The protocol of words

Keawe reached for the words, drawing them into her like sweet nectar.  The sight of her daughter and her companions filled the space that is spirit, making her passage into flesh a gentle movement.  The smell of puakenini rose from her.  In place of the toothless man next to Lokahi, a broad-shouldered man with a kihei made of thick la'e, the thick waxy leaves of the ti leaf grown for kahua stood with a smile as big as a calabash.  "When I am reborn I will remember all who I was,"  Na'ea repeated the promise and between them the lovers carefully took the child now grown to woman across the stone walk.  Keawe had waited.  Na'ea had waited.  Lokahi knew not to wait and instead grew beyond the Kapu. 

The girls observed.  In their young lives protocol was as clear as the lessons of learning to speak the language.  They were the 'schooled-generation' the second of the 'opio who benefitted from the Renassaince Era of the Islands during the '70's, the latest evidence that the culture was alive and enduring.  Still, the transformation the pair witnessed was graduate level protocol and neither girl had words in either language to describe the events.  Celeste automatically reached for the ipod and found it, "A-mazing."  She nudged Andy and lifted her kihei, "Is this for real?"  She whispered knowing already that she and her best friends were part of a great adventure.

"Press RECORD ... and ask for permission while you're at it."  Andrea Essentia was the daughter of a historian and was not without her wits when it came to seeing how her ancestors treated time.  All around her the smells and feel of the winds of central Maui came to witness and to partake.  The dry sand dunes upon which the college was built was now a terrace of lo'i kalo and the irrigation ditches -- the auwai, ran loudly with running water.  Andy allowed her fertile memory to reverse time and knew Kapapaweave and Na'ea had taken them to Maui B.S. before sugar, long before Sprecklesville, before the uncrowned sugar king had turned her island home into sugar plantations, and long before sailing ships brought whalers, disease and the bible.  E ho mai, akua lani e.  E ho mai. E ho mai.