Whare Potae (The House of Mourning)

Chapter Sixteen

Author's Note: I'm sure you guys have seen the news today about Carrie Fisher. I'm usually the first person to admit that I'm unaffected by celebrity deaths, the deaths of people I genuinely didn't know, but I'm feeling weird about this one. I was a Star Wars nerd starting at age five, and my father and I used to spend a lot of time together with our Star Wars tapes (yes, cassette tapes were still a thing back then), and our Star Wars movies.

I'm an eleven-year survivor of traumatic brain injury, and so Carrie Fisher has been an icon of mine as I've grown up, too. She was a survivor, she was a fighter, she was an advocate, she was a believer, she was all the things that I sometimes struggled to be, that I had to be, that I had to pretend to be, that I wanted to be. She was a hero.

I think I am going to miss her. I think a lot of people are going to miss her.

Anyway, all of that to say, obviously, the Star Wars fandom is grieving right now, and if you're grieving, I hear you. I'm going to write a chapter, now, and I apologize in advance for any typos. It'll be a happy chapter. That'll be fun, right?

Chapter Sixteen

Moana woke up the next morning to find Maui gone.

"He's finished off the boat and taken it down to the water already," her mother informed her. "I have to admit, I was impressed! He had us wrap that new canoe of yours in a bunch of ropes and fishing nets, and then he flew the whole thing down to the sea, carrying it in his claws!"

"Apparently," agreed her Dad, "it's true what they say about the demigod's inhuman strength."

"He's going to have sore shoulders for it, though," Mom observed, shaking her head. "I just hope it doesn't drag him into the sea and drown him. That canoe looked so heavy."

"What?" Moana was suddenly very awake. Rushing outside, she was just in time to see Maui, in hawk form, returning from his trip to the ocean. He looked a little bedraggled, but decidedly not drowned.

"Maui!" She waved him over, and he landed in front of the house, stretching out his wings and shaking them, almost as though they were sore, like Mom expected his human shoulders might have been. "Look at you, impressing the ladies again. How are you feeling?"

Maui dropped the fishhook he'd been carrying in his beak, let out a cry, and transformed himself back into a human again.

"Oh, I'm fine." He grinned. "Who'd I impress?"

"My Mom," Moana told him, "and she's not easy to impress, either.... trust me on that."

"Hah, I don't doubt it." He glanced back over at the house, looking pleased with himself. "Well, hey, it's always nice to be appreciated. You ready to get climbing? We don't want to waste the daylight. Probably shouldn't do too much climbing at night, assuming you want to make it down to the sea in one piece."

Moana was frowning at the pile of rope and fishing nets that were still tangled around Maui's legs.

"It'll take more than a day to climb down all that way," she reminded him. "We don't have that much time."

"We don't have any other options," retorted Maui. "The sooner we get started, the sooner we get...wait, what are you looking at? Stop looking at me like that. Why do I have a bad feeling about this, all of a sudden?"

Moana picked up a piece of rope and turned it thoughtfully over in her hands.

"You made a sort of basket out of these for the boat, right?" She tied and untied a quick, experimental knot.

"Sorta," said Maui. "More like a harness, honestly, and my back is killing me."

"So..." Moana looked innocently up at him. "If you could make a harness for the canoe, then maybe-!"