The strange waa sailed closer by the second, its great sheets of bleached pandanus flapping dramatically. The vessel—a heavy, deep-sea outrigger—slid to a stop, grounding into the white coral sand with a long, agonizing scrrr-itch.
The four men didn't move immediately; they sat for a heartbeat, the sudden lack of ocean motion
making their heads swim. Then, with a stiff, rhythmic coordination, they began to unload.
They held long, heavy objects. These were sticks, nearly the length of a man's torso, but they were entirely hidden—bound tightly in layers of coarse, grey-brown bark cloth and weathered matting, secured with tight turns of sennit rope As they stepped over the gunwales, their feet hit the shallow water with a heavy plosh.
The Banabans watched, mesmerized by the bundles and a bit of.. fear.
Up close, the men were giants.
Tako and the other villagers held their defensive positions, their feet sinking into the wet sand,
ready to spring.
One man, with a thick, salt-crusted afro that looked like a storm cloud. His front hair was light brown ochre, a dry, dusty crown that didn't move in the wind. He held a serene, slightly knowing smile, yet his eyes were Hollow Orbits, blinking occasionally. His skin looked "shrink-wrapped" over his frame like braided sennit rope, towering over many villagers—suggests a predatory patience and capability of Lightening-fast strikes that could shatter anyone in a heartbeat.
He stepped forward. He raised a palm—open, empty, and genuine.
"Hey everyone. My name is Tambo, and these are my three brothers: Konto, Tantei, and Kanka. We are from Fiji island." His voice carried a slight raspy edge.
A Wave of confusion rippled through the Banabans. Brows were raised; low murmurs spread like the hiss of the receding tide.
"What the?" Tako muttered, leaning forward.
Chief Maluma did not simply walk; he occupied the space, his massive frame blotting out the late
afternoon sun. He moved with a slow, heavy grace that made his deep, sun-darkened skin shimmer like polished Te Itai wood. His brow was pulled low into a permanent, authoritative scowl, casting his dark eyes into shadow and making his stare feel as unyielding as the reef itself. "Good afternoon, voyagers. Fiji island, you say? What brings you to the sands of Banaba?"
Kanka, the one with the scarred cheek and the red, dried dreadlocks that looked like stiff, red sea-sponge, stepped forward. The dreadlocks were pulled tightly back and gathered into a large, high bun at the crown of his head, Each lock appeared to be neatly maintained, tapering slightly toward the ends, giving it a structured, almost architectural look. His deep, sunken gaze glanced at his brothers like black glass, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. "We came because the water back home was cursed. A sickness came from the reefs. It spoiled the sea and poisoned the soil. It killed everything we sowed. We could no longer rely on the land."
"A curse?" the villagers muttered, eyes darting to one another.
Maluma's expression hardened, his jaw set. "What caused this curse?"
"We have no idea," Tambo replied, his voice a low, melodic rumble, but brought a fine, papery grit to the edges of his words. "Someone might have cursed our waters. We kept sowing, but the soil grew bitter somehow. Every plant we set simply... withered."
Konto, the one with the shorter, tight afro hugging closer to his skull, matted with dried salt crystals, making his head look like a piece of weathered, sun-dried stone. His frame. The deep-set muscles of his chest and arms looked like hardened wood. His cheeks sank into the "skeletal" shadows of his skull, making his jawline as sharp as a coral blade. he looked like a spear that had been stripped of its polish—sharper, harder, and ready to be thrown. He chimed in, his voice was a low, smooth hum, even with the salt-rasp of dehydration. "There are only fifty of us left on that island."
"Only fifty?" a villager called out.
"Yes. We live on a very small island," Konto confirmed, his gaze level and steady.
Chief Maluma interjected, his hands resting heavily on his hips. "Then what is it you suggest we do?"
Tambo looked at the circle of suspicious faces. "We ask for your help. If we can fish in your waters for a few days, we can take some food back to our people."
The murmurs grew louder.
Maluma stared at Tambo, searching for a lie in the man's volcanic-stone features. "How many days?"
A momentary silence settled.
Kanka's eyes flickered to Konto for a split second—a silent, lightning-fast exchange. Then, with practiced slowness, Kanka turned back. "Uhh... Two. Two days would be reasonable."
The Chief looked at the sea, as if seeking counsel from the depths. The only sound was the slap-slap of the waves against the Fijian hull. Finally, Maluma nodded.
"Alright. You can stay for two days. Only fishing, correct?"
Tenia, standing three paces behind him, darted her head sharply toward the side of his face. Her eyes were narrowed in a jagged, fractured confusion. She looked at the back of Maluma's thick neck, then back to the salt-crusted stone faces of the brothers.
A slow smile spread across Tambo's face, revealing teeth as white as bleached coral. "Yes, just fishing, and we are out of your hair. Thank you, sir. Thank you."
The Chief watched the four of them—the towering, shrink-wrapped frames and the hollow orbits of their eyes. He exhaled, his posture relaxing into a mask of hospitality.
"Okay. I will take your word for it. You guys must look pretty hungry," Maluma said, waving a hand toward the treeline. "Come on. Make yourselves at home... Well, our home. Ah, ah!"
at the Chief's awkward joke, a ripple of nervous relief broke through the crowd. Some villagers chuckled, others were on their guard. They began to turn, leading the way off the sand into the lush greenery of the island.
The healthy Banabans moved with fluid, easy grace, their laughter echoing through the palms. Behind them followed the four brothers, moving with a mechanical, joint-locked precision.
Tenia didn't join the laughter. She watched the way their "shrink-wrapped" legs moved without a single human bounce. Her confusion deepened into a cold, silent weight.
The Fijians strode further onto the island, carrying the wrapped tools on their shoulders. Their heavy, flat-footed steps created the dry, rhythmic hiss of their feet dragging slightly through the sand than the light, springy gait of the Banabans.
Kanka He moved like a clockwork predator, his head darting slightly as he scanned the environment.
Konto looked the most mechanical of all. Leaner and shorter. He didn't waste a single millimeter of movement. He followed along the others like a silent, rhythmic shadow, his eyes fixed all around him.
Tantei, the brother with medium-full, rounded afro, looking like a solid earth helmet. The tectonic mass made him look like a piece of the earth that has started to walk. His chest looked like a carved shield of bone and leather, with deep hollows beneath his collarbones. His expression remained the most fixed and unreadable. His eyes were, sunken, black glass pits, showing no emotion. He didn't scan the village like the rest. He stared straight ahead with a lethal patience.
Their upper bodies remain almost entirely still while their legs did the work of walking, making them look like moving pillars of stone.
In the middle of the crowd, Teniko and Rania found themselves walking side-by-side. As the massive, grey-coral shoulders of Tambo passed them, Teniko's eyes shifted. She didn't turn her head, but her gaze met Rania's for a fleeting, heavy second. Teniko's brow was tight, her eyes scanning the strangers' wounds. It was a look of shared recognition.
Behind the main surge of the crowd, Tako remained.
Tako didn't move at first. His mouth hang open just enough for the humid air to dry his tongue, yet no sound escaped.
His eyes, wide and unblinking, fixing on the rhythmic, skeletal shimmy of the fijians depart. He took slow, deliberate steps. He looked from the massive, complex rigging of the strangers—to the four men now walking toward his home.
Watching the way the visitors conversed with Maluma, the last of the brothers' "braided hair" silhouettes stepped into the tree line, a sudden, soft wind swept in from the ocean. It felt like a collective exhale from the deep. The wind brushed past the laughing villagers, trailing behind them like a cold ghost, snuffing out The vibrant gold of the afternoon, plunging the inland into a thick, black dimness.
FINALLY, THE SILENCE BROKE.
The vibrant gold of the afternoon bled away, replaced by a bruised, low dimness as the sun retreated behind a heavy ceiling of purple-grey clouds. Time didn't seem to flow; it pooled in the silence of the high-thatched communal tent that stood on elevated coral stone pillars, thick and stagnant, but the eaves of the roof reached incredibly low, the interior feeling sunken like a burial chamber. The outward villagers sat cross-legged on the very edge of the mats, right where the roof ends,
Their backs technically "outside" exposed to the air, creating a ring of bodies inside the structure.
Everyone else—the young men, women, the curious, and the fearful—formed a dense, breathing ring around the very edge of the structure, crouching low under the roof to peer inside.
Inside the Maneaba, the shadows clung to the rafters like soot. The only light came from a single, sputtering coconut-frond torch, casting a wavering orange glare over the "pale cream" mats.
The first thing the torchlight caught was the lower face of Konto.
His clean fingers—thin, corded with "braided" tendons, brought a coconut bowl to his mouth, grasping a piece of white fish dripping with thick coconut cream. He shoved the meat into his mouth with a heavy, wet slap. The white cream sprayed across his lips, a viscous 'schluk' echoing through the silent tent as he swallowed half-chewed chunks. He chewed with a rhythmic, mechanical gnashing, breathing through his nose like a hound that hadn't seen a kill in a month.
Next to him, Tambo ate with a chilling, forward focus. His head wasn't bowed; instead, his neck was extended, his chin jutting forward over his bowl like a vulture's. His "hollow orbits" were fixed entirely on the dirt floor beneath the edge of the mat, as if staring through the very foundation of the island. His jaw moved in a slow, circular grind, his "shrink-wrapped" throat muscles jumping with every labored swallow. He looked less like a man enjoying a meal and more like a machine processing fuel.
Kanka. He sat with a terrifying, unnatural stillness, his frame appearing larger than it was due to the massive crown of sea-sponge dreadlocks. As he ate, the firelight caught the red-tinted fibers of his hair, which seemed to twitch with a life of their own. He stared straight through the villagers, his dreadlocks casting a jagged, swaying shadow that danced against the thatched roof, making his silhouette loom like a dark god over the assembly.
Tantei, the tallest, drank from a raw, heavy green palm fruit. He tipped the fruit back, his head snapping to an unnatural angle, and let the coconut water cascade over his face. He drank with a desperate, guttural sound—a rhythmic glug-glug-glug that echoed off the low roof. The water spilled over his cheek and chest, drenching his skin like wet leather.
The torchlight flickered, casting long, erratic shadows that danced against the low thatch.
Away from the wet schluk of the meat, the villagers sat in a unified, smooth arc—a collective of stilled motion. Their faces were etched in a shared, cold disgust, lips pressed into thin, bloodless lines as they watched the beastly consumption.
But further away, Tenia did not sit at the head of the mat where Maluma occupied the center. She sat to the side, her body turned vertically against the grain of the average person like a splinter in a wood. While the village faced the men head-on. Her amber eyes were like dark honey and iron that didn't reflect the orange glare as she looked at the men with a thick, heavy condescension. Slowly, she shook her head with a faint, weary motion and a soft, dismissive roll of her eyes to the side, pivoting away.
The flickering orange light of the torch pooled in the deep hollows of Maluma's face, turning his skin into the color of scorched earth. His broad chest barely rising with his breath. His gaze was a heavy, watchful silence that lacked the earlier hospitality. They didn't wander over the strangers' mechanical limbs or their hair. It remained fixed and centered, narrowing until his eyes were two sharp, dark slits of unfiltered disgust that bore into the men.
The view tightened, cropping the world down to just Konto and Tambo sitting shoulder-to-shoulder.
Outside the structure, framed by the low, jagged edge of the roof, sat Tako. He was a small, organic shape peering through the "slices" of space between the villagers' shoulders. The orange glow of the torch leaked out from the bure, catching the whites of his eyes as he watched.
Tako peered, through the gaps between the villagers' shoulders. He saw the brothers in "slices"—a glimpse of Tantei's "earth helmet," a flash of Konto's jagged, mechanical anatomy, eating with a vicious shluckk.
—they eat like beasts in a cage—
Further along the length of the bure, distanced from where Tako stood peering through his own sliver of light, Rania's face was a map of visceral disgust. As the heavy, wet sounds of the feeding echo from the bure, she turned her head sharply in the opposite direction from where her mother, Teniko, was cropped low to the ground.
Beside her, a young man—his face obscured by the darkness and the angle of his posture—turned his head toward her. He seemed to be seeking a shared reaction. She met his look with eyes narrowed into slits of pure, sharp judgment.
She shook her head with a jagged, impatient motion—a silent "What??"
Then, the sounds stopped.
Maluma's face, His eyes still remained fixed, two dark slits of unfiltered judgment that seem to weigh the very souls of the men before him.
The four brothers sat broken over their empty bowls, their tongues having chased every drop of grease until the grain of the wood shone. They were "busy" in their shame—four shadows hunched in a row, hiding their faces from the village's judgment.
Then, the stillness snapped.
Tantei, the eldest, was the first to tilt his head. It wasn't the mechanical jerk of a beast, but the slow, weighted lift of a man reclaiming his soul. He looked at the people, his eyes moving with a pained, empathetic clarity that seemed to apologize before his lips even moved. He met Maluma's gaze and inclined his head in a shallow, respectful bow.
"I'm so sorry about that. Forgive our manners," Tantei said, his voice a steady but weary anchor in the quiet bure.
Konto, the youngest, shifted next. He moved with a lazy, awkward shrug. He looked at the dirt then the Chief, eyes wavering. "Yeah... sorry about that," he muttered, his voice lacking Tantei's grace but holding a raw, youthful embarrassment. "We were just... well, we were just kind of hungry."
Maluma's brow finally snapped. His face softened, the hard lines of his mouth curving into the ghost of a smile. His eyes widen slightly with suprise. A faint, deep-chested chuckle rumbled through the bure, breaking the stagnant air.
"Well," Maluma said, his voice losing its jagged edge. "I'm just glad you four enjoyed yourselves." he leaned forward, his eyes traveling over the brothers before settling on the long, fabric-wrapped shapes resting across their laps. "Now that your energies are fully restored," he began, his voice dropping into a low, chief-like rumble, "Tell us more about yourselves. Your life back home..." He gestured vaguely to the tools. "Before... all this."
Tantei let a low "Uhm..." vibrate in his chest. His gaze drifted, becoming vacant as if he were staring through the walls of the bure and across the ocean. His hand found the long tool on his legs. His thumb traced the coarse masí fabric, then he tapped three times: Thump. Thump Thump.
"Our life back home used to be great," Tantei said softly. "Me and my brothers used to do our everyday tasks—hunting for meat, repairing the thatch. But one day... people just started getting sick. We thought it was food poisoning, or a flu someone carried... but the elders found it was the reef. Our very source of life, rendered obsolete."
Maluma placed a hand on his chin, tilting his head. "Hmm."
"We wanted to fix it," Tantei continued, his voice tight. "But by then, it was too late. People had been drinking from the reefs and the inlands for weeks—months, maybe. So, those of us still healthy made a plan. We took the Drua vessels…" Tantei had said.
Tako's brow furrowed. He pulled his head back out from under the low, jagged edge of the thatch, the warm, sunny air hitting his sweaty face.
"Drua," Tako whispered, his voice barely a breath. A small, confused realization smoothed the tension in his face for a fleeting second. "So that's what it's called."
But inside, the air stayed cold.
Maluma's eyes snapped to Tantei's skeletal frame. "Wait, wait. Three days only? H—how?" He gestured to their "shrink-wrapped" skin, the bones protruding like jagged stones. "You look as if you've been starving for a month."
Tantei turned to Tambo, his eyes flashing with a brief, wide-eyed alarm.
"And how did you know we were here?" Maluma pressed, his suspicion rising. "You seemed very sure of yourselves when you asked to stay."
Tambo interjected immediately, his voice cutting through the tension. "We didn't," he said, lowering his head before looking back up with a gaze that seemed to plead. "Those three days were relentless, Chief. A storm almost took us, and our rations went into the deep. We were lost in the grey. When we saw your island... you have no idea how relieved we were. We only asked to stay to heal from the trauma that would otherwise drown us."
Maluma slowly shook his head, a heavy sigh escaping him. "That is a traumatic flashback indeed. I can sense your honesty. It makes sense now why you all are so conflicted. Funny thing, Tantei," Maluma whispered, leaning in closer, the torchlight making his face look like carved stone. "You said this sickness might have been a curse or a flu... But now you say the people used the water weeks—months—ago, they majority passed away." He paused, tilting his head with a slow, predatory curiosity. "Then why are you four still talking?"
Konto froze gazing at the Chief. Kanka's red dreadlocks seemed to go still.
Tantei let out a breath he'd been holding.
"If the reef was rotten and the inland was poisoned for months... how are you still alive?" His voice like grinding stones. "So tell me..."
Maluma's eyes flickered to the Masi-wrapped tool on Tantei's lap. "Is it the Fiji water that kept you alive? Or did you find something else? I'm just curious."
Tako's eyes were wide, the whites reflecting the orange torchlight like twin moons.
Teniko's eyes were wide, the dark irises fixed like deep, shadowed pits that didn't move with a human breath.
Rania's youthful face was "tied"—the muscles of her jaw locked, her skin pale under the orange flicker of the torch. Her eyes were widened to their limits.
The four brothers were frozen, their hands locked onto their fabric-wrapped bundles. Not a single lock of Kanka's red sea-sponge hair moves.
Tenia, her static gaze were wide, ancient, and fixed in a state of absolute horror, her breath held so long it felt like the room itself might crack.
Chief Maluma's chest leaned into the orange torchlight as if to block a path that was once breached. His eyes remained into two dark slits of unfiltered judgment, narrowed by the glare of a memory more than the flame. He seemed to watch the brothers not as guests, but as an echo of a scream that the island has finally stopped hearing.