Whare Potae (The House of Mourning)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Author's Note: Ugh, I ended up going another couple of days without updating. I really am sorry. Unfortunately, at the very beginning of a new show, it's always like this. This will calm down again soon enough, but getting the process started is a full-time job all its own!

We had our first readthrough tonight, and it went VERY well. I'm extremely pleased.

We'll see how it goes from here on out.

Oh, and now...we are reaching the end of part one of our story. Are you ready? I'm not.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

As the shaking and rumbling of the island finally stopped, Moana looked around, then down at the sea which was now even closer than it had been before. It lapped happily at the beach where the people of Motunui had once moored their fishing boats, where Moana herself had played safely, years and years ago. It hadn't been safe to play by the water's edge for months, and children had avoided the beach, but now, of course, things would be different. The sun sparkling off the waves looked as warm as Moana felt inside, and everything seemed to be right again; almost too perfect.

Well, no, she corrected herself, glancing over her shoulder at where Maui was trailing along the beach behind her. Maybe not everything is perfect.

Something, at least, was still definitely wrong with Maui. He'd been humming nervously to himself for the past five minutes, and whenever Moana turned to look at him, he was pointedly looking at something else, like the water, or the trees, or he was staring off at the horizon with ridiculously forced contemplation on his face.

Moana wondered if maybe their recent, uncomfortable lunch conversation was responsible for Maui's awkward mood. She wouldn't have blamed him. All that talk about marriage had certainly given her an unpleasant feeling in her stomach, and Maui was a guest; he shouldn't have had to sit through that sort of family argument. Moana was frankly a little embarrassed about the whole thing.

"Um, about Anahera," she said, sighing. "She's just...you know, she's a little old fashioned, I guess? She doesn't love the idea of having an unmarried female Chief, and she's had issues with my Dad for years, because he, you know, kinda raised me in his own sorta unconventional way, so she just...she takes every chance she can to come at me. I'm, uh, really sorry you had to hear all that, though. I'm not totally sure why Mom didn't shut her up. She usually does."

"Huh?" Maui gave her a distracted sort of smile. "Oh, uh, no worries. Not a big deal."

"The weird thing is," Moana went on, frowning to herself, "that even though I was never really given the choice not to be a chief, it's not like I hate it. I don't hate it. It's not like there are a ton of big dreams that I've been missing out on, or anything, it's just...um, there's a lot of pressure. Everybody kind of expects me to be the kind of chief that their fathers were, and that's...well, that's obviously not going to happen, because there's no way I'm ever going to be exactly like some nostalgic image they've got in their heads of 'the world's greatest island chief.'"

"Yeah," mumbled Maui. "That sounds tough."

Moana shot a quick sidelong look at Maui, and could tell immediately that he wasn't really listening to her. Whatever was on his mind was really holding his attention.

She just sighed.

"Honestly," she went on, more to herself and to the sea than to Maui, "if anybody was that kind of 'great Chief' of days gone by, it was my Dad. When he got hurt, though, things got even weirder for me, because he's still around...which is amazing, I definitely wouldn't have it any other way, but it's like everyone's looking to him to take over and be the chief they were really expecting and hoping for, and he...doesn't. He doesn't, and that makes everbody kind of annoyed, like, 'well, if Tui hadn't gotten injured, this whole village would be a better place,' right? I don't want Dad to feel weird and guilty about it, so...ugh." She blew out a long, frustrated breath. "Yeah, there are just a lot of expectations, and the marriage thing...that's the worst. It's like they never stop harping on it, like if I got married, settled down, had twenty kids, I'd just sort of magically turn into the person that Motunui has always needed...which doesn't make sense, really, because how could I focus on running the village if I was too busy chasing after children? I'm...honestly, I'm not even sure I really like children. Is that awful? Does it make me a bad person? No, right?"