. When he saw Moana's right hand smoothing the water, he asked.
"Moana, what exactly are you doing?"
The girl looked over her right shoulder at her father.
"Petting the ocean. Grandmother Tala says I have to be gentle."
Tui took three steps closer to his daughter and said.
"Well, why don't you come over here and be useful? I could use some help with the sail."
Moana perched her feet on the starboard side where her father was and pushed her hands against the bottom pole.
"Just lean back help tip the sail," her father instructed. "Move too much and the boat will stall."
And so she held on, careful not to let go. Eventually, the boat moved at a leisurely pace and that was the exact moment Moana rested her arms against the bottom pole and asked.
"Metua tane? How come we can never go past the reef?"
"The reef acts as a barrier that keeps us safe. As you may have known, kaikamāhine, there are no other lands and if there are, the people who live there have similar reasons."
"But Grandmother Tala says we did not used to just sit here and let the island provide the life we needed. We explored other parts of the world during the great migration to discover thousands of islands. And that is what I want to do, become a navigator like Maui."
"We have not voyaged in a thousand years for a reason. Past the reef is the edge of nowhere and after that there is nothing."
Moana felt that falling off the edge of the earth sounded completely unimaginable.
"You mean only the ocean? Nothing else…?"
"Not even clouds or stars or even fish. Everything that was there is long gone from here. A powerful land spirit named Te Po consumed every last bit of it."
And that is just what her mind was, nothing. In addition, her face was flat with dread at experiencing an endless void herself. But Moana continued with another question.
"What about Te Fiti?"
"Te Po consumed it too."
She sulked over that fact for the entire day. No matter how scintillating her father sounded to be, it seemed he did not know everything.
Moana first learned about the coconut when she was seven and how rich and deliciously sweet the water inside it was, something that further piqued her interest in the ocean. These green coconuts, used to make fiber for their nets, had leaves that were capable of building fires (as Hei-Hei had experienced for himself when attempting to feel the warmth of the flames before Moana saved him from being scorched). To pick the coconuts off the trees, some had to shake them and some would just climb up and pick the coconuts off their roots and throw them in the baskets which could fill up to about five coconuts at a time. Others would use axes to chop them off their roots, while those below with the baskets caught them.
For her birthday, she received a dwarf pig with fur as white as a lamb and some black splotches on his right ear and withers. She named the shoat Pua for it seemed to be as adorable as his pink nose along with the lighter pink pigments of his ears. He had more energy than any other farrow on the island and loved to accompany Moana wherever she went, even on days where she would paddle her 9-foot tall canoe behind the rock where her parents, seeing her from the distance, ran over to the rock and it was her father who scooped her up and hung his daughter over his left shoulder to take her back to where she truly belonged. Moana was just about as dismayed as Pua, whom they left behind in the canoe with an oar in his mouth. They eventually sent a trio of men to get him out and return the canoe to the beach.
Returning home, Tui and Sina had Moana try on a new crown of red feathers, a clam on the headband and three heliotrope pearls festooning the front, along with four white leaf designs and seven rubies under the large pearl. A crowd of one hundred came to see how she looked in the headdress that suited her white top drawn with three foam flowers, a necklace of shells with a fish hook and a skirt of red. They stood between the maota tofa and the fale fono, which had a path long enough for all three to walk down in the equivalent of an ancient parade with no other performers.
To her right, Moana could see her grandmother about a half mile away on the rock where she left Pua and her canoe, rising her hands upwards. Curious, she rushed off before Tui and Sina, also donned in formal headdresses, had noticed that there was a longer gap between themselves. Arriving by the tall tree, Moana watched her grandmother turn clockwise, sensing she was there and smile at her presence.
"I like to dance with the water," Tala explained before her granddaughter could even ask. "It can be wise and mischievous at times, but it understands where you truly belong."
But at the same time, the other natives began to disregard the old chieftess' former reputation to that of an insane woman who apparently had lost her mind at the moment she was widowed.
When she had grown into a beautiful maiden of sixteen years, Moana had fully mastered her grandmother's hula dancing, knowing every step that corresponded with a human's interpretation of the flowing water: right arm forward, hand out, one step back, arm in, put your right foot in, reach out and grab it with your right hand in the air, turn counterclockwise and wave your hands as they match the soft waves of the ocean. Among other movements, they were just about as traditional as Tala had wanted it to be.
But she still had her obligations to keep up with and she would help her people and her parents with collecting coconuts and later that night, donning a crown of pink carnation flowers, she danced with seven other women who wore pumpkin orange skirts and white straps around the arm and shoulder joints wrapped around the neck. She was confident that she could lead her people through hard times, peaceful times….all in the same place where they belonged…forever and ever.
On the fifth day of July, it was cold and wet. The small drops of rain had turned into a quick hurricane that nearly ripped off roofs, nearly even blowing the chicken coop away. Pua offered to help with the pots and pans to prevent the drops from staining the floor as Tui and Sina, flanked by an architect (or tufuga) wearing a tan skirt and two rows of white beads for a necklace inspected the patches on the roof in the maota tofa.
"Every time a storm comes, the roof leaks no matter how much effort we put into it."
Moana, who been checking the fronts from the thirty-foot-tall post while wearing a crown of hinano flowers to establish her presence in front of "commoners", came down to present the architect with her discovery.
"Not to worry, tufuga, the wind simply shifted the post a little to the north."
Surprisingly, the architect had also brought with him a grey-silver bowl filled right to the top with the cooked remains of a sow as an emergency practice in case his superiors went hungry. Moana's right hand had one second to take the biggest piece she could find from the top and shove it into her mouth as the man along with her parents gave a second glance at the roof. Her eyes closed for two seconds, and her face felt compromised and enjoyable, feeling the warmth of the meat drive away the cold that began to take her into a world of satisfactory paradise where food was endless. She could feel it running down her throat along with the meat going directly into her stomach where closed her eyes again at the heat filling the entirety of her body.
"Mm! This pork is so delicious!"
But then her eyes opened at the sound of a squeal, turning to see the recoiling face of Pua. The pig was looking at her as if she were a cannibal. Truth be told, the piece she had eaten was the brain of his mother rolled into a meatball, who lived long enough to feed her babies, but by the time Moana had turned sixteen, she had to be executed.
"I'm sorry, Pua, but…."
The idea of telling him that his mother had died in order to become food seemed to be a difficult subject for Moana, thinking that Pua was still a child even if she knew he was a dwarf pig, but she took this knowledge into a simple point of view. Pushing that thought aside, she hurried over to the hut of the tattoo artist, or pe'a.
The pe'a, who held his hair in a ponytail and wore a dark skirt, was just about working his artistic craftsmanship on the back of a burly, yet clean shaven and young man named Ikaika which meant "strong", drawing shapes of diamonds and triangular ones to depict the ocean and it's fauna, using a black inked tooth from a bone handle in his right hand and a wooden bar in his left. He was drawing in the finishing touches on the fourth fish swimming down Ikaika's spine at the time Moana came to console him with Pua in tow. With both of her hands holding his large left one, she knew that such processes would be a painful experience. Ikaika cried out at least eight times when Moana's right hand petted the hand she was holding.
"You are going to be fine, Ikaika. Your strength will overcome any injury."
"Thank you," he tried not to scream. "But is it done yet? I have been here almost an hour, maybe even two!"
Moana checked Ikaika's back. The dark-inked tooth was poking his skin four times harder until it drew blood, but nevertheless, the job was done. Pua, who seemed a bit sensitive to the red substance, inched away from getting infected. With her observation at a finish, Moana and Pua left the hut as the pe'a wiped away the blood with a solo, a tapa cloth used to clean injuries.
Next, at precisely 12:00 PM, she thought a hula dance to her class, consisting of a twelve-year-old boy and his equally pre-teen sisters—and then there was that one other eight year old boy in curly black hair, brown eyes, a white shell necklace, an armband of thin tan string on his upper left arm and a clear white garment depicting life under the sea whose dances seemed pretty unorthodox. He walked backwards into his peers, placed his hands in, then out, ran his left hand through his hair, lifted his right foot, threw his left foot and finally bounced his shoulders up and down while the traditional sort continued without further delay. Moana was not entirely sure where had gotten such movements from, but it seemed like an omen that something new and exciting was about to enter her world of stature and institution.
Up next around 12:56 was a meeting with the kuke, or cook at his imu, an underground oven. He had already cooked up a lunch of four cabbages placed against the rocks when an insipid Hei-Hei began to inspect the heat of imu to make sure it was hot enough to cook the cabbages. Luckily, his wide eyes noticed Moana and Pua and stepped backwards, letting the more superior of species handle the situation properly. The kuke, an old man with a necklace of a carved white shell placed his pincers down and spoke to his chieftess-to-be.
"I am curious about the chief's pet rooster's inspections of my imu. He doesn't know that it's dangerous to set at least one foot on the rocks. He could end up as my dinner if he continues like this."
Moana was more sympathetic to her father's loyal pet, no matter how self-assured he seemed to be.
"Sometimes our strengths lie underneath the surface. Hei-Hei may be a bit…arrogant and simple minded at times, but maybe there is more to him than what we see with our eyes."
Confident that Moana had everything under control, Hei-Hei left to rejoin his squad in the coop.
At 1:28, she had just helped a woman with a crown of leaves and a dress of red with a basket of coconuts. Her parents watched over her, firm in their belief that she could surpass this simple act of kindness. The woman, whose name was Elikapeka, had nothing more than a tale of grim news.
"This morning, I was husking the coconuts…"
She held one up in both hands.
"And then I find this…"
With all her strength, she had split it into two sections and what would have contained a fresh, clean source of milk or water was replaced by a degraded surface of white and black cracks which would have suffered a first degree burn. The cracks looked parched and dry as it had proved to Tui upon seeing it, that there was no way he could able to consume it. It seemed to the chief that the coconut had been suffering from an equivalent of malnutrition. Two other women, one with also a crown of leaves and the other with her hair wrapped in a bun, also produced similar results: opened coconuts with shades of black and cracked embers all over the previously completely white clean interior.
Sina could only express confusion into this natural intruder of their idyllic lifestyle and Moana could only hold back certain feelings of dread and her optimism seemed to be taking a nosedive at the poor sight of the sullied coconut.
"Well…" her voice was turning stronger at her decision. "I think we should clear the diseased trees."
Another thought came into her head.
"And we will start a new grove…"
She pointed her right index finger to a sunny area of four trees in the foreground.
"Over there."
"That sounds very much like a good idea to me, Moana."
This seemed to have lifted Elikapeka's spirits as she and her lady friends took their baskets to find a way of disposing the ill coconuts. She stopped to her chief and chieftess and said.
"Your daughter has commanded a most excellent act of charity. I hope she will be just as wise as you when she is older."
And she left without another word from her or her friends. Her parents smiled at their daughter, happy with the fulfillment of her duties for the day.
"You have done a most suitable performance," Tui smiled.
Last but not least, were the boats on the beach to oversee the fishing results of the day. One man with his hair in a ponytail had noticed a slight detriment to the funnel shaped traps which had a hole in the end of the square belly close to the bottom. He opened up the bottom to prove his point to the chief and his daughter as he explained.
"Our traps in the eastern lagoon were pulling out less and less fish."
Moana inspected the cover tediously.
"Then we shall rotate the fishing grounds."
"We have already tried that and if there is no fish; there is no fish at all."
"Well then…"
The idea immediately came into her head.
"Then we shall fish the far side of the island."
The man was pessimistic with his results.
"We have tried that as well."
"The leeward side?"
"That too. The shallows and the channel are deprived of fish as well."
As the man consoled with the chief, Moana could see nine men and women hovering over their boats with traps at the ready, but their faces told a tale of woe. She concluded that the diseased coconuts were not the only problems her people had to face and that their resources were being used up. Her right foot was paced on the stern of the fisherman's boat and she stood up onto the body of the boat to take a closer view of the ocean. Life out there had a lot more to offer than anything on Motunui.
"What if we fish beyond the reef?"
Her voice was loud and dominant, turning clockwise to face her father as she held an oar in her strong arms, but what she got in return was a searing stare from Tui. His answer was plain and simple.
"No one goes beyond the reef."
Moana had to convince her hard-hearted father.
"I know, but if there are no fish in the lagoon and there is a whole ocean out there just waiting—"
Before she could say "to be discovered", Tui interrupted her.
"We have one rule and that is not going beyond reef."
His daughter turned clockwise again to face him, her expression serious.
"Are you willing to remain bound to this old single rule when there are fish all the way out there?"
"It is a rule that keeps us safe!"
By now, Tui had his hands to the level of his mouth in desperation.
"Instead of endangering our people, we should solve our problems here and not go anywhere into the ocean!"
"Then is it true, you are blinded by complacency?"
The three men standing behind their faithful chief seemed to gasp at such a notion. But Tui seemed undeterred.
"Complacency or not, we cannot risk our lives going out to a sea of forbidden territory."
Then, she asked a question she had never said before since ten years ago.
"What if there are other tribes?"
"If there are, they too have stayed put for their own reasons."
"So they could starve to death?"
Moana placed his hands on her hips and her voice sounded angry and strictly upset. Were all the chiefs in the world as stubborn as her father? Tui was not sure how to mention it, but the thought of his people facing a famine had never occurred to him before. But in the moment that she gave her father a silent apology, she released her hands, dropping the oar, slowly walked off the raft and stormed away to the maota tofa. There, she left her crown of flowers and after at least thirty minutes of rolling around on the floor and gazing up at the dark ceiling she went outside to clear her thoughts, fooling around with a 20 inch stick of maple wood by just juggling it back and forth in complete boredom.
Moana was almost certain that she had nine older brothers who sailed beyond the reef, but this was a myth invented by herself when thoughts of denial that no one had explored beyond reef contradicted her, creating her fictitious siblings to put her mind at ease that others were sailing away from the island to find other lands, no matter how many times her father and mother corrected her. Her grandmother also believed her in order to keep the spirit of exploration alive in her mind.
Her mother, who had just learned about Moana's idea from Tui, had found her at last after about four minutes of searching. The words came out of her mouth almost unexpectedly.
"Well, your father does have a point about his ways, but confronting him while standing up on a boat was worth a try at seeing the error of his ways."
Moana's eyes avoided her, she was still frustrated by her father's stubbornness.
"I did not say that I wanted go beyond the reef because I want to be on the ocean, metua vahine, I just wanted to know if there were other islands out there like ours."
Sina, remembering her mother-in-law's tales of explorers, sympathized with her daughter.
"And you still do, kaikamāhine, but he was very much like you once."
Moana could not believe her mother's ears. Her face fell flat as a mental image of a younger, less mature embodiment of her father filled her eyes. At last, she turned her head right to face her mother sitting down beside her.
"Like me?"
"Yes, he and your grandfather were drawn to the ocean. They wanted to explore every drop of it and challenge the shores like the true men they were. They took a canoe, crossed the reef and found an unforgiving sea with waves like mountains. The boat came back to shore the next morning with only one person…your father. He couldn't save him. He's hoping he can save you."
Moana's imagination took her to the events as mentioned by her mother took ahold of her previous views of her father. What she could see next was sadness and tragedy in the death of a family who was so wise and trusting…almost as much as her grandmother.
"And the ocean did not listen to him?"
"The ocean only listens to one who is worthy and unfortunately for your father…he was not."
And it was then that Moana began to understand why her father was so strict on his single rule.
"Sometimes, who we wish we were and what we wish we can be is not meant to be."
She lovingly pushed back a handful of Moana's hair behind her left ear with her right hand and placed it against her cheek.
"Perhaps that time will come, if there is a sign to prove it."
And it was there that Sina left Moana for some long overdue mourning.
All the rest of that day, Moana had been wandering around the island, overviewing the life and surroundings of the place she called home with Pua following her in curiosity. Left and right, up and down, north and south, east and west, everything looked the same. For as long as she could remember, she had been standing on the edge of the water, wishing she could be the perfect chieftess with reasonable rules of exploring other islands just like Maui, but now in her current state, all roads lead to home (Or at least that was how she saw it on her island and all that.). Everyone on her island was very happy and complacent with the way things were…but was there really more to this world, than what everyone else saw, to be uncovered by and by?
By 5:40, Moana felt torn between wanting to see what the ocean had to offer and remaining to stay in the place of heritage where she could rule Motunui in countless centuries of peace without a single war to disturb it. With Pua close by the boat, her heart was telling her to go to the distance, but her mind told her to stay and it took her body up to the tallest mountain on Motunui where the great chiefs of the past recorded their reign, dynasty and existence in the form of a stone.
There were 36 stones piled up, one for each chief who ruled the island for over 25 years over the past millennium. The stone that her father had selected for her, lying five feet from the pile was already in her hands, just waiting to be added. But the urge of her own heart screaming at her brain to take a different path, controlled her body to turn left in a counterclockwise direction. Then squeezing her eyes shut, Moana clutched the stone to her breasts and wondered with all the confusion building up inside of her.
"What is wrong with me?"
The whistling of the wind followed, coupled by what sounded like a strange whining nose and the burning of a fire that crackled in the air. This seemed to have caught Moana's attention, for when she opened her eyes, a pillar of black smoke was falling all the way towards the horizon. Perhaps it could have been a meteor, but it was not the same size that took out all the dinosaurs, it was something smaller, burning it's way through the atmosphere until it passed into the sun and touched the water without even so much as causing a gigantic tidal wave.
"Could it be a sign?"
Moana had to find out for herself. Her thoughts of the stone went quickly away as she left it right by the base of the column and rushed down the mountain, curious to find out. Determined and with her inquisitiveness growing at an alarming rate, her right hand grabbed a palm leaf and she took the end in her right hand, holding it a foot high above her head and using it as an air glider on the elongated bark of a palm tree. The rush of this precursor to something that seemed similar to a zip line only fueled her desire to find what was really out there. She passed the headdress still standing on it's mount in the maota tofa, ignoring her destiny to choose the path of her heart.
Passing the green grass and colored flowers, Moana's feet felt the hardness of stone as she found herself on the black rocky ground of four geysers, each one blowing off hot, steamed water as she ran quickly over the holes, some of the drops even staining her hair, exposed back and dress. Sure enough as she reached the beach, there was Pua in the boat with a 7 foot oar in his mouth, holding it with the blade on his left side. He waited anxiously for his mistress until the moment she came to him and petted his cute little head with her left hand and took the oar in her right, pushing the boat off the beach and onto the aquamarine colored water.
And with the oar in both hands, she directed her boat towards the smoke.