Where Mountain Meets Sea: HAWAII'S STORY (1) [REWRITTEN]

Oops! I Adopted Another Traumatised Soul! [The Paulet Affair Part 9]

Hawaiʻi learned quickly what a monster was in the months that had passed.

Wales looked like a monster. He had devil horns and slit eyes and large wings that looked scary, but in the end, he was rather nice, inside. She didn't speak to him much, but found him overall as a nice person.

Though he was rather grumpy sometimes, that was alright, everyone had a right to be grumpy.

Britain didn't look like a monster. He looked so... so normal. And that's what was the worst part of it all.

Despite the fact that Britain was a monster, despite the anger he showed, despite how it hurt to be around him... Hawaiʻi didn't want to lose the friendship she had. She had so much proof, and yet, she wanted it to not exist. Even if he was a monster, which Hawai'i now had more proof of, it was still better to be friends with the human side of that monster.

But this all meant accepting some things that seemed untrue.

Lies, if you accepted them wholeheartedly enough, became very easy to believe to be true.

A combination of Cape Colony and the madness that plagued Ireland was responsible for the poor man's blindness.

Hawaiʻi was not her name. Sandwich Islands was, at least while Britain was around.

Everything was alright, nothing was amiss.

In the entirety of the few months Hawaiʻi lived in Britain's house, he only had hit her once. He only needed to once.

In the bedroom that had once seemed sparse and cage-like, a comfortable atmosphere developed. There, everything was real and true, all the lies could be left in the hallway. It was the only place where Hawai'i didn't have to pretend that all of this was just something that was normal.

Ireland's eye was healing now, although not completely. He "wasn't ready to take off the bandages" yet. However, he needed less help to get around, and, if he did take off the bandages, could actually see a little.

Not that Britain changed anything about how much 'help' was given.

And certain stubborn colonies had stopped with their constant headbutting with her, opting to ignore her completely at times.

But there were good times. It would be unseemly and downright wrong to pretend it was all right. But to say it was completely terrible wasn't true either.

There were the recitations of plays Hawaiʻi had found dreadfully boring in reading form, music being played sometimes, and supervised (as well as unsupervised) fun that Hawaiʻi got a chance to participate in.

It was all a game. A grand charade, a poor player trying to push away everything that was wrong.

A smile really seemed to work at keeping things in place.

There were so many colonies that Hawaiʻi met, so many voices and faces she tried to remember. It was so hard to remember.

Jamaica, surprisingly, was one of Hawaiʻi's favourite people to talk to. He was very interesting, in her opinion, like the other Caribbean colonies. She had even got a chance to meet Hong Kong, who spoke a very rounded type of English, and Nova Scotia, who was quick to state that she was Scotland's daughter, not Britain or England.

But the ones Hawaiʻi felt most at home with were New Zealand and his siblings. Sure, they were much younger than her, but something about them felt familiar. And when she looked at the map, finally, and found New Zealand, she knew why.

Hawaiʻi had heard many words to describe her islands. South Seas. Oceanian. Pacific. But the best word she heard for it actually came from a Frenchman, who used Greek to inspire him. Polynésie, which became Polynesia in English. Many islands.