When Worlds Converge
The news came slowly to Malea's ears. She was always at home, always alone, always out of the loop in the thick waters of Elehun, so as with all news... she was the last to know.
She had heard her fathers talking about it the night before. They were cleaning up after dinner, and Malea didn't think that they were paying attention to whether Malea would even hear them or not, but she liked to listen to her daddies talk, even if some of the things she didn't understand yet.
When they spoke of a place called Pali'iko... well Malea just didn't know what they meant. What was that place? She didn't know there were other people out there, and she had no idea that there were people who didn't look like they looked. Their skins were all dark, browns and greens, and their scales were dark, everything was dark. Dark like mud. She pulled at a strand of her chestnut brown hair and examined it closely. She didn't ask her daddies questions, it wasn't her place to interrupt, but she wondered what they looked like. Were they scary people? Were they nice? Her daddies said that they would be having a meeting in their place called Pale'iko and that the Menehune who looked like her would be joining them. So they couldn't be bad, right?
She got up from the table and swam to the upper levels of the house. That was where the air met the water, and they kept their things that shouldn't get wet. Like her books. She liked to read, but without water it was so hard. It took her a long time to finish any books. She pulled herself out of the water, she was so heavy too, and wrung out her thick hair. There was cloth she used to dry her hands so she couldn't get things wet and she pulled out a stick of charcoal and her blank book. She liked to scribble her doodles in there, and she drew up what she imagined the others would looking like from what her daddies were saying. They had light skin, light like the pearls people dug out of the clams in the mud. With light hair and light scales, they were like the sky up above the water, passed the trees, way up high. It was light blues. They said they had frilly clothes, stuff that the Menehune didn't wear. She wanted to see them. Maybe her daddies would take her with them when they went... if they went. But she didn't really go many places. She was still small, only ten years old, but maybe when she was older they would let her.
She heard a splash behind her, the signal from her parents that she had been up in the air too long and needed to come back down. It was almost bed time anyways. She shoved her book and her charcoal back into the corner it came from and dipped her toes back into the soothing warm water. She sunk down back to the lower levels of the house and let her daddies tell her what she already knew; tomorrow was a new day and she could always do more then.
(Word Count: 541/500)
