Caterina’s Reviews > The Wayfinder > Status Update

Does the moon remember? ... One could wish the moon died nightly, if only that she be born unburdened the next eve, free from a backlog of human depravity.

How lovely was a fan--the closest thing humans had to wings.

It was clear the O'honi aunt disapproved of this course of action, but she surveyed the will of the men around her and bowed to their desires, the look on her face suggesting that wisdom cannot be put into the heads of men--they must bang understanding into their skulls themselves.

The Wayfinder looked into my eyes. "The one whom fate spares," he said, "must also spare himself."

There was a force that compelled everything, all the time, to the bottom of the sea, and the weight of the faith the people placed in him was the heaviest cargo.

Smell the night flower,
observe the beetle's wing.
Are the greatest gifts
before you, unreceived?
.
Nāmu'i e laukau po'uli,
vakai ki he kapakau o e manu kai niu.
Ngāahi me'a'ofa tu'u kimu'a
kia koe, ka'ikai kimu'a
kia koe, ka'ikai ma'u?
.

At some point in every voyage, the familiar water around you becomes unfamiliar.But only by sailing onward did the unknown seas join the ranks of the known.

Silence would overtake him, & he'd become denatured, attuning himself only to the elements-registering his existence by his hindrance to the wind & submitting himself to the clarifying gestures of the sea, for,while the sea was neither just nor fair,while it was indifferent to the desires of men,it operated wholly without subterfuge or betrayal or false hope.It might aid in your demise but would make no profit by it.

Salted light fell through the grove.He'd heard there used to be a variety of pigeons that roosted here.He wondered what it'd sounded like..He'd never really thought about it before, what remains after something disappears.But now it was all he could think about, the look in someone's eyes, the way water circled their faces, & then, once they were underwater, replaced their faces with yours, reflected on the surface.

Finau & his father took their ink in the royal gardens..The son & the father lay on their stomachs, on either side of the Tufuga so he could shift between his subjects, inking one while the pain subsided on the other...
Finau: The first strike drew a veil upon his sight. There was only dark, with needles letting in the faintest light. And then the tapping drew the focus of his mind, a regularity, a rhythm
.
(cont..)