Alistair Hughes/Stuff
Seven writers have collaborated to inform an "extraordinary corpse" story about Moana, equipment and tūī.
We invited seven writers to explore the artwork of exceptional corpse – a online game where a person attracts or, during this case, writes something then passes it on to the next grownup, concealing all but the final line.
each author knew best of two constant characters and the linking observe, tūī.
reading it these days is the first time they have seen the story – beneath an unlimited Sky – in its entirety.
Paul McCredie/Stuff
Kate Camp
(Kate Camp)
in case you ever need to soak up a game don't let it's finest frisbee.
That turned into the sentence equipment became shaping, re-enhancing and mentally delivering, placing the emphasis on ever, then on you, sometimes even on frisbee, notwithstanding the greater instances you even notion that note, the more insane it grew to be.
Moana walked past, adopted by Tūī in cupcake pyjamas. "stop ruminating," she pointed out to equipment. "be troubled is chewing gum for the mind." One session of family unit remedy and Moana had develop into somewhat an expert.
"I'm no longer ruminating," kit noted, "I'm planning what to say at Christmas, you recognize, stockpiling some conversational gambits."
Can any one during this family speak like a normal human being, Bex notion however what she noted become, "Tūī! cease it!" because the dog turned into tearing a gap in his pyjamas to lick at the location the place his balls used to be.
all of them became to watch the dog. each time he well-nigh reached the scar, he misplaced his balance and fell over.
"I understand it's no longer fair to have schadenfreude for canine," kit spoke of, "however it is relatively freaking hilarious."
Getting Tūī had been the correct factor to do, Bex concept, for exactly this purpose. He was some thing – someone in reality – that all and sundry might look at, and focus on, and snort at, on the identical time.
observing Tūī try to lick his phantom balls was the closest they got to a household endeavor, and 7 days out from Christmas, Bex became happy to settle for that.
Ross Giblin/Stuff
pleasure Cowley
(joy Cowley)
Bex changed into chuffed to accept that plus a windless day to dry the washing. She changed into stuffing sheets into the machine when Moana came in, smiling. "i want considered one of your home-made Christmas playing cards."
"due to the fact when?"
Moana shrugged. "Oldies like cards. It's for the Frog."
"omit Ribbet?" Bex moved Tūī who was sniffing the sheets. "You observed she was the pits."
"Yeah, but I've got her for English once again next year. i need a sweetener please. one in every of your photograph playing cards?"
"All appropriate. only one. Take it from the top of the pile. Scenic pictures. Kiwiana Christmas."
Moana's smile broadened. "Fantasmo! equipment advised me you'd say sure."
Sweetener, Bex determined. I've simply been sweetened.
The day remained great, and the pantyhose pegged on the road had been early Christmas stockings filled with sunlight.
She become having a coffee when Moana and gear got here lower back with their skateboards. equipment grinned. "She posted the cardboard to historical Froggy."
"miss Ribbet, please," said Bex.
"Yeah!" equipment's eyes danced. "but it surely wasn't the card you observed. It was from the bottom of the pile."
"What?"
"flowers!" mentioned Moana. "i thought she'd like the card with a rose on it."
Bex checked out equipment. "You didn't cease her? these are Condolence cards!"
"No, no!" referred to Moana. "The internal changed into blank."
"She didn't examine the words on the outdoor," pointed out package. "With Deepest Sympathy."
There become a moment of silence before kit said to Moana. "Kei te tino pai, Moana. You bought it appropriate."
supplied
J Wiremu Kane
(J Wiremu Kane)
Moana laughed. "I'm all the time correct."
The wind appeared come from every course, knocking the accurate off the short, choppy waves.
"package!" the waves gave a staccato shout as they hit the jagged rocks. "Moana!" they sighed as they tugged ropes of yellow-brown kelp.
"plenty less crowded right here," Moana pointed out. "We may even go swimming."
kit felt a threshing of their belly at the idea.
"Nah, too cold."
"Let's simply stroll then," Moana pointed out. She chose each step with care, hunting for smooth, good rocks or patches of pebbly sand.
equipment wondered if they timed their step simply correct, may they slip via a gap on earth and into yet another one. One a bit gentler, extra welcoming.
"the place do you believe yours?" Moana requested.
equipment touched their stomach.
"You?"
Moana put a hand to her throat where she felt a clean, cool lump inside. It came away in her hand, a grey egg that filled her palm.
kit didn't suppose pain, simply a wierd rummaging as anything pushed its method out of their stomach. It fell from under their T-shirt onto the rocks, a mucous coated tūī. It shook itself dry and took off toward the scrubby bush.
The egg in Moana's hand hatched. Out sprang a fully grown toroa, each wing provided that Moana turned into tall.
The toroa rose on a column of air and changed into misplaced from view in the excessive cloud. With each and every blink, Moana noticed in the course of the eyes of the toroa, a glimpse of not ever-ending ocean below an unlimited sky.
presented
Chris Tse
(Chris Tse)
She imagined what it would be like to see the world from such heights – untethered, but nonetheless caught between two worlds like somebody on the point of entering into a dream.
Oh, to be able to take a breath and let your self be swept away through the wind, to go with the flow so excessive you might soak up the entire world directly.
on occasion Moana preferred to feel here is what tūī had been so desperate to describe with their chatty songs – each click, whistle and hiccup was a river, or a tree, or a mountain they'd viewed on their travels.
a chum informed her as soon as a couple of tūī of their yard who turned into able to mimic the sound of a neighbour's vehicle alarm, which brought about more than its share of confusion.
Moana begun to lose track of time, as most people do when they permit themselves to disappear into blissful contemplation.
The spell turned into damaged when she heard kit calling out to her. They bounded over, waving some thing exquisitely eco-friendly of their palms.
"seem to be – this changed into caught in that tree," they pointed out, pointing to a golden okōwhai within the distance.
It turned into a pretty silk scarf embroidered with pink and white vegetation. Moana had by no means viewed fabric shimmer so brilliantly earlier than, as if it had been made of liquid.
"What should we do with it?" equipment requested, posing like a celebrity on a pink carpet with the shawl draped around their shoulders. Moana appeared round, wondering who would go away behind such a gorgeous scarf.
provided
Samantha Lane Murphy
(Samantha Lane Murphy)
No, wondering why someone would leave anything desirable in the event that they might support it.
The thought despatched a quick thrill of concern down her lower back as she took inventory of the deserted web page.
The van obviously hadn't long gone anywhere in ages, with tall yellow grass spiking up around the wheels, curling under the fenders. No glaring signal of an assault, and any attack can be obvious, correct?
"Did you see anything within the van?"
equipment hopped down from the entry, the scarf fluttering. "Nothing first rate," they stated. "All cleared out, except for this. may still we leave it, though, in case whoever it belongs to comes back?"
however that wasn't what Moana turned into considering. She considered kit, dirt-stained clothing under shining sky-blue silk. She changed into pondering: it's too vivid, the silk.
The hungry undead have been certain to peer it during the trees at some lousy, important second. possibly that's why the shawl became left. probably it'd even saved someone's life, if it was grabbed in its place of flesh or hair, left to fall from unfeeling fingers. Forgotten, now discovered.
within the bushes above, a hen performed an pressing opera. Mating season. Ngā tūī didn't seem to comprehend that the area had ended, and infrequently, it seemed like package didn't both. So, they sang.
"Moana?" asked equipment, as their smile begun to fade. the style it dwindled become fitting more accepted to Moana than when it lit up.
"keep it," Moana observed. She reached over to ruffle package's hair. "It's Christmas."
supplied
Tina Makereti
(Tina Makereti)
They heard it then, excessive-pitched and urgent screeching – a mayhem of birds swooping through the bushes, chasing each different, warning of impending hazard.
equipment wandered out to the stand of ancient manuka and baby pōhutukawa, flowering for the primary time this summer.
Moana adopted, but the birds didn't care for their presence.
They saved up their acrobatic chase, shrill and panicked, five or six tūī they now saw, the birds diving in front of them earlier than dashing back as much as spiral through the air.
package felt the push of it, even alongside the anxiousness brought on with the aid of the birds' scrapping. To be that free, to be so in that factor, that airy dance.
Moana changed into smiling too, head tilted again, and then the birds began to disperse. possibly there was enough nectar for all and sundry after all. ample for one of them to begin singing, a warble, a pure sweet-flavoured observe, some thing like a question for the humans.
"Kia ora," Moana observed, and it sounded strange to her however she believed the chicken understood, "hiya there."
kit laughed. "maybe we're not just like the ancestors that method," they talked about, "speakme to birds."
"Kao, might be no longer. however I reckon we may if we had a person to reveal us. I suggest Uncle Timmo used to do some relatively some distance out things with his kahu."
Moana changed into appropriate – if you listened carefully, you might virtually hear what the tūī was announcing.
Chris McKeen/Stuff
Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh.
(Selina Tusitala Marsh)
very nearly.
"nobody listens anymore," referred to equipment. "Omnicrom, kauri die-lower back, colonialism's gawdy soul flashing its cubic zirconias to the highest bidder."
"that might be zirconia, like sheep," observed Moana. They trudged on in opposition t the summit, passing woolly huddles in the dead of night with the bizarre lamb mewling.
"cease humouring me Mo. Christmas or no Christmas, I'm allowed to drown my Christmases."
"that might be Christmae."
"actually?"
"Nah."
They'd taken a side-winding trail to evade the sweeping searchlight from the mozzie helicopter hovering overhead. They could attain the summit undetected in the event that they stuck to the darkish clumps of bush and midden pits.
"Is it nonetheless there?" Moana pried open her backpack to display kit. A greeny-bronze dome shone iridescent below Mahina's full gentle. An egg the measurement of a basketball become nestled interior.
A dying species. The ritual need to be achieved on the eve's turning.
at the properly of Maungakiekie, Moana and gear took out the egg and placed it at the foot of the obelisk, pointing its head in opposition t Rangitoto.
"Geez! this is similar to beneath the Mountain." They'd just comprehensive Westie Classics in kit's category.
"apart from we don't have purple hair."
"And we're now not twins."
"And this isn't a stone. It's the last one."
In unison, they spoke of their kuia's karakia, finishing the mantra as they have been taught:
"With the size of the Moa, the resurrection power of the Phoenix, we return you to your tūpuna maunga and to us all."
The enormous Tūī would rise all over again.
Kate Camp is a Wellington poet. Her memoir You probably think this tune is about you may be published in 2022.
At eighty five, and with superior macular degeneration, joy Cowley's contribution to this become written slowly in 48pt "kindergarten" print, in all probability an indication of 2d childhood, anything to appear ahead to, she says.
J Wiremu Kane (Ngāpuhi) lives and writes on the ancestral lands of Ngāti Hei and Ngāti Maru.The title of this story comes from his contribution.
Chris Tse is an award-profitable poet from Wellington. His most fresh books are he's SO MASC and Out here: An anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa.
Samantha Lane Murphy is a Wellington-based science fiction author. Her stories seem in Monsters in the garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and fantasy and, most recently, middle Distance: long stories of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi) writes fiction and creative nonfiction, and teaches artistic writing at Te Herenga Waka Victoria college of Wellington. In 2022, she should be working on a brand new novel as some of the Canterbury university Ursula Bethell Writers in home.
Selina Tusitala Marsh simply made full professor on the institution of Auckland and is working on Mophead: KNOT, the third publication in her Mophead collection.
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