words: 3,870
Quick guide to name pronunciation:
Awa: ah-wah
Hani: ha-nee
Tane: ta-nay
Kapuni: ka-poo-nee
Enjoy :)
“Ah!” Awa cried out in pain as sparks flew up in her face, the product of a log collapsing in the cook fire the girl sat tending. In her haste to pull away, Awa’s hand brushed against a hot coal. She howled.
Her mother, who’d been cleaning fish, rushed over. “Oh, Awa!” She swiftly took Awa’s hand and submerged it in a wooden bowl of water, all the while making exclamations of how clumsy a daughter she had, and how Awa should pay more attention to the fire.
Awa sat in sullen silence. Her mother had gotten burned, recently, too, Awa knew; she’d seen the burn on her mother’s forearm only yesterday, and still Awa was the clumsy one. Still, she said nothing as her mother held her. Awa’s mother smelled of fish and wood smoke; the scent was familiar and comforting. “Sorry, mama,” Awa said, and obediently kept her hand submerged as her mother went to resume her task. The cool water felt good against her skin in the heat of the day.
Awa’s mother continued, “How will I ever find a husband for such a clumsy daughter?”
“Mama!” Awa cried, embarrassed.
“What? You are nearly of an age to be married, you must begin to think of such things,” her mother replied, sternly, causing Awa’s cheeks to flush with as much heat as the angry red mark on the back of her hand. “Your sisters and two of your cousins have already married.”
To distract herself as well as her mother, “Tane!” Awa called to her little brother. “Don’t play in the mud,” she scolded. Shaking water from her hand, Awa went to extract Tane from the pool of mud he was so greatly enjoying. She was wiping streaks of the mud from her brother’s face when a familiar voice called her name.
“Awa!” Awa smiled to see her best friend, Hani, running up.
“Hurry!” Hani said excitedly. “The fishermen are coming in and more are needed to help. “The task of cleaning and cooking whatever the men brought in was an ongoing task in the island village.
“Mama?” Awa turned to her mother with pleading eyes.
Her mother rolled her eyes, knowing it was no newfound eagerness for work that drove the girls toward the fishermen’s boats, but then laughed and said “Go on. But bring Tane with you.”
The girls were on their way quickly, Awa with Tane on her hip.
Awa and Hani had been inseparable friends for as long as anyone could remember; they had been confused with one another on more than one occasion. Being of a similar age and height, they shared the same long dark hair, slim figures, golden-brown skin, and brown eyes bright with mischief. Of course, most people on the island resembled each other in some manner; most being related in some way, but Awa and Hani were true sisters of the heart.
So often were the two together that everyone knew that to look for one of them was to find the other, so in searching for either their names would invariably be coupled into one; “Haniawa,” people would call. It helped little with telling the girls apart, but neither girl minded.
The girls took their time going through the village toward the beach, not so eager to see the arriving menfolk that they would hasten overeagerly towards work. The island village consisted of a comfortably assembled group of huts. Each hut had dirt floors packed by the passing of many feet, stout walls of wood, and thatched roofs. Each family’s cook fire was kept outside; the tropical humidity made it far too hot for an indoor one, even at night. There were bigger communal fires as well; these larger fires were kept constantly at the center of the village. Here, at the heart of the village, one could go to retrieve live coals to revive a fire at the day’s start, and was where most of the food was cooked.
