The transition didn't happen with a flicker or a slow dawn. It happened with a violent surge of light.
The oppressive silence was replaced by the raucous cacophony of a festival in full swing.
The torches erupted into life with an impossible, brilliance, as if the shadows had been physically bleached from the room.
One moment, the people were drowning in a black vacuum; the next, the Maneaba was flooded with an excessive, golden glare.
In its place were the clatter of wooden bowls, the high-pitched laughter of children, and the mundane, comforting drone of a hundred simultaneous conversations.
Outside, the perimeter of the village was a sea of amber light. The "sweet, cloying frangipani" scent remained, but the metallic tang of the salt had faded into the aroma of roasted fish, the heavy, sweet, starchy, and slightly earthy aroma of steamed earth-oven Giant Taro, with the sharp, yeasty tang of fermented coconut sap.
a burly man had just finished a, hand-waving story with a villager, reaching down toward his woven mat. With a practiced, thirsty motion, he snatched up his polished coconut cup.
his throat dry from the effort.
Nothing was left.
He shook the cup. A single, sticky amber drop clung to the rim before falling onto his knee. The man's face darkened, his brow furrowing into a mask of mock-fury that was only half-pretend.
He let out a low, guttural growl that vibrated in his chest. "What? Who drank all my sap?" He peered into the hollow shell as if the liquid might be hiding in the shadows of the wood.
He surged to his feet, his empty coconut shell still clutched in one hand like a blunt weapon.
He prowled into the crowd, his torso twisting as he darted his head from side to side, his eyes scanning the gaps between the seated elders and the shadows of the food mats.
"Eri!" he shouted again, his voice bouncing off the thatch. He swung his gaze toward a cluster of laughing women, then whipped it back toward the coral pillars.
"Eri! Come here. I'm not laughing."
The man's footsteps crunched steadily away, fading into the rhythmic wash of the tide until he was nothing more than a retreating silhouette.
The world seemed to hold its breath as he vanished, leaving the heavy, gnarled trunk of an ancient breadfruit tree to fill the center of the world.
As the eye lingered on the rough, sun-bleached ridges of the bark, the silence began to fray.
From deep within the shadows of the twisted roots, right where the wood met the cooling sand, the air vibrated with a low, rhythmic friction. It wasn't the wind; it was the dry, hushed friction of human breath. Voices mumbled.
They were thick and low, private sounds tucked away behind the wood, turning the tree from a landmark into a shield.
Bako stood in the partial eclipse of the large tree.
Tenia stood opposite him, her presence less about sharp lines and more about a heavy, grounded stillness.
Bako watched her, the surgical precision of his face softening just a fraction.
He looked like a man watching his daughter slip away into a fog he couldn't reach.
"You've been... off," Bako said. His voice lost its rasp, turning into something flatter, more tired. "Since they pulled that boat onto the sand, you haven't been yourself. You're snapping at your son. You're pacing. What's the matter, Tenia?"
He reached out, his hand reaching her shoulder. He paused, then…
"Was it them? Do you feel like their presence are bothering you?"
Tenia didn't look at him.
She stared at the dirt,
her fingers twisting a loose thread on her wrap.
The festive noise from the Maneaba felt like a physical weight on her neck.
"I don't know… Dad. I don't want to talk about it." she muttered. Her voice was thin, lacking its usual strength. "I think it's best to leave it as it is,"
She met his gaze. "For all our sakes."
"Tenia, if there's a problem— you can just speak up."
Tenia closed her eyes, swallowing hard. The rhythmic thud of the Te Baurua box in the distance seemed to vibrate against her closed lids.
She crossed her hands over her chest, her fingers digging into the rough texture of her pandanus-leaf wrap.
"Dad... Do you remember when I was, say... twelve?" Her voice was a fragile thread, nearly lost to the sound of the tide. "I used to climb the trees... every day. I was a great climber."
She opened her eyes and looked at him, a sudden, bright smile flashing in the dark—a display of teeth that felt more like a defense than a joy. Then she swallowed, the smile vanishing as quickly as it had come.
"You used to warn me to be careful, because you were worried that I would fall and injure myself. You told me... every day. You weren't the same since Mom passed away. You were always careful... and that is what happened to me... eighteen years ago."
Through the haze of the festival smoke, he sat unmoving, a shadow carved from obsidian.
His face was a masterpiece of geometry that defied the soft curves of human flesh.
Every inch of his skin was consumed by an intricate web of Moko, ink so deep and dark it looked like the skin had been chiseled away to reveal a second, more ancient face beneath.
The tattoos didn't just sit on the surface; they spiraled in rhythmic, mathematical symmetry, pulling the eye toward the center of his features until the world around him seemed to blur.
He didn't blink.
His eyes were wide and held a glassy, doll-like clarity that felt fixed on a point leagues behind Tenia's head.
In the flickering orange light, the lines on his cheeks appeared to pulse, like the gills of a deep-sea creature.
There was a vibrating stillness about him, not the stillness of a man resting, but the stillness of a predator that had become indistinguishable from the trees.
he turned his head, the motion was so smooth it lacked the micro-shudders of bone and muscle—it was the rotation of a stone pillar on a greased axis.
He didn't look like a man who would shout or growl; he looked like a man who would simply exist in the space where your life used to be, his tattooed face the last thing you would see as the light left your eyes.
The red-rimmed blackness of the tattooed hand didn't just vanish; it melted into a warmth that tasted of sun-warmed skin and coconut oil.
Suddenly, the air was no longer thick with the acrid smoke of the festival. It was light, carrying the scent of salt-spray and clean pandanus. Tenia felt a weight against her chest—not the crushing grip of a killer,
but the solid, rhythmic heartbeat of a boy.
She was no longer the woman with the analytical grooves around her eyes.
In this light, her skin was as smooth as a polished pearl, the hard lines of survival replaced by a blooming, youthful glow.
Her hair was pulled back in a tight, disciplined man-bun, every strand gleaming with health.
She pressed her face firmly against her son's cheek.
The contact was a physical anchor of joy. She felt the softness of his skin and the slight, damp heat of a child who had been running in the sun.
She pulled him closer, her lips curving into a smile so wide it felt like it could swallow the horizon—a flash of brilliant white teeth against her sun-darkened face.
Her son didn't just stand there; he leaned back into her, his own face splitting into a mirror of her radiance. His laughter was a silent vibration against her jaw, a pure, ringing sound that existed in a world where "intruders" and "betrayal" were words that hadn't been invented yet.
For that single, golden heartbeat, they were a single unit of light, a statue of safety held together by the strength of her arms.
Then, a leaf from the breadfruit tree overhead rustled,
the sound sharp and dry like a bone snapping.
The warmth began to recede, turning cold and grey at the edges.
The boy's cheek beneath her own grew thin,
then translucent,
then vanished into the rough, sun-bleached bark of the ancient palm trees.
Tenia's eyes snapped open.
The air between them felt thick, stagnant. Bako's shadow seemed to lengthen, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling bass. "Tenia."
"And I'm afraid history would repeat itself," she cut in, her words coming out sharp and dry, like the rustle of the leaves above them.
Bako took a step closer, the moonlight
catching the deep, surgical lines of his face.
"I understand your pain, Tenia. It won't repeat itself. What happened in the past is the past, and it will stay in the past. What we should be focusing on is the belief that the future will be better. Don't wander on old grief, Tenia. It will just swallow you further."
Tenia's grounded stillness finally broke. She didn't move her feet, but her whole body seemed to vibrate with a sudden, rigid energy, the same Te Katei tension the dancers were showing in the Maneaba.
"No," she whispered, the word hitting like a physical blow. "You can't tell me that. I won't put myself into ignorance and risk danger. Not again. Not with Kanoa."
Bako let his hand fall to his side. He looked at the white wire of his beard reflected in the dark, then back at her.
"They looked 'different' back then, too, Dad
Would you have said the same?" she said, her voice now a cold, flat blade. "They asked to stay too. They smiled. We gave them our water—our precious water from the deep caves—and they paid us in midnight."
The amber light struck the trenches of her brow, turning the deep furrows into jagged canyons of shadow.
The skin there did not just fold; it tightened, pulling the sharp grooves around her eyes into a fixed, predatory squint that refused to blink.
The light slid down.
It hit the obsidian pits of her pupils, which grew wide and rhythmic, swallowing the room.
As the pulse quickened, the texture of her cheek shifted from sun-sculpted skin to the dry, scorched grain of burning thatch.
A fine, oily sweat broke across her collarbone, catching the lantern's glare until she looked less like a woman and more like a statue of wet phosphate rock being unearthed.
The weight of her gaze moved lower.
A tiny, frantic vein in the column of her neck began to jump. It was the only thing moving in her "held-breath" stillness.
Then, the shadow of her own hand entered from the darkness below—a slow, heavy ascent. Her fingers trembled, a grey haze against the dark, until they finally pressed into the soft skin of her throat.
The contact was the shutter-snap.
The golden glare of the lantern turned white-hot. Her mouth, a bloodless line of suppressed screams, finally hitched as she inhaled.
The world was no longer a room; it was a tunnel of red-rimmed blackness where the only thing real was the cold pressure of her own touch and the ghost of the fire.
Bako's gaze dropped. He stared at the packed earth beneath his feet,
Then, the muscles in his jaw knotted.
He didn't speak.
He simply rotated his neck, a slow and deliberate pivot away from Tenia.
He stared toward the opposite side of the Maneaba, facing the deep, charcoal shadows where the lantern light failed to reach.
The view glided in from the side, level with the same stilted thatch roof.
It moved across the empty space between the shore and the structure, closing the distance toward the dry straw eaves.
Tako sat there, a dark, unmoving shape suspended at the same height as the gaze, looking straight out at the black horizon where the sky and the water became a single, suffocating void.
The focus tightened, filling with the tension of his frame.
The focus tightened, capturing a fluid stillness in his body. His arms rested easily at his sides.
The corded muscles of his neck have smoothed into the natural lines of a young man at rest. His chest has risen and fell with a deep, oceanic swell—a slow, steady breath that feels synchronized with the gentle lap of the tide below.
His hands lied open on his knees, palms up, fingers curled like resting fronds. The nearby torchlight caught a soft, wandering gaze in his eyes, looking at the distance as if they were old friends rather than cold observers.
In the distance, the Maneaba was invisible, hidden by the terrain, but its presence was felt through the heavy, golden haze of light that bled over the ridge, staining the night sky a dusty amber.
From the side, a dark figure entered the frame.
She moved into the light of the bure's torch, her form emerging from the charcoal shadows.
The flame flickered, casting a long, dancing shadow that climbed the stilts before the light finally found her face.
Tako turned his head toward the figure with a slight raise of his brow. "Oh. Rania."
The orange glow of the bure torch catches the smooth, high curve of her cheekbones and the calm, steady depth in her eyes, carving her features out of the obsidian night.
She moved with a grounded grace, her steps light but deliberate, carrying the Bati, a polished coconut shell with a singular, perfect circular opening, its contents sloshing softly within as the woven fiber handle swings rhythmically from her grip.
In her other hand, she cradled the Breadfruit Leaves, their broad, waxy surfaces shimmering like green silk under the firelight, wrapped tight around the steaming meal to lock in the scent of salt and earth.
Rania's shadow stretched long across the platform before she appeared.
she set the giant clam shell and the polished coconut cup onto the wood.
The clam shell clattered softly, heavy with the weight of smoked fish, sending a thick, swirling cloud of steam and coconut milk directly into Tako's face.
The scent was fatty and salt-cured, a sharp contrast to the cold brine of the ocean.
the torchlight from the bure caught the playful glint in her eyes as
"I brought you some food," she said, her voice a warm rasp. "They were quickly running out, so I thought, 'let me get something for my strange twin brother.'"
Tako looked down, his nose twitching as the heat hit his skin. "Wait, why did you get me this cup?"
Rania fixed him with a mock-glare, her lips twitching with an imperceptible smile. "Don't start with me. Don't start. I walked half a mile just to get this to you, instead of leaving you with an empty stomach. You should thank me—no, no, no. You must thank me."
Tako's shoulders finally dropped an inch. He chuckled, the sound dry but genuine. "I wouldn't let that happen."
She hoisted herself onto the platform, her weight causing the old timber to groan rhythmically.
She didn't look at him; she kept her eyes on the shimmering amber scales of light dancing on the black water.
"What are you doing out here alone?" she asked.
"What do you think?"
"What's on your mind?"
"Nothing much."
Rania leaned in, her face entering the warm halo of the bure's torch. Her expression was searchingly soft. "What is not much?"
Tako lifted the coconut shell, but before he took a slow sip, he turned to her. "Really? What are you, an interrogator? I don't know. I just like sitting here experiencing this comforting view... away from all the light. Is that too much to ask?"
Rania pulled her hand back defensively, though her eyes remained kind. "Okayy. You earn it."
The silence returned, filled only by the heavy roar of the Pacific.
Tako's gaze drifted to the wood beside her. "Hey, Rania. What do you think about these visitors? Do you think they are actually survivors or... do you feel like they are making this up?"
Rania scratched her head, her brow furrowing. "It depends on how you look at it. We only know their claims, but I don't think we should be jumping to conclusions. What if they're just people trying to make it through the day? We can't judge a book by its cover."
Tako's tension broke into a real smile. "You're starting to sound like Tinko. Get outta here."
She laughed, the sound bright and grounding. "By the way," she nudged him with her shoulder, "I saw you get rattled by that drum in the Maneaba."
Tako went rigid, his eyes darting to the side. "What drum?"
"Don't play sly with me. I know you know what I mean."
"I think there's a misconception there," he insisted, though his voice betrayed him.
"No. There is no misconception anywhere. You were jumpscared."
"You didn't see me. The room was dark. That was another person you think was me."
"Wha—why are you lying?" She gave him a playful shove, the movement light but enough to make the stilted hut vibrate. "Look at your face. It says everything."
Tako tried to hold a mask of stone, but the "forced rigidness" of his jaw cracked. He broke into a light chuckle, shaking his head. "I'm smiling because you're staring at me. That's why. I'm not lying."
Rania leaned back, her laugh fading into a satisfied grin. "You're not getting away with it."
Tako's dry chuckle was a fading echo that drifted over the ridge, swallowed by the distant, rhythmic thrum of the village.
Below, the four brothers moved behind Maluma.
They didn't walk in the synchronized, mechanical file of soldiers; they drifted in a disorganized, predatory pattern, their shadows stretching long and jagged toward an open-sided bure.
The only sound was the dry, rhythmic rasp of the pandanus-leaf walls breathing in the wind—a shhh-shuck that sounded like the turning of a million paper pages.
Thirty paces behind, deep within the twisted geometry of a breadfruit grove, a dark figure stood.
The figure was an unmoving vertical line against the silver-grey trunks.
Every time the watcher leaned in for a clear view, the brothers' frames would overlap in a flickering blur—a shoulder blotting out a head, a massive torso masking a limb.
Maluma stopped before the entrance.
His thick, scarred hand reached for the Te Ba—the heavy blinds of woven pandanus leaves.
The fibers were dry and sun-bleached, smelling of salt and ancient dust.
Before he could pull the blind aside like a heavy curtain, a voice cut through the hum of the night.
Konto, standing closest to the Chief, pointed a corded finger in raw curiosity. "Sorry to pry, Chief Maluma... but what happened to your skin?"
The air in the clearing seemed to flash-freeze.
Tambo's hand shot out, flicking Konto's shoulder with an alarming sharpness. "Konto," he hissed, his voice a low, warning vibration. "Why?"
"Ouch, man," Konto muttered, rubbing his arm.
Kanka simply rolled his eyes.
Tantei's eyes darted to the trio, but he remained unbothered, his gaze returning to pin itself on the back of the Chief's neck.
Maluma didn't turn immediately. He traced their expressions through the corner of his eye. Finally, he looked at Konto,
his lips peeling back into a smile that looked like it was about to rip the younger man apart. "No, it's okay, fellow visitors." He locked eyes with Konto. "I was born that way."
Konto tilted a knowing chin, his "hollow orbits" reflecting the torchlight. "Ooh. I understand."
With a sharp, dry rasping sound, the Chief hauled the woven blind aside.
The interior of the stilted bure was a sanctuary of shadows.
Pale cream mats were laid across the floor with surgical neatness, their woven patterns glowing faintly in the reflected light of the village fires.
The four brothers stood at the threshold, their massive, "shrink-wrapped" frames making them look like giants trying to enter a dollhouse.
"Welcome to your new room," Maluma said, his voice a deep, resonant hum. "It took a couple of hours to get it ready. It's all yours. Recovering your body and mind is just as important as feasting."
Tantei stepped forward, his head nearly brushing the low thatch. "We appreciate your hospitality, Chief. We can't thank you enough."
Maluma chuckled, raising a pointed finger in an 'Aha' gesture. "You can't... or you won't?"
The Chief's face turned serious—not just stern, but as heavy and unyielding as the earth itself.
The quartet froze. The silence was absolute; Konto swallowed, the sound of his dry throat clicking like a stone.
Then, Maluma's hand shot out, hitting Konto square on the chest. The blow was heavy, enough to make the air leave the boy's lungs.
"I'm just kidding, fellow men!" Maluma's laughter erupted—a loud, booming sound that felt like it was intended to mask a growl. "It's always fun to scare our friends, isn't it? Ah, ah! I'm sure you did the same back on Fiji."
The brothers chuckled—a sound so poorly concealed and jagged it was practically a lie.
"Yes... we did. You caught us. Ha, ha," Tambo said, his eyes never leaving the Chief's.
"Ha, ha, ha! See? Love it!" Maluma backed away, his silhouette blotted out by the night. "Well, enjoy your rest. Tomorrow's gonna be a wonderful day."
Inside the bure, the air was thick with the scent of dried grass and the lingering salt on their skin.
The ribbons of orange light from the village fires flickered through the horizontal blinds, painting the brothers in jagged stripes of amber and shadow.
Konto let out a high-pitched, muffled groan, the sound of a body stretching until the tendons screamed—and threw himself carefully against the reed wall.
The structure creaked under his weight, a dry skritch of protest. "Wow. That was fun. These people really know how to keep you stimulated."
Tantei lay flat on the floor, one leg crooked up at a sharp, awkward angle.
He rested a heavy, corded hand over his forehead like a weight, his breathing labored.
"I have no strength in my legs... to stand up anymore," he muttered into the shadows of his palm. "Ah."
With a sudden, stubborn grunt, he lurched forward, his torso folding as he reached out with both hands to grab his own feet. He gripped his ankles, his thick fingers digging into the salt-crusted skin as if trying to manually force the life back into the joints.
A dry, jagged chuckle escaped him. His grip failed, his hands slipping from his feet and hitting the mat with a dull thud. He let himself go completely loose, his spine hitting the floor as he released a sharp, final exhale.
Beside him, Kanka was a statue of exhaustion, both hands clamped over his eyes to seal out the world, his dreadlocks spilling across the cream-colored mat.
Tambo did not rest. He paced the perimeter like a caged leopard. He traced the line where the wall met the low-slung roof, his hollow orbits scanning every inch of the thatch, checking the integrity of the space.
Kanka pulled his arms away from his eyes, his gaze a sharp, side-eye glint of ridiculousness.
Konto stared up, his face twisted into an absurd mask of disbelief at Tambo's restlessness.
Tantei's brow narrowed into a structured, silent judgment.
Tambo stopped. He placed a hand flat against his afro, then snapped it back toward the roof in a sharp, back-to-back sizing motion. He was measuring the air he was forced to breathe.
"What.. are you doing?" Kanka rasped, the sound like coral grinding.
"I'm measuring," Tambo replied, his voice a low, melodic rumble. "It seems awfully small." He dropped his hands to his sides, his massive frame blotting out the light from the blinds.
Konto let out a dry, mocking huff. "Yes, our Genius Chief. Of course it's small. We are on Ba-Na-Ba."
Tambo didn't look at him. He stared at the ceiling as if trying to push it upward with his mind. "Back home, everything was bigger. I feel like a big fish in a small pond."
"Then become smaller," Tantei muttered without moving his hand from his face.
Tambo's jaw set. "Oh, really? If you know the magic word to make that happen, then I will comply. Agreed?" He finally took a seat, dropping onto the mat opposite Konto with a heavy, bone-deep thud.
The silence returned, but it was restless.
"Guys," Konto whispered, his voice barely a thread. "What do you think about the Chief? Do you like him?"
The others chuckled—a dark, knowing sound that didn't hold a grain of humor.
"Konto," Tambo said, leaning into the shadows. "If I liked the Chief, then I would have to be really starving and dry, and brittle as a Nokono tree to make that possible."
"Honestly," Kanka added, his eyes tracking a moth fluttering near the thatch. "He's got to have the most predatory smile in history. No pun intended."
Konto shifted, his muscles rippling under his salt-crusted skin. "He would make a great lead warrior, huh? Maybe a Valu-maka."
"No," Tambo corrected, his voice dropping into a cold, clinical flatline. "He would make a great Hill Warrior. The kind that hides in the vertical dark and waits for you to trip." Chuckles.
Kanka made a weary, loud sigh, a deep, shuddering intake that hitches in the chest, followed by a long, whistling exhale that sounded like a man who has carried the "Wonderful Day" on his shoulders and is finally letting the gravity take him.
His hand reached his forehead and rose in a leaden, almost audible creak of the shoulder joint. "Moce mada (Peace out)." and turned his back to the brothers.
Tambo didn't even look up as he lay down, his weight causing the cream-colored mats to groan. "You can stay up all night if you want," he rumbled, his voice vibrating through the floor. "Maybe go outside... and play with the ghosts."
Konto huffed, crossing his arms over his "shrink-wrapped" chest. "You're not scaring me with ten-year-old stories, Tambo. Try harder."
But no retort came.
The room was suddenly, violently silent.
Within seconds, the sharp, rhythmic cadence of their breathing shifted.
It was replaced by low, heavy snores—the mechanical, guttural sound of three predators shutting down their engines at once.
Konto sat frozen, looking at them one by one in the flickering orange ribbons of light. His heart thrummed softly against his ribs, a frantic little bird trapped in a cage of stone.
"They are already asleep? he thought, his eyes wide. That was quick."
A single cricket,
hidden somewhere in the deep, dry layers of the pandanus thatch, began its vigil. It wasn't a chirp; it was a continuous, high-pitched whirr—a needle of sound that stitched the darkness together.
It hummed at a frequency that seemed to vibrate the very fluid in Konto's ears, matching the frantic, rhythmic thrumming of his own pulse.
The hut was a tomb of orange shadows and shifting light.
Konto leaned into the center of the room, his torso cutting through the gloom.
From high in the rafters, the two of them looked like two jagged pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit—the younger brother hovering, suspended in his own anxiety, while the elder lay pinned to the mat by exhaustion.
"Tantei," Konto whispered. Then again, softer. "Tantei."
On the third time, the view shifted low and close. Now the world was level with the floor, seeing through Konto's own eyes as the thatched walls loomed tall and the air felt thick enough to touch.
Tantei rolled his head. His irises glinted in the dim space like wet stones catching a stray spark.
"What?" Tantei's voice was a dry scrape against the silence.
The focus flipped instantly to Konto. He looked down, his face a map of uncertainty. The question had been sitting in his throat all day, and now it spilled out, quiet and heavy.
"Do you miss her?"
The view shifted to the opposite side of the mat, pulling both men back into the frame.
Tantei didn't look away immediately, but then his neck muscles moved, turning his head back toward the ceiling.
He released an exhale so thin it was almost imperceptible—the sound of air leaving a punctured tire.
"I wish I didn't have to," Tantei said.
The focus went back to Konto. He paused, his gaze dropping patterns of the mat.
His eyes searched the fibers as if trying to regain a hidden memory, something buried under the salt and the blood of their journey. Finally, he gave a small, defeated nod.
"Well then," Konto murmured. "Goodnight."
He began to lower himself back toward his own mat, the tension leaving his shoulders.
But then, Tantei's voice stopped him mid-motion.
"Hey, Konto."
Konto paused, hovering halfway down, and looked back. "Yeah?"
Through Konto's eyes, the elder brother looked like a mountain that had finally collapsed. Tantei turned his head.
"No slacking off tomorrow," Tantei said.
The view pulled back to the side as Tantei lifted his arm, head straight, placing the heavy, corded limb back over his eyes.
He shifted his weight once, settling into the mat, and his breathing immediately lengthened, slipping into the rhythmic trance of a soldier.
Konto stayed where he was for a second. His eyebrows raised, his brows narrowing in the dark. He stared at the motionless shape of his brother.
The view pulled away from the low, heavy eaves of the thatch, gliding into the open dark.
The cricket in the thatch has been joined by a thousand others in the surrounding tall grass.
Their collective whirr was no longer a sound; it's a high-frequency vibration that seemed to make the very air around the hut shimmer.
It's the sound of a thousand tiny needles stitching the night shut, burying the brothers under a wall of white noise.