#so much that I forgot that his bead is grayish

[freshmarketflesh]

you know what? I’m feeling silly. *anime girlifies CM Punk*

What if his hair was so messy because he got late and didn’t have time to brush or do anything to his hair?

Closeup because I gave him some very pretty lashes

[pengychan]

Te Rerenga Wairua - Prologue

Title: Te Rerenga Wairua Summary: Found by the gods drifting at sea, Maui always assumed he had been thrown in it to drown. When that assumption is challenged, there is only one way to find closure: speaking to his long-departed family. But it's never a smooth sail to the Underworld, and he'll need help from a friend - plus a token that fell in the claws of an old enemy long ago. Characters: Maui, Moana, Tamatoa Rating: K

A/N: This fic is mostly based on the legend according to which Maui's mother believed him to be stillborn and therefore meant to bury him at sea - not abandon him as Maui says in the movie. Then again, how would he know? He was a baby. He may have made the wrong assumption. I liked the idea, and this fic happened. This is a prologue; the next chapters - see below - will be set shortly after the movie.

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Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Epilogue

***

There were things Tamatoa knew he wasn’t supposed to do. Leaving the cave and getting to the surface on his own was one of them; getting close to the humans was another.

“You’re still too small and soft, and this won’t help you,” his grandmother had said, knocking on the seashell he was using until he grew old enough to harden his own shell. “Humans, birds, bigger crabs. If they catch you they’ll pull you out of the shell, crack you open and eat you up.”

“Like when we ate Ma?”

“Hah! Much more easily than that. Her shell was tough. Your tiny little pincers couldn’t even scratch it. Tinytoa,” Gran had mocked him, one eyestalk inching closer. 

Tamatoa had huffed and looked away, because of course that was true. His Gran had had to crack her shell open herself so that he could get to the flesh beneath, or else he wouldn’t have been able to eat anything. “I’m not that tiny anymore,” he had protested in the end, and she had given a guwaffing laugh, flicking at his antennae with her own.

“But still tiny enough for humans to catch and eat. Pouting at me won’t change that, you know.”

“I’ll get bigger!”

“If they don’t get you first, yes, you will.”

“And I’ll eat you!”

“I should hope so - I didn’t raise you to be wasteful. But my death is still a great many years away, and so is the day you’ll be big enough to fend for yourself. So don’t you go near them until then, you hear?”

“... Sure.”

In the end, it was all a matter of miscommunication. His Gran had taken his ‘sure’ as ‘sure, I won’t go near them’; what he had really meant was that sure, he had heard her. As far as he was concerned, he had made no promises.

And even if he had, he’d break them anyway. There was no way he could resist the temptation to go, no matter what.

The humans’ stuff was just too shiny.

*** 

“Aw, I can’t find my bracelet!”

“Are you sure you left it here?”

“Yes! Right here on this rock!��

“Maybe it fell in the sand…?”

Tamatoa waited until they were all on their knees and digging through the sand before he scuttered away from his hiding place and away from the beach, under the cover of the vegetation and with his prize clutched tight in his pincers. It wasn’t anything especially shiny - a small bracelet of colored glass - but it was the best to be found on tiny humans, and at the moment they were the only ones he felt safe enough to take stuff from. Bigger humans had shinier stuff, but they were also more dangerous.

… Besides, this wasn’t too bad. He liked the way it shone in the sun, the beads all bright blues and yellows. Tamatoa took another good look at it, holding it up against the sunlight, then grinned and put it around his neck. Not the best, but still a nice catch. Real nice. It would be nice to see how it looked on him before he headed back to the cave, he thought, and slipped out of the seashell. He was gonna be more vulnerable without it, but also quicker, and nothing would happen to him if he was quick about it anyway, right?

Right.

After a quick glance around to make sure no one was nearby - no humans, but also no birds of prey - he scuttled towards a quiet spot among rocks on the shore, to take a good look at himself in the puddles of seawater. And really, it was well worth the risk: he looked gorgeous with that bracelet on him, if he said so himself: the colored glass beads shone and sparkled in the sun, so captivating that Tamatoa forgot it was supposed to be a quick look.

And he also forgot that he wasn’t the only one attracted by shiny stuff.

“... And look, it really brings out my eyes! Looking great aren’t I? Huh?” he asked no one in particular, leaning down until his eyes almost touched the surface. Somewhere in the distance, a bird screeched.

“Yep, I agree!” Tamatoa declared, and grinned down at his reflection. “This kind of stuff is wasted on humans anyway. They’re never gonna look this good, are they?”

"Kaw! Kaw!"

“I know, right? And besides-- GAH!”

Tamatoa threw himself on the side just on time: the next moment a thin, sharp beak hit the spot where he had been standing a moment earlier, breaking the stillness of the puddle. The bird looked up, tilted its head, and tried to strike again. “Kaw!”

Okay, so maybe he shouldn’t have ditched the shell.

“No! Hey!” Tamatoa shrieked, pincers held up as a pathetic shield, and was just able to dodge the next strike, burrowing under the tiny space between a large rock and the sand. “Go away!”

“KAW!”

They’ll pull you out of the shell, crack you open and--

“NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Far from leaving, the bird just began trying to peck at him through the opening, to get him out, and all Tamatoa could do was lashing out with his pincers, which barely scratched the beak’s surface. If anything, it just seemed to make it angrier.

Dig in the sand I gotta dig in the sand maybe it will stop trying if I--

Tamatoa’s panicked thoughts were cut off by a sudden, powerful pull. Had he had more than a split second to process what was happening, he’d have realized that the bird had caught one of the beads of the bracelet around his neck; but he didn’t, and all he knew was that a moment later he was being flung through the air, landing hard on his back in the sand along with several beads from the broken bracelet.

“Ow! OW!” he yelped, reaching up to cover his head with his pinces just a moment too late to keep two of the falling beads from hitting him right between his eyestalks in quick succession. “Hey! That was min--”

A shadow fell over him, the heat of the sun suddenly gone, and he blinked up to see the bird’s red eyes fixed straight on him. It stared at him for a few moments, and tilted its head.

“Kaw?”

“...Eeeeh. L-look, come to think about it, if you want the shiny stuff--”

“Kaw!”

In the story he’d tell his Gran later, Tamatoa had yelled back and struck out with his pincers, very nearly taking out that beast’s eye and scarring its beak. In truth, he shrieked and covered his head, all legs folding to protect his underside, eyes squeezing shut while waiting for pain that… never happened. In its place came more screeching, the sound of wings and a sudden gust of air lifting the sand all around him.

“Kaw! Kaw!”

“... Huh?”

Tamatoa let one eyestalk poke through his pincers to take a look. The bird was gone, scared away by something much bigger, something that was walking straight towards him.

A human.

With a yelp, Tamatoa managed to get himself back upright and immediately hid under the rock again, with only his eyes peeking out. The human - a human female - gave no sign to have seen him, or the bird, or the shining beads still in the sand. She walked past the rock slowly, without breaking her stride, a tiny white bundle in her arms. That wasn’t what caught Tamatoa’s attention, however: what got him to leave the hiding spot under the rock was the shine of the thin golden chain around her ankle. A very thin one: a snip of his pincers would be enough to have it, he was sure of it.

Of course it was a bad idea. Way too dangerous, and he’d had enough dangers for one day. He should pick up the beads he could, get back in his shell, and go home. He really should.

But that thing was just so shiny…!

He looked at the beads. He looked at the bird’s prints on the sand. He shot a glance towards the spot where he had left his shell. Then he looked back at the woman, walking slowly along the beach with that tiny bundle in her arms, and at the shiny golden chain at her ankle.

… Ah well. It had been a crappy day, so he may as well get something worthwhile out of it. Tamatoa shrugged, kicked a glass bead aside, and went after her.

*** 

A baby. The thing in the blanket was a human baby.

Tamatoa had never seen one up close, and gods was that ugly - a squishy-looking thing with stubby limbs and grayish… huh. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure human babies were supposed to look gray. Also, hadn’t his Gran said they would wail and kick and scream all the time? As the woman leaned him down on the sand and opened the blanket to reveal him, he did none of those things: it stayed limp, eyes shut like he was sleeping or… or…

… Oh.

The realization hit Tamatoa just as the woman placed the motionless body on a small piece of driftwood. Maybe she was about to eat him now? That was what his Gran would do if he died, because she hated letting things go to waste. It had been the same with his Ma: if they hadn’t eaten her someone else would have, and there was no point in letting the chance of a filling meal just pass them by.

But this was a human, and his Gran had also told him that humans did weird things, like burying their dead or throwing them in the sea instead of eating them. A huge waste, she had said, and Tamatoa had to agree. Why would anybody do something like that, letting worms or fish have it all instead?

His question stayed without an answer: only moments later, the human female began making an odd sort of humming noise. It wasn’t quite a song, because there were no words, but there was definitely some kind of melody there, and it actually seemed quite sad - enough to make him forget about the shiny golden chain for a moment.

He stared in morbid fascination as she reached to take a pin out of her hair, letting it fall down her shoulders. She settled the pin in the sand, and that definitely caught Tamatoa’s attention - because it was made of gold, too, bigger and shinier than the chain… and left entirely unguarded.

Well. Finders keepers, right?

He moved quickly, scuttling closer while the human’s attention was entirely taken by the dead baby, grabbed the pin - it was so pretty, with a few tiny gems in it as well! - and immediately went back to his hiding place. After that he really, really should go back to his shell and then home, but a sudden gleam caught his eye, and he turned to look again.

She had a knife in her hand, its blade catching the rays of the dying sun. Tamatoa froze, staring at the knife and thinking that maybe she had spotted him - that she’d take back the pin before she cracked him open and ate him - but, moments later, it became clear that she had not seen him. Before his perplexed gaze, she began using it to cut her own hair.

That was… weird. Tamatoa frowned in confusion and kept staring, his eyestalks the only thing poking out of his hiding place. He watched as the woman wrapped her hair around the child and knotted it, still humming that wordless, sad tune. Watched as she placed him in the water, driftwood and all, and pushed him out at sea. Watched along with her as the sea took the baby further and further away - and then winced when she abruptly turned, hand on her mouth, and almost ran back the way she came.

She did not pause, didn’t even try to find her hairpin, like she had forgotten it existed. Tamatoa stared at her retreating back until she was gone from sight, not really sure what he should think, his prize almost forgotten in his pincers. He was finally snapped out of it by a sound that seemed to be coming from the ocean, distant and weak but still recognizable.

Wailing.

… Wait, what? The baby had been dead, right?

Tamatoa turned to look, but there was nothing for him to see: there was something shifting in the ocean, like an odd wave, and the piece of driftwood was carried away, the cries fading. If there had been any cries at all, really. Maybe he was just hearing things - it had been a long day and, come to think of it, he really should head back.

His Gran was going to give him the scolding of a lifetime but, as he stared down at the shiniest prize he’d ever managed to get his pincers on until then, Tamatoa was pretty sure it had been all well worth it.

***

[On to Chapter 1]