Two months. For two months, he leaves Motunui, and when he comes back they've already up and set sail in a different direction. It's as though the entire island is restless!

Well, it makes sense - they'd been cooped up on that one island for a millennium, and he understands on an uncomfortably personal level exactly how itchy that type of confinement can make a person. But honestly, the way they're scrambling around the ocean, it's like they expect their island to explode underneath their feet.

At least this time they haven't gone far. Little under two hours' flight westward heralds a squawking seagull. And by "heralds", he means that the bird nearly collides with him. Seagulls are about the stupidest things with wings - it's not like he's a small bird, and the ball of fluff and feathers nearly ran straight into his curved, sharpened beak.

The one thing it's good for is tipping him off to start looking for settlement. As he veers over the warm updrafts, the patchwork roofs of niuleaves loom out of the mist rolling off the ocean. A telltale sign of humans.

Another few flaps of his wings propel him straight into the center of the village. Although the roofs look pretty new, already their fale teleis up and stately in the center. The gathering-space is surrounded on all sides by secondary fales, including a new addition to their typical layout in the form of a forge. Huh. The trade with Tumu's metals must be a bigger success than either he or Moana anticipated.

It's midafternoon, and the villagers are already out and about, so Maui spares no flaunting expense as he plummets toward the ground, fishhook flashing ostentatiously as a demigod materializes practically out of nowhere. The catch of the sunlight against his hook doesn't hurt his image, either. Nothing like making an entrance on a town full of unsuspecting mortals. He can't help but preen a bit at the shocked gasps from below; although he's the patron demigod of practically the entire island, he notes with pride, he never fails to amaze them.

A wide-eyed kid - Fetuilelagi, he remembers, one of Moana's wayfinding proteges - has abandoned her place by her mothers' skirts to wrap her arms around Maui's legs. "Story!" she squeals immediately, entirely uncowed by the looming fishhook resting comfortably in Maui's grasp.

"Yeah!" pipes another voice from behind him. Maui comes face-to-face with a boy younger than Moana, one tooth chipped off his mouth and a split lip. Vaguely, Maui wonders if the right hook that tore at the boy's mouth came from the ocean or another kid in the tribe. "Tell us another story!"

Grinning broadly at the attention, Maui seats himself on the ground, right in the center of the village. His enormous fishhook rests against one muscled shoulder, and Maui takes no small amount of glee at the amazement that lights their faces.

In the beginning, there was fear in the faces of the people of Motunui. He hated it, and he hated to admit that he was used to it. That was just how most of his interactions with mortals went. Before his thousand-year vacation home, everywhere he would venture, he would be known. He was someone to adore, to worship, but never someone to love.

Before Moana, he'd never known that could change.

Over time, as Maui returned to her island again and again, their fear dissipated like the fog of the ocean under the burning gaze of the sun. Eventually, that fear turned to exasperation (a grandmother's there's only one lizard who steals chickens three times the size of itself, demigod), amusement (the childrens' recurring pleas for stories), and - though he didn't think it possible, not really - fondness.

He's not sure about the precedent for being the patron demigod of a village. Actually, he's not even sure there isprecedent. He's just kind of the village's unfathomably powerful, crazy uncle that drops out of the sky for a couple of weeks at a time, bearing gifts in the form of the words he weaves for the children.

"Can I touch it?"

Fetuilelagi snaps him out of his pensive trance. He looks down, and the kids in front of him have multiplied. Without waiting for him to begin his recounting, she reaches out with eager hands toward the handle of his hook.

"Fetu," the boy reprimands her as another pair of children join them. "Don't be rude."

As if, Maui thinks to himself. "Go for it, kiddo."

Her entire face lights up with glee as she wraps her hand around the handle. She can't so much as make it budge. Frowning, she latches her other palm onto the hook as well, then heaves upward, straining her entire body against the force of gravity.

Another child comes running from the forge and plops himself on the ground to watch the spectacle. Tamati, Maui remembers vaguely, the little boy ambles around the village wearing coconut husks as hats. There's coconut milk in his hair. In the distance, Tamati's brother comes speeding from the forests to join his brother, skidding in the rocky sand on bare feet.

"You're not doing it right," the toothless boy says haughtily, and hip-checks Fetuilelagi out of the way. Without waiting for her response, he tugs.

Just like Fetuilelagi, he fails.

"Neither are you!" she points out, irritated. Maui leans back against the ground, content to watch the young ones squabble over their uncovered treasure.

By some miracle of diplomacy, Fetuilelagi convinces the toothless kid to help her heft the hook. Still to no avail. One by one, the kids he's accumulated - wow, he can already count a full dozen and he's been here for maybe ten minutes - lend their strength to this endeavor.

Maui stifles a laugh and reaches a hand over, nudging a couple of them out of the way with his fingers, then hefts it in one hand, giving it a little spin for the sake of dramatics. Tension forgotten, the tiny warriors of Motunui ooh and aah appreciatively.

"I know, I know," he tells them, laughing. "Once you fight a lava monster, maybe you'll be able to lift this hook too." He sends his hook spinning across his shoulderblades and catches it in his outstretched palm. With a flick of his wrist, he catapults it into the air, gleaming as it spins. "Speaking of which, did I hear that you little rascals wanted to hear a story?"

"Yeah!" cries toothless boy and Fetuilelagi at the same time, before they both decide fighting's not worth the effort in the face of a Maui-story (guaranteed to be riveting and highly exaggerated), then plunk themselves on the ground, turning their eager faces toward him.

Ah, yes. This is his favorite part of the visits - getting to check in on all his adoring fans.

His hook thunks into the ground behind him. "All right," Maui begins, running through his mental catalogue of tall tales, glancing down at his own tattooed chest for inspiration. Perched on his bicep, Mini-Maui grins and winks.

Which story to tell? Glittershell's way too creepy for kids their age, and Moana hates it when he tells stories that scare the little kiddos. He's already told them a couple of variations on his capture of the wind - maybe the one with the sun? He'd tell it again, he muses, eyeing his crowd appraisingly, if he weren't worried about the sun getting a bit too peeved and turning the sand scorching. Maui's pretty convinced the sun's still holding a grudge, even though the whole lassoing deal was a couple millennia ago.

Eh. Time for a tried-and-true fallback. "How many of you want to learn about coconuts?"