Whare Potae (The House of Mourning)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Author's Note: Well, I'm afraid I've hit a bit of a life setback.

I woke up this morning with a terrible migraine and sort of dully unhappy feeling that something wasn't quite right. It's a hard feeling to put into words.

Things didn't get better as the day went on. I found that I had to read Chapter Twenty-Three four times over in order to catch all the grammatical mistakes I'd made while writing it, which is embarrassing for someone like me, who makes a living out of knowing how to use a semicolon properly.

Hoping to improve my mood, I went to the movies, which proved to be a huge mistake. I won't tell you what I saw, so as not to spoil anything for you, but I ended up crying through the last thirty minutes of the movie...and then I discovered that I couldn't stop.

Forty-five minutes later, when David came home from work, I was still crying. He's very good at handling this sort of thing, and is pretty used to it by now, since it's been eleven years since my brain injury, and we do have this problem sometimes in my household.

Unfortunately, I seem to be having what I affectionately refer to as a "stupid brain episode," or a period of time during which my brain chemistry is not functioning at its highest due to a very serious injury I received some years ago in a car accident. This is likely to result in blurriness, headaches, insomnia, nausea, and irrational mood swings. The doctors have explained to me that these episodes have something to do with proteins not replenishing as they should. I am not myself a doctor, and so I've taken their words for it. They only way that I know to solve these brain episodes is to take it much easier for a few days, and sometimes to stay away from bright shiny confusing things like computers or the harsh light of day. :-p

Nothing bad is going to happen; I'm not to get hurt or any sicker, or anything of that nature. I may, however, have trouble updating for a few days. I'm considering going to stay at my parents' house until the storm blows over, just so that I don't totally screw up David's day-to-day rhythm, and the internet connection there is very slow.

Thanks in advance for your patience. I really do appreciate it.

Now, hopefully, I'll be able to write this next chapter. I'm going to do have to do it a bit more slowly if I don't want to misspell everything, so bear with me. Let's see how this goes.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Several of the Turehu were standing outside the palace when Moana and Maui emerged. Ngaire and some of the others were glaring, but Moana's Grandma was there as well, grinning from ear to ear and giving Moana two enthusiastic thumbs-up, apparently totally oblivious to the dirty looks she was getting from her sister handmaidens.

Moana smiled and gave her a little wave.

"Maui," she said, turning to face him, "you know the Grandma I'm always telling you about? Well, this is...hey, are you okay?"

Maui looked more than a little dazed, and was staring off into empty ocean, apparently not paying much attention.

"Maui." Moana put her hand on his arm.

He blinked, looked down at her, and then smiled distractedly, nodding.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," he mumbled. "I'm good. You say something?"

Moana reflected that the stress of being dragged down into the underworld and hunted by goddesses and deadly bodies of water was probably starting to get to him at last. Everybody had their limits, after all, and she couldn't really blame him. It was long past time to get both of them back to Motunui.

"This," repeated Moana patiently, "is my grandmother, Tala Waialiki. Grandma, this is-!"

"Oh, I know who THIS is," declared Grandma, grabbing Maui by both shoulders and holding him away from her to take a good, slightly too-long look at him. "You're the troublemaker who's been giving my Moana all these excuses to go on adventures, aren't you? Never thought I'd meet you in person...and you're not exactly what I expected, for a demigod, but I bet you get that a lot, don't you?"