Tava placed a large, warm hand on his betrothed's shoulder. They looked out over the horizon together, at the large canoes bobbing closer and closer. "When I was a boy I never expected to see ships on the horizon as we do now." He sighed, light and with a smile. "You are an amazing chiefess, Moana. Your people should be so proud. I know I am."
"Thank you, Tava ," Moana smiled as she bent down to feel the waves with her hands. The ocean swirled around her hand in affection. "My- I mean, our people are definitely catching onto to wayfinding well."
Tava picked up a yellow shell the ocean had pushed towards the beach. Moana admired his muscles as he was beant. Wide shoulders and long, muscular arms, Tava was an experienced chieftan's son from the neighboring Malakas island. He was an experienced leader and warrior, tattoos covered his shoulders and arms to detail those achievments. You are not getting any younger, Moana's mother, Sina had told her before her parents brought up Tava as a possible husband. I was younger than you when I became wife to the chief and not long after had you!
Tava was kind enough, and definitely handsome, and Moana had grown to love him, but not in that way. Good friends, perhaps, or a partnership towards a better future for both of their islands. Wayfinding, discovering, and settling their new island of Lataitai over the last five years had left little time for love. Or wayfinding her inner voice echoed sadly. No, she didn't have time for that, either. She had sailed back to Motonui a few times to make sure the sailors she tasked with the trade lines and fishing beyond the reef knew what they were doing. But since then? Nothing more than pleasure sails around the island.
Tava tossed the shell back into the ocean and grabbed Moana's hand, tugging her towards their village. The smells of the feast had wafted towards the beach. The invisible line between her and the ocean stretched as she stepped away. The ocean pushed a wave towards her, the yellow shell landing at her feet. She bent over and slipt in into her skirt and she silently thanked the ocean for trying to connect with Ropati, even though he didn't understand the significance.
Moana sat cross legged on the ground, tightly set between her mom and Tava. The firelight danced off of them as they shared a bowl of roast pork. Her father stood tall in front of the fire, a smile on his face. "People of Lataitai and Motonui and Malakas!" His voice bellowed and the party sounds fell quiet. "We are hear to celebrate the recent proposal of uniting our three islands! Of the uniting of my daughter, of the chief of Laitaitai, Moana, and Tava, son of Pekelo, chief of Malakas!" The people surrounding us whooped and yelled in happiness. Moana and Tava stood up, hands clasped.
"As an outsider," Tava spoke, "I was naturally nervous how well me and my people would be welcomed on your islands. I'd like to say, for my father and the rest of my people that are back on Malakas, I am truly thankful for the kindness shown to me by you all!" He held up Moana's hand and kissed the back of it, causing Moana to blush. "I look forward to being united to thi-" An unsettling mumor begun to spread in the peoples surrounding the happy couple. Moana and Tava turned to see the reason for the suddent interruption.
An unmistakable figure stood in the shadows just outside the light of the fire. Moana's stomach felt as if it was filled with fire when she realized who the silhouette belonged to.
"Maui," she breathed, forcing the wind from her lungs in a manner of disbelief an anger. Her voice had changed, thought Maui. The same, yet different. His name from her lips set a tingle through his body down to his toes.
Maui? the people around her whispered. Maui? Maui? Maui!
Maui stepped forward, into the light of the raging fire.
He had a smile on his face, his impossibly white teeth flashing. He rested an elbow on his giant fishook. He was tall, unhumanly tall, he could never blend into the crowd. Shiny, curly back hair fell around his head and onto his shoulders, seamingly connecting towards the tattoos that covered pracically every bit of his tanned body. Swirls accented his impressivly wide shoulders, biceps, and chest. Lines danced across his arms legs, and down his torso, over his stomach muscles, and disapeared into an attracive V that dissapeared underneath his tradtional leaf skirt that was almost comically too short. He was the picture perfect warrior of her people, just as if someone had enlarged him two or three fold. Even his necklace of coconut fiber and mismatched large teeth was ostentacious.
Moana scowled and bit back the bitterness that rose in her throat. She had thought this moment for four years now, even though as of late what she took as an absentminded imortal demigod taking down monsters turned into someone who was purposefully avoiding her and her islands. Even though angry, her stomach flipped. A piece of her floated, happy to see the demigod before her.
Maui lifted his hook and started to walk around the fire, towards Moana. She turned towards Tava to gain her composure and she squeezed his hand before dropping it. Her long curly hair fell over her back. A tattoo now adorned it, but he couldn't tell what is was. Jealousy weighed heavy in Maui, but he held it behind the usual mask of happiness. If Maui tought Moana had grown the last time he had seen her, it paled in comparisson to now. She was taller, fuller. Her torso longer, hips wider. She turned back towards Maui. Her face had filled. Once slim and girlish, her cheekbones were higher, her lips fuller, her eyes even wider and wonderful. Her chest, too, he thought, but pushed that thought away.
"Maui," she said again, strong and loud, opening her arms in a beckoning manner as to reintroduce him to her people, to introduce him to her newly betrothed's people. "Shapeshifter, demigod of the wind and sea! Hero to all!" She tipped her head in a gratious manner. She trembled to be polite, to keep the anger inside her.
"Hey kid," he said, and extended long, impossibly muscled arms towards Moana. Part of her chanted hug him, hug him, hug him. After four years, hug him! She walked to close the distance and lifted an arm. Maui expected some kind of warm connection. But what he did not expect was a slap. An open handed, surprinsgly strong slap. Both physicall and emotional pain tingled in Maui. He lifted his hand to cover his cheek as he lowered his eyes towards Moana. For a moment he saw a look of sheer surprise in her eyes before they quickly filled with fire and overfilled with tears.
"Four years," she spat, as if there was a bad taste in her mouth. "Four years and nothing!" The last word was an angry whisper, her voice cracking.
"I'm sorry, Mo," Maui offered, half shrugging, half shaking his head. "I got caught up with demigod stuff, ya know? I'm thousands of years old ... those four years just kind of blinked by. I'm sorry!" He gazed at her, trying to work the demigod charm to make her happy. To erase the anger, sadness, grief upon her face.
"Yeah, right," she chuckled without happiness. "As if those four went by in a blink for me?"
She turned on her heels and stalked back to Tava, grabbing his hand and pulling away from the fire, through the group. Maui's already fragile heart broke.
Maui's broken heart shattered when the breeze picked up and whisked Moana's hair away from her back and revealed her tattoo. Te Kah, Te Fiti, and a canoe in the ocean. And above them all, a fishook in the talons of a great hawk spread across her shoulderblades.
