Capeworld Comics

Pele

 

The Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, destruction, creation, anger, lightning, the dead, and dance. When she first emanated from the conscious Astral to Hawaii in the 1930’s, Pele feared how people would treat her knowing her reputation of violence and rage. Mystic Kuaihelani, home of the gods, did not want her because they feared her power. How would mortals receive her? In fear of the answer, she hid herself away in Kilauea volcano. But since she repelled an invasion by Imperial Japan in the 1940’s by wounding their sun goddess Amaterasu she has been by far the most popular superbeing in the Hawaiian islands. She maintained her popularity throughout the decades with warm visitations upon the populace and tabloid scandals. She loved humanity because they loved her and traveled among them disguised. Wherever she dropped  her disguise, all around her celebrated like it was Christmas morning. She contributed to the culture of Hawaii with lava festivals at Killuhua, fire gardens with flowers of spun volcanic glass, and the halau Pele, the most prestigious and demanding hula school in the world. But Pele was also a party girl, a “super-celebrity,” and her public brawls and sexual encounters brought shame to herself and her state. A second encounter with Amaterasu in 1967 drove Pele to critical self-reflection and she decided that she needed a family–daughters specifically. With daughters, with kamalani, she hoped to be able to see aspects of herself missed by her introspection. She hoped that motherhood would force her to temper her wild lifestyle. She hoped they would have love for their sisters and mother unlike what Pele knew growing up.

 

Pele As Known to The Races of the Cosmos

 

When the gods of Kuaihelani found telepathic resonance with the stories of our universe, most paid little attention to Earth, though Polynesia’s mystic shadow had its charms. The humans imagined them as beautiful beings that ruled over shimmering, cerulean waters teeming with life and black mountains that smoked with the churning lifeblood of a planet. But Polynesia was just a series of islands that rested upon a small watery droplet called Earth that floated in the ripple of a gravity pit called the sun. 

 

There were older races that imagined the gods of Kuaihelani as ruling over vastly larger domains. It was into these forms that the Kuaihelani typically poured their attention.

 

Namaka, Kuaihelani goddess of oceans, was known to the spacefaring Estrel as the Harrier in Darkness. Her domain was space itself.

 

The Estrel were a nomadic race. They evolved within a drifting nebula and never knew a homeworld. Like the Thule of Earth, they projected telekinetic fields that provided them with the heat and pressure they needed to survive their environment. To space traveling races, they were guides through the infinite black ocean of the universe. They were also known to be traders, though having evolved to live within small, energy-efficient bubbles, quantitative wealth interested them little. In fact, they considered it a burden in most cases. There was only so much room in their bubbles. Qualitative wealth is what they traded for. They wanted rare objects,  preferably ones with good stories behind them. 

 

The Estrel found trust to be an issue when trading with races out in black infinity. Betrayal is easy when one can move lightyears away with a push of a button. Their collected frustrations at swindlers and cheats created the figure of the Harrier in Darkness who became a prominent feature of their religion. 

 

Stars were the eyes of the Harrier in Darkness. No matter where deal-breakers hid, she would find them. Space was the many limbs of the Harrier in Darkness. No matter how far liars ran, she would open her hands to receive them–and close them to hold them forevermore She was Estrel’s curse against trespassers and the guarantor or their vows. “If I fail to speak the truth, may my light fall into the endless maw of the Harrier in Darkness and be no seen no more forever.” 

 

Namaka thought being the goddess of space was far better than being the goddess of a little droplet world.

 

Poliahu, Kuaihelani goddess of snow, was known to the Vog as Hereahar, goddess of limits.

 

Hereahar was a deification of the artificial ring that encircled the red giant their homeworld orbited. The ring was all that remained of a Chromian sun-swallower abandoned in its development when the Vog’s homeworld was blazing and lifeless. Hereahar made her home within the ring, but ruled over limits and borders wherever they might be. Where a planet’s atmosphere gave way to void, there was Hereahar. Where the Form Masters found they could not perceive the beauty of stars because their universe-dwarfing eyes were too large, here was Hereahar to. And where the ring halted the expansion of their dying sun and absorbed its atmosphere-shredding heat into cold, black panels, there Hereahar was in her purest, most benevolent form. 

 

Hereahar was the cold and distance that turned destructive heat into life-giving warmth. 

 

Older races mocked the Vog and their faith. They said the Vog are a race of flies born from the trash of the Chromians. They said Hereahar is their idiot explanation for technology they cannot comprehend. But the Vog know the truth. Hereahar is the goddess of limits, including the limits of their detractors’ understanding. They will never know what it means to owe their entire world, their entire existence, to the benevolence of a single being. 

 

They will never know what it feels like to be loved by a deity. And that is their punishment.

 

Poliahu thought being a goddess who lived in a ring around a star was grander than being a goddess who lived in a ring of snow around a mountain called Mauna Kea.

 

Telepathic resonance brought the gods of Kuaihelani to the mystic shadow of Polynesia. But most placed only a perfunctory emmanation within Polynesia’s shadow and placed their focus instead behind older shadows from older worlds. 

 

Their earthly emanations sleepwalked through a beautiful dream.  Namaka strolled upon the ocean and admired how beautiful her reflection was mingling with the darting fish. Poliahu flipped snowflakes between her fingers and snipped them into unique shapes. They seldom crossed over into the physical world finding little that interested them on Earth.

 

But not Pele.

 

Pele was different.

She had always been the different one.

 

Like all homo fabula, Pele was made up of stories as humans were made of cells. But all these stories involved violent conflicts with her fellow goddesses–conflict that she lost.

 

She was Pele who was exiled from her mother’s lands for the potential danger of her powers, Pele who fled from her sister Namaka until she was cornered, defeated, and broken, Pele who started a battle with Poliahu over territory and was decisively vanquished, and worst of all–Pele who burnt her beloved sister Hi’iaka over a stupid, pointless, romantic squabble.

 

This was how she was known in one form or another to all the mystic shadows of the universe. 

 

Unlike Namaka and Poliahu, she did not want to be a grand goddess. She hated seeing herself at a cosmic scale because it made her defeats and sins seem insurmountably massive. To the Vog, she was their chained life-star. She was a ravenous, near-mindless creature that would incinerate the world if she slipped the leash that held her tight. To the Estrel, she was the Wanton Star,  the deification of a troublesome, naturally occuring phenomena where protostars, molecular clouds which the Estrel harvest to create the atmosphere for their telekinetic bubbles, suddenly sparked into premature novas incinerating all around them. Wanton Stars were seen as deceitful cheaters by the Estrel no different from space-traders that reneged on their deals. As such, they were said to be punished by the Harrier in Darkness. It was because of the Harrier in Darkness that Wanton Stars could flare up once and only once. Because after they did so, the Harrier in Darkness took their life.

 

Pele’s faults were written in the stars, and the goddess longed for a mystic shadow to emmante into where her faults were not so titanically huge.

 

The mystic shadow of Hawaii gave her just that.

 

Pele as Known to the Hawaiians 

 

The Hawaiians, in their own way, knew all the stories of Pele. They knew how she was, like the rest of the gods, a child of Kanehoalani who was the sky and Haumea who was the Earth. They knew how she, unlike the rest of the gods, had a violent power that frightened her family. 

 

Pele was born on an island that floated in the sky like a mirage which was sometimes said to be in Tahiti, other times where the setting sun met the horizon, and other times in a spiritual place mankind could never find. Unlike her siblings who found kinship with water and earth and air, Pele found a friend in fire. She kept close to mother Haumea’s fireplace, or the fire-keeper god Lono-makua, or sometimes both. 

 

Pele loved fire. She loved how it danced on her palm and how it felt when she closed her hand around. She loved fire so much that in time, she became fire. 

 

And then things went wrong. 

 

She started making fire-pits. She did this because she wanted to fill her home with beauty and could think of nothing more beautiful than fire, or because she grew ambitious and began creating fire-pits to strengthen her power to the point she could overthrow father Kanehoalani. There were many versions of the story, and one even said that she never made a single fire pit. Her family just reacted to the potential threat her power represented. 

 

Regardless of what she did to earn the ire of her family, she was exiled from Kuaihelani–violently.

 

Her elder sister Namaka, goddess of the ocean, drove Pele away from Kuaihelani and chased her with the intention of killing her so that whatever made Pele a danger in the eyes of her people would be extinguished forever. 

 

Pele was hounded across the Pacific, Namaka’s cold waters hardening the fire she left behind in her flight into the Hawaiian islands. From Niihau to Maui, Namaka chased Pele until she was trapped at Hawaii island. 

 

Pele fought for her life but was overpowered by her sister and slain.

 

Being a goddess, death was a phase for Pele, not an end. But though her death was temporary, the memory of being slaughtered by her sister was forever etched onto her soul. Namaka had accomplished her mission. Pele would never be a threat to the gods of Kuaihelani. She hated them. She feared them. She wanted nothing to do with their company.

 

The trauma of her death likely influenced Pele’s behavior in future stories. Hawaiian mythology is filled with stories depicting Pele as an impulsive goddess quick to use violence at the slightest provocation. 

 

One such humiliation began when she saw the snow goddess Poliahu sledding down snowy Mauna Kea, the largest mountain in the world when measured from its ocean base. Mauna Kea was vastly larger than Pele’s own home of Kilauea which was a low shield volcano, a glorified hill compared to Mauna Kea, and when Pele looked up at Mauna Kea she felt the eyes of Namaka looking down on her. 

 

In jealousy, Pele challenged Poliahu to a sledding race down Mauna Kea. She lost, but because Poliahu was a kind and polite goddess she offered to exchange sleds and have a rematch. Pele took her gesture as condescension, but accepted anyway because she wanted very badly to win just once.

 

When she lost again, Pele demanded a third match. And when she saw she was going to lose for a third time, she attacked Poliahu with her fire only to be beaten back by Poliahu’s snow. This started a fierce battle.

 

Ice clashed with fire. Pele opened flaming fissures that Poliahu sealed with ice. Pele summoned flowing rivers of lava that Poliahu swallowed with oceans of snow. Pele hurled globes of fire at Poliahu that fizzled into nothing against her skin.

 

Poliahu was victorious and Pele was forced to flee back down to her squat volcano.

 

She had lost to another goddess. She had fled from another goddess. But Poliahu was mightier than her, and so her only recourse was to seath just like the churning magma of her home.

 

This was not the last time Pele’s temper led to her humiliation. 

 

The worst time came when she burnt her sister Hi’iaka. 

 

That was the worst humiliation by far. It was worse than her tryst with a pig-demigod named Kamapua’a. It was worse than when she challenged Poliahu’s sisters to a fight and lost to them one after the other.

 

It was the worst humiliation because in all her other humiliations she only harmed herself. But in burning Hi’iaka, she harmed someone she loved far more than herself.

 

Hi’iaka was Pele’s sister, though in many ways she was her daughter. When Pele was expelled from the land of the gods, she carried Hi’iaka as an egg and kept her close to incubate her. For this reason she is known as Hi’iaka-i-ka-pole-o-Pele, Hi’iaka in the bosom of Pele.

 

Hi’iaka was a kind, calm, and friendly goddess. She was everything Pele wasn’t and Pele loved her for it. Hi’iaka was at peace with the world in a way Pele could never be. But by being close to Hi’iaka, Pele came close to that peace. 

 

Pele doted on Hi’iaka. She gifted her objects of power so that she would never be the lesser of any goddess–Pele included. With these objects, Hi’aka traveled the islands of Hawaii as a heroine. She destroyed monsters and defeated evil sorcerers. She developed a history that stood well above Pele’s, and for that Pele was glad.

 

But then there was a man. 

 

He was most often called Lohiau. And he fell in love with Pele, and Pele fell in love with him. But there were complications and misunderstandings and it was all so foolish, and Pele wished she could forget all about Lohiau and what had happened but she couldn’t. She thought Hi’iaka had stolen Lohiau from her. She didn’t, and even if she did Pele would still have regretted what she had done.

 

The shame she felt at the possibility of being disrespected by another goddess was greater than her love for Hi’iaka. She destroyed Lohiau. She destroyed a grove of trees sacred to Hi’iaka. In some stories, she even burnt Hi’iaka–the person she loved most in the world. She attacked her just as Namaka had attacked her long ago.

 

Pele made amends. She brought Lohiau back to life. She restored the grove. She apologized. She allowed Lohiau, whose love for Pele cooled considerably after she killed him, to go with Hi’iaka. She begged Hi’iaka for forgiveness and it was granted.

 

None of it made the guilt go away.

 

Her defeat by Namaka had defined her to such an extent that she became like Namaka–but worse. Namaka hated Pele. But Pele had harmed the one being she loved above all others.

 

This was how Pele knew herself.

 

This was how the Hawaiians of Earth knew Pele.

 

They didn’t know her as a planet devouring star, but they knew all her secrets, shames and defeats. When Pele crossed over from Hawaii’s mystic shadow into the physical world, she did not expect to be welcomed. She figured she would be left alone to brood in Kilauea’s crater. That was all she wanted really–just the chance to sit down and think in a place where she and her infamy were smaller than the stars.

 

Pele Manifests on Earth

 

In 1936, Pele appeared at the peak of Kilauea in a body of black volcanic glass. Her long hair reached to her ankles and was made of thick locks of magma whose colors flowed from gold to red to blue. She wore a skirt and top spun from lightning, for lightning was one of her little-known domains, and it was bright white with a slight hue of blue. Loose threads from her lightning-cloth sparked vividly in the air. Each turn of her body was a little, brief lightning storm. Each turn of her head was a slow gush of lava from an obsidian scalp.

 

Pele announced her arrival with the aplomb expected of a goddess. She made the Kilauea erupt with fury, but took care that not a spark touched the ground. She willed the fire to hang like a crowning cloud above Kilauea for a day and a night. Thousands came to watch the cloud of lava swirl like a glob of paint stirred by God’s brush. Then she drew the fire into a column and fed it back into Kilauea.

 

 In a voice that shook the volcano, she announced “I am the goddess Pele. That is all that I am.” then followed the fire down into Kilauea.

 

Pele figured that her announcement would more or less be all the contact she would have with humanity. She would live in a world of light guarded from the outside by an earthen fortress. It would be a lonely life, but not a sad one, not really. Earth’s superhumans might even visit her. She would like that. She wanted to ask them how they managed to have such dangerous powers without being considered a threat by those around them.

 

But the crowds around Kilauea did not disperse.

 

They grew.

 

Multitudes wanted to see her.

 

They shouted, they chanted, they beat drums, and they begged her to appear again. They wanted to see her. They wanted to hear her speak. 

 

Why did they love her so? Pele couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t a mighty goddess. When challenged she was defeated. When she issued a challenge she was defeated. She wasn’t a wise goddess either. Her temper was legendary. She burnt the one person she loved most in the world.

 

And they knew this! They knew all this!

 

Was their love just because she was tied to the creation of their lands? Was it just because her fires made the surface upon which they built their civilization? 

 

Or was it because they had sympathy for her? Did they pity her? No. Pity alone couldn’t account for how they treated her. They called her Madame Pele, Sweet Pele. They respected her, and respect could not come from pity. 

 

Pele thought long and hard about how they treated her, and after a time she came to the conclusion that they loved her because they did not worship her. 

 

Worship of Pele all but died out in 1824 when Kapiolani, a chieftess and convert to Christianity, threw rocks into Kilauea in an act of defiance recorded in a poem by Tennyson.  Before Kapiolani, Pele’s story was a tool of warlords. In 1790, Hawaii was divided between the warring factions of Kamehameha and Keoua. When Kilauea erupted, it killed the forces of Keoua. Kamehameha was quick to capitalize on his good fortune and proclaimed himself divinely appointed to rule by Pele–as if a goddess that knew all too well the cost of violence would slaughter masses of people for the benefit of a tiny, human warlord.

Kapiolani had a personal stake in dismantling the worship of Pele. She was niece of Kiwalao who was half-brother of Keoua, cousin to Kamehameha, and son of the previous king Kalaniopuu. Kiwalao was killed by Kamehameha which caused Keoua to raise an army in retaliation. When Kamehameha claimed Pele justified his rule, it retroactively justified his killing of Kapiolani’s uncle. Though Kapiolani was made a chieftess by Kamehameha in an effort to stabilize his rule, she never forgot that it was Pele who was said to have justified Kamehameha’s crimes.

 

Kapiolani knew the pain of being victimized by family.. Though she opposed “Pele,” she of all  of Hawaii’s rulers was the most after Pele’s own heart. If Pele truly had a say in the politics of 19th century Hawaii, she would have fried Kamehameha and made Kapiolani queen.

 

Pele would have hated being in Hawaii before 1824. The Hawaiians confused the vagaries of nature for her will. They treated her like the Vog and Estrel treated her star-incarnations.They saw Pele not as Pele, but as a danger to be avoided and appeased. They thought she wanted sacrifices. They threw flowers and fruits and pigs into Kilauea–as if meaningless destruction was anything that interested her. Whenever she unleashed destruction, it was for a reason. It was often a petty reason, but it was a reason nonetheless.

 

But because modern Hawaiians had no fear of her, they could love her in ways an object of worship couldn’t be loved. They could love her as a person. They could love her as a person who suffered great loneliness and pain, who was cast out of her family’s land and slain by her sister. They could love her as a person whose pride was wounded and who acted foolishly because of it. They could love her as a person who hurt someone dear to their heart and deeply regretted it.

 

They could love her as Pele.

 

But though Pele understood why she was loved, she was not prepared to accept that love. It was a new and strange feeling to be loved by so many and it frightened her. She withdrew into Kilauea and drowned out the voices outside with roiling magma. She didn’t know what to say to the crowds, and so she said nothing.

 

Then the Empire of Japan attacked Hawaii.

 

Pele vs Amaterasu

 

In 1940, the Axis activated Vril walls hidden around the world and began a global blitzkrieg to conquer an Earth divided by walls of fire. The Empire of Japan attacked the Pacific and the East coast of the United States. Hawaii was attacked. Pele’s Hawaii was attacked. 

 

Hollow-eyed umibozo rose from the ocean floor and broke through her blue waters as their blank faces shot into the air. Oni trampled her sandy beaches. Raijin left glowing scars of electricity in her clear skies. 

 

The sun herself, in the glowing form of Amaterasu, straddled her mountain and asked in a voice that had no fear at all for Pele to appear before her.

 

The solar goddess stood with nearly transparent, crystal-like skin the color of the bluest sky. She was clothed in a fiery kimono woven from the finest sunsets. In her chest was a sun as bright as the dawn and its radiance coursed through her being and poured from her eyes. Her hair reached to her bare feet and was as black as night and followed her graceful movements just as night followed the day.

 

Pele will never admit that she feared Amaterasu–not even to herself. But in truth, she did. She feared most other goddesses and felt inferior to their might. And Amaterasu was a particularly mighty goddess. Earth was not the only place in the cosmos where she was associated with sunlight.  Countless worlds across the universe envisioned her as their life-giving suns. The closest Pele came to such grandeur was when she was a chained, dying star. Just between their Earth emanations the difference in power was stark. Amaterasu was the sun. Pele was, to be generous, the Earth. Her magma-fire was pathetically cold next to Amaterasu’s star-fire.

 

But this had become her land. The Hawaiians had become her people.

 

She would not run as she ran from Namaka. Even if she was defeated again, she would not run.

 

She pulled herself up from Kilauea and met Amaterasu at her size.

 

Amaterasu, with characteristic humility, made a short bow and politely asked for Pele’s surrender.

 

Pele took Amaterasu’s genuine politeness for mocking condescension.

 

And that made Pele fly into a rage.

 

Pele always had a temper. Often, it led to her ruin. But not in this case.

 

Anger can sometimes make the difference in a fight be it a fight between mortals or goddesses. And it did in the battle between Pele and Amaterasu.

 

Amaterasu was shocked by Pele’s sudden ferocity. Her world was a world of courtly manners where even the most volatile of emotions were cloaked in verbal acuity. Naked savagery was the domain of her brother Susanoo, god of storms and war. It was alien to her nature.

 

Amaterasu may have been more powerful, but she drew back and left herself open to Pele’s full strength. And that strength was something for even the living sun to respect. 

 

Pele was feared by the other gods of Kuaihelani. Before they reduced her, restrained her, and humbled her, they feared her.

 

It is no small thing to be feared by divinity.

 

Pele was no more a pocket of magma beneath the Earth than Amaterasu was a nuclear furnace the Earth orbited.Physical things described gods, they did not define them.

 

Pele was power restrained–power long restrained like an active volcano, like a gathering storm, like a growing earthquake. Restrained power was her definition.

 

And now the restraints were off.

 

The goddesses grappled on the ocean floor. The waters surged from their colliding bodies in mountain-dwarfing sheets. The ground crystalized. The ocean vaporized. Through cloudbanks of steam, onlookers miles away saw two fires–one with the stillness of the sun, the other with the dancing furyof flame. And gradually, the latter consumed the former.

 

Pele put her fist through Amaterasu and gave her a wound that would last the war. 

 

Amaterasu retreated, and Japan’s forces retreated with her. She became a red sun over Tokyo that plunged the city into twenty-four hour twilight. The sky seeped with her blood. Over the city, there was neither the rest of sunset, nor the rebirth of sunrise, but only a languishing exhaustion.

 

Pele was ecstatic in her victory. She at last knew what it was like to be the winner in a fight. And the cheers across the eight islands of Hawaii added to her heady exhilaration.

 

They were her people now. Before, there were many that were leery of Pele and dismissed her as an extradimensional alien stealing her appearance from their mythology. It was hard for many in the 20th century to understand that homo fabula had lived through Earth’s mythologies–and all other mythologies– well before Earth ever formed. But after she defended Hawaii from an invasion, everyone recognized her as Pele. 

 

In the post-war years, Pele became one of the most popular figures in the world. She was certainly the most popular in Hawaii. Year after year she was voted the Statesman representative of Hawaii in landslide victories. 

 

No other superhuman has her record, and she would be Statesmen representative every year if she didn’t occasionally decline the nomination to give Hawaii’s other superhumans a chance.

 

She hosted yearly, then monthly, festivals at Kilauea where she would reenact her 1936 appearance and cause Kilauea’s lava to flow across the land- and commanding it to not burn a thing. Surfing the lava flows as they roll towards the sea is a popular sport. 

 

She constructed underground “fire gardens” that connected through tunnels to Kilauea’s magma heart. Her fire gardens were lit by magma flowing through the walls, though her power made it cool even to the touch. From this magma sprang geometric creations of volcanic glass like flowers from fertile soil. The glass flowers caught the light of the magma and broke it into scintillations that flooded the fire gardens with brilliant color. The fire gardens rival the beaches and mountaintops for Hawaii’s most beautiful environments and many young Hawaiians have shared their first kiss in the light of their glass plants.

 

 She made a cameo in Elvis’ Blue Hawaii in 1961, and then after personally convincing Elvis that she was much prettier than Joan Blackman, starred in She Likes it Hot! In 1962. 

 

She opened Hawaii’s most prestigious and demanding hula school, or halau. She was a goddess of dance and the goddess of the hula after Hi’iaka. She taught hula both in the traditional ai kahiko style and the modern auana style, but in whatever style she taught she demanded perfection. She had to, for the dances she taught were rituals that connected dancers to the mystic shadow of Hawaii. When her students danced all the steps, they would be seen by the gods themselves. 

 

Pele loved to bask in her celebrity like a flower before the sun, but sometimes she would go among the people disguised as a human. Pele was fascinated by humans. She was fascinated with how they had families and made friends, how they negotiated and resolved disputes, and how they worked to help one another. Pele loved the goddess-to-human relationship she had with the Hawaiians, but she wanted to try having human-to-human relationships as well.

 

She also loved surprising people. She loved shedding her human disguise and suddenly, PELE! It never failed to make the news. “Local charity receives a massive boost in support after elderly woman donates flowers made of obsidian. Notorious supervillain Gravestone captured when one of his hostages opened the ground beneath him. Beautiful surfer delights crowds at O’ahu by using aquatic earthquakes to ride record-breaking waves.”

 

It was her “human hobby” that led Pele to become involved in the United State’s superhero community. US superheroes have championed the use of secret identities since 1933 when Dr. Hercules Stone wrote of their positive psychological benefits in his anthropological study of superhumans, Princes of Dawn. 

 

Pele liked asking superheroes how they maintained their identities and found the labyrinthian social layers they navigated on a daily basis fascinating, though she lacked the desire and the discipline to ever take her disguises to the level of a fully-constructed alter-ego. Her disguises made things fun. She wasn’t about to turn them into something that required serious work on her behalf to maintain.A pretty face, an alluring body, and a name like “Penny” or “Penelope”–this was all she needed in a disguise. And if anything went wrong, she just changed the face and hair a little.

 

Pele considered herself a superheroine–the greatest superheroine in Hawaii, in fact. She loved the theatrics that came with the American superhero tradition. She was naturally a loud, attention-grabbing person and liked how superheroics allowed her to use her personality to both intimidate evildoers and give calm assurance to the innocent. The superheroic ideal of an invincible, colorful being that emerged from out of nowhere or from a seemingly helpless individual to take powerful, decisive action–that was the essence of a volcanic eruption. That was the essence of Pele.

 

Pele joined the Coast Guardians superteam in 1950 as a founding member, but she often quit the team only to rejoin it later, which made her in practice more of an associate than a full member though her signature (written in cold, glowing magma) was on the charter. Pele disliked never being the leader (the Coast Guardians knew better than to ever trust Pele with a position of authority) and having to conform her schedule (what little of a schedule she had) to Coast Guardian patrols and functions. 

 

Pele liked impromptu team-ups with superheroes far more than working with a team. She paid surprise visits to superheroes around the world to offer her assistance–or to get in the way.

 

The superhero community in general has ambivalent feelings toward Pele. They appreciate that she’s very active in shaping the community and culture of Hawaii, but they dislike her infamous hunger for celebrity. Large parts of the community distance themselves from Pele and roll their eyes at if not openly protest her constant elections to Statesmen representative. They consider Pele less of a supheroine and more of a celebrity playing at being a superheroine.

 

And unfortunately, Pele gives her detractors plenty of ammunition to use against her.

 

After the 1940’s, Pele became an inseparable feature of Hawaiian culture. The public showered her with attention and Pele basked in it. But the attention of the public always comes and goes. That was simply the way of popularity. She would always be in the hearts of Hawaiians, but not always on their minds. 

 

But Pele feared obscurity. Attention made her happy, and because she was seldom happy she thought that she needed attention to be happy. She resolved that she would always be on the minds of Hawaiians. They would always be talking about her.

They would always be talking about her even if she had to do some shameful things to keep their attention.

 

Pele the Celebrity

 

Pele was notorious for cultivating controversy and seeking scandal. She inserted herself into the worlds of entertainment, politics, and superheroes. She had duels and catfights, debates and shouting matches, romances and trysts. Mostly, she simply enjoyed herself and indulged in whatever fickle passions she had at the moment and let journalists and fans care about the consequences. 

 

She had fun.

 

Hawaiians became split on Pele. Some saw her as roguish and fun. Other states didn’t have superheroes as interesting as Pele. Did they want to be like North Carolina where their most popular superhero was Eliteman? But other Hawaiians bemoaned Pele’s behavior. They said their state had a “super-tabloid” instead of a superheroine and worried about the image of Hawaii she presented to the rest of the world.

 

Pele surrounded herself with paramours. Elvis Presley was her most famous lover, but other notable partners included James Dean, Sean Connery, and Sword Saint, one of Hawaii’s greatest superheroes. Pele never went after a man in a committed relationship. She remembered the pain shared between herself, Hi’iaka, and Lohiau. She didn’t wish that kind of pain on anyone. But that being said, Pele had no problem claiming men playing the field. She didn’t just not mind jealous girlfriends–she preferred them. She liked beating out other women for the affections of men. It made her feel secure. And as for flirting–not even married men were safe from Pele chatting them up. A commonly circulated anecdote concerns the married superhero couple of Voidman and Outbacker vacationing in Hawaii. When Pele visited the couple sunbathing on Poipu Beach, she complimented Voidman’s muscles in a tone that Outbacker thought was inappropriate. The superheroine made her displeasure known by punching the goddess so hard that she skipped across the Pacific like a flaming stone. Pele gleefully retaliated, but her hopes of having a long brawl with one of Australia’s finest were crushed by Voidman creating his namesake between Pele and his wife. Following the confrontation, Outbacker’s superheroine costume underwent a noticeable revision. It became far more revealing and pantless–and everyone could guess the reason why.

 

Pele liked politics–particularly radical politics. She campaigned to have the constitution of Hawaii changed so that she, technically a foreigner, could run for governor. When she got what she wanted in 1965, she ran for governor only to drop out well before voting began. She liked politics, but not political science, and never realized how restrictive the office of governor was compared to what she imagined it to be. She then campaigned for the restoration of the monarchy with herself as queen of a new dynasty, but Hawaiians knew Pele too well to trust her as a monarch. They knew that if they actually made her queen of Hawaii she’d be begging for someone to take over the throne as soon as she saw her first economic debriefing. 

 

In the 1980’s, Pele campaigned for Hawaii to expand with an entirely new, larger island created by her own hands. But Hawaiians didn’t want a sudden landmass to ruin the natural beautify of their archipelago–nor drive down their property values–and terminated Pele’s proposal.

 

Pele’s current political pet project is perhaps her most effective yet– the reformation of the Statesmen. Since 1938, the Statesmen program has been the world’s leading superhuman advocacy group. It helps superhumans negotiate law and business with basics, provides medical and psychological evaluations, and creates charity projects that harness superpowers for the common good. The Statesmen project was as American as the Liberty Bell and Uncle Sam. Every state in the union had a Statesmen center where superhumans connected with their community. Every year, “Statesmen representatives” were elected from each state as examples of what America valued in her superhumans.

 

To try and reform the Statesmen would be as controversial as trying to reform the Constitution–which is exactly why Pele tried it.

 

Pele declared that the Statesmen were holding back their potential. They accepted superhumans that never were never in a fight, that never tried to become stronger, and that only explored the surface of their powers.

 

It was ridiculous that these desultory people were held up as the peers of herself and beings like Gold Star. That many would say that she was “desultory” herself she contested. She wasn’t entirely a living tabloid–though she enjoyed being so immensely. She had her fire gardens, her hula halau, and her work on the Coast Guardians. Anyone that wanted to dispute that the Statesmen needed to move their standards up to her own were welcome to fight her.

 

A couple of young and stupid superhumans did, and after overpowering them Pele would invite them to her home in Kilauea for refreshments. Pele was eternally young and stupid and thus had a kinship with her challengers. But she was fortunate that none of the Statesmen powerful enough to crush her in a second were dumb enough to bother playing her games. 

 

Pele always struggled to realize that the truly powerful had no reason to prove they were powerful.

 

Pele knows very well that she’s never going to change the Statesmen. It was founded not to be a superteam, a taskforce, a paramilitary organization, or a group of elites. It was founded to identify, celebrate, and support all the ways superhumans used their powers to improve the world around themselves. A superhuman that used her powers over sound to deafen libraries and pipe gentle music into an art gallery that changed based on what exhibit was looked at was just as much apart of the Statesmen as a superhuman that used similar powers to be a superheroine that soothed rampaging extradimensional monsters that oozed out from the worldtunnels. 

 

Not even a goddess could change the heart of the Statesmen. But Pele also knew that there were just enough people that saw things her way–or wanted to see people mad–to keep the idea of reformation in circulation. The noosphere would occasionally burst into flames over “Pele’s Statesmen” and “Statesmen Reform.” and Pele thought it was more than appropriate that she could start fires that had nothing to do with lava.

 

Pele’s behavior started a saying in Hawaii–fire either spreads or starts. If there was a fight, Pele would throw herself right into it. If there wasn’t a fight, Pele would start one. But Pele’s confrontational, attention-seeking behavior would end up shaming herself in ways she couldn’t ignore. 

 

Pele had embarrassing incidents with Amaterasu and her brother Susanoo stemming from her 1940 fight with the sun goddess that deeply shamed her and caused her to reexamine her life and follow a new path–that of motherhood.

 

Pele vs Susanoo

 

In the years following Pele’s victory over Amaterasu, Pele held a grudge against Japan and her sun goddess. She never missed an opportunity to throw shade on the rising sun. Whenever the topic of Japan was raised, Pele would mock the country as a wicked and weak nation with a wicked and weak goddess. With Hawaii being almost a quarter Japanese, this was always a highly controversial side of her well beyond her usual tabloid drama. In the 1940’s, when Hawaii was fresh from an invasion attempt, Pele’s sentiments were common. In the 1950’s, when it was learned that Amaterasu and her fellow kami had been unwitting pawns of the Imperial government, many started to pity the sun goddess. But others, including Pele, were skeptical. Was Amaterasu really innocent in her country’s crimes or were the Japanese people trying to cover for their favorite goddess? This skepticism would be dispelled for most by the 1960’s–but not all, and not Pele. She clung tight to her bitter hatred of the sun goddess.

 

Since Japan’s surrender, Amaterasu spent decades journeying around the world on a mission of reconciliation. She personally met with veterans from both sides. She dedicated her matsuri, which was something like a birthday to her, to having dinner with as many veterans from both sides at Ise Grand Shrine. People started to forgive Amaterasu. People started to love Amaterasu. People started to love Amaterasu more than Pele and it made the fire goddess furious. 

 

She attacked Hawaii. She attacked her home and her people. She would never forgive her for that. Amaterasu had tried to take her home, the only home she ever felt comfortable in, away from her. Circumstances be damned, she wasn’t worth forgiveness.

 

In 1965, the public began to talk about whether Pele’s victory over Amaterasu during the war had been from Pele’s might–or Amaterasu’s reluctance to fight back. It had always been a topic of quiet consideration. It did seem odd given their respective mythology that a goddess who had only ever lost against other goddesses would defeat a goddess that embodied the sun. But no one wanted to seriously raise the question during the war. Why dampen their own side’s spirits by speculating that a major victory had been a fluke? But in 1965, the war was more than a decade into the past. It was still a sensitive subject, but people had begun to talk more and more about it.

 

And Pele heard them talk.

 

Pele publicly challenged Amaterasu to a rematch and drew herself trampling the sun goddess in magma and hung it in the sky. The good-natured sun goddess wasn’t interested in a fight, but the challenge was taken up by her brother Susanoo, warrior god of storms. 

 

Susanoo stood in international waters as a black stormcloud formed into samurai armor. Golden lightning ornamented his armored mask and belt. His hands were bare and showed the crimson lightning that was his body. Five red thorns gripped a sword made of white lightning from its tip to its handle. It was called the sword of ten-hands breadth, but no one ever said whether it was measured in human hands or god hands.

 

With the thunder that was his domain, Susanoo bellowed his challenge at Kilauea miles away. Pele answered swiftly by flying out to meet him on a floating river of lava that boiled the ocean below it.

 

They faced each other in the middle of the Pacific as superheroes rushed to build a barrier around the two and politicians from Japan and the United States scrambled to publicly disavow their actions. As a small army of superheroes gathered and tried to talk the two down, Pele and Susanoo started to realize that their fight had spun out of their control.

 

They were no longer in a duel of honor. Now they were in a scandal of stupidity,

 

They couldn’t fight now, but their pride wouldn’t allow them to back down. So they postured. Susanoo and Pele insulted each others’ gender, race, culture, dress, language, and anything else they could make a mean comment about. Susanoo called Pele a barefoot savage and a jumped-up firecracker. Pele called Susanoo a meathead with an overcompensating sword. It was less like two warriors sizing each other up and more like two children at recess. Even the journalists that were overjoyed at the idea of  reporting about two deities clashing were disappointed by the sorry display.

 

Fortunately, the superhero Gold Star intervened and deposited the two deities on Oberon, a moon of Uranus, “Until they learned to stop being an embarrassment to the Earth.”

 

Seperate from the eyes of Earth, they were able to talk as themselves and not as a god of Japan and a goddess of Hawaii. It turned out they had a lot in common. They both had vicious tempers which had gotten them in trouble with their families, they both were cast out of their respective heavens, they both had power over lightning, they both liked the color black, and they both had problems with Amaterasu. Susanoo took up Pele’s challenge not so much for his sister as for his family. 

 

He told Pele that he never got along with Amaterasu. He couldn’t stand her obseques manners and passive-aggressiveness. She would start a fight by saying something sly and then run off crying to the other gods when he retaliated. If she only fought back like the sibling of a storm god should he wouldn’t ever have had a problem with her. But instead she did things like runaway to a cave and deprive the entire world of light. Then suddenly their private dispute was the concern of all the other gods and they all blamed him, not her, because she wasn’t the violent sibling. 

 

They never punished her for the cave incident, but they made sure to punish him by forcing him to go down to Earth and slay an eight-headed dragon as penance–the Earth that was in Japan’s mystic shadow, not the physical Earth. But that was still quite a distance for a son of Heaven–and the dragon was no joke either. He had to get it drunk before he could kill it.

 

When Pele related the story of her own exile, Susanoo remarked that he thought it was very brave for Pele to have stood up to Namaka even though she was defeated. That was something Amaterasu would have never done.

 

When Gold Star returned an hour later to check on the deities, he found them in the midst of courtship. 

 

Susanoo placed his helmet aside and rested his crackling head on Pele’s lap. They talked to each other about the mistakes they had made in their rage and how they went about controlling their rage so that they never made those mistakes again. Pele had dance. Susanoo had swordsmanship. They made plans to meet again someplace private to spar, not for any matter of honor but for the fun of it. 

 

Susanoo told Pele that one time, he threw a dead horse at Amaterasu. Pele then laughed so hard that Oberon broke apart, much to Gold Star’s bewilderment. 

 

Their first date was spent using their powers to weld back the pieces. Uninhabitable, unclaimed rock though Oberon might have been, they wanted to show Earth that they were more than irresponsible gods of destruction.

 

And they did. No one could tell that Oberon had ever blown apart into a million pieces.

 

The Susanoo episode settled the matter of Amaterasu for Pele–for a time. Susanoo and Pele became great friends and remain as such to this day. Pele didn’t want to cause trouble for Susanoo by causing trouble with Amaterasu and so took greater care of the words she said about her and Japan. And besides, she took no small amount of pleasure in knowing that Amaterasu knew that she was dating her brother. She wouldn’t risk breaking up with him for anything.

 

But in 1968, she ended up causing another embarrassing incident with Amaterasu.

 

Pele vs Amaterasu, Round 2

 

Amaterasu’s wound finally healed in 1968, and it wasn’t just Japan that celebrated. She vowed to continue working to bring peace and reconciliation to the world. She had met with veterans. She had attended their weddings. She had attended their funerals. She had met with their children. And she would continue to do so on into the indeterminate future.. People praised Amaterasu for working tirelessly to raise the dawn upon a new, peaceful world.

 

But she had yet to meet with Pele. She had yet to meet with the one that wounded her during the war.

 

Amaterasu wanted to. She had sent several letters to Kilauea–beautiful missives folded into the shape of doves that flapped all the way to Hawaii.

 

Pele burnt every one of them without reading a single word.

 

Many saw Pele’s refusal to talk with Amaterasu as holding back the world from healing just to feed her personal grudge. If she could forgive Amaterasu, it would send a message of forgiveness to the entire world. Shouldn’t that have been something Pele wanted?  If she truly cared for her people, then she would reign in her anger and make peace with Amaterasu.

 

Pele grew irate as those close to her, the Coast Guardians and the students at her halau, started to broach the subject. She would not forgive Amaterasu. She wasn’t the one that invaded a country. She wasn’t the bad one. She wasn’t doing anything wrong and didn’t appreciate her friends acting as if she did.

 

And, though she never admitted it, she wasn’t the one that terrified the other with memories of her sister rending her limb-from-limb with her bare hands.

 

In 1969, a year of pressure from the public caused Pele to snap and publicly declare that if the sun goddess appeared before her, then she had better be prepared to get another wound. Her comment set off a deluge of public disapproval, but Pele would still not forgive Amaterasu. Her friends urged her to at the very least receive Amaterasu. She didn’t have to say a word to Amaterasu. She just had to listen to her and then watch her leave. So great was the public disapproval of Pele that even Susanoo asked her to hear his sister out. He was concerned for his lover’s well-being, for he knew very well that Pele needed public approval like a flower needed the sun.

 

But Pele reacted to adversity in her usual manner–she fled and fought. She hardened her heart and buried herself deep within Kilauea. When her friends came to her, she shouted at them with a voice that boomed with thunderclaps. But they continued to urge her to forgive Amaterasu, and after they hounded her again and again with the question “What can Amaterasu do to possibly earn your forgiveness?” An exasperated Pele said that if Amaterasu truly wanted her forgiveness, then she would prostrate herself before her and beg for it like a slave.

 

When Amaterasu actually did appear as a humble five-foot woman in an unadorned kimono at the base of Kilauea, kneel down, place her head at its rocky base, and beg forgiveness, Pele was ashamed, possibly more ashamed than she had ever been in her immortal life. 

 

Pele reacted to her shame in her usual fashion–and made the situation far worse. She shouted at Amaterasu. How dare she make a scene like this? How dare she humiliate her?

 

Then she saw how the crowd around them was looking at her, and she knew that she had once again been a victim of her temper.

 

She fled into Kilauea and screamed silently in the depths of its magma. She hugged herself close with earth and fire. She would not allow even a rumble to escape to the surface as she let out a scream that could have split the Earth in two.

 

It wasn’t fair, she thought. It wasn’t fair what Amaterasu had done. Amaterasu was the trespasser. She had no right to make it look like she was the one being victimized. 

 

The old familiar anger grew and grew within her.

 

She wanted to tear Amaterasu apart. She wanted to make her really beg. 

 

But she paused, and waited, and let the fire eat itself until it was purged from her soul.

 

No. She would not be the fool again. She would think this through.

 

And she did.

 

Why did Amaterasu want to talk with her? Why did she want to talk with her so badly that she would humiliate herself like that? If she wanted peace why couldn’t it be enough that they stay far away from each other?

 

She thought of Hi’iaka. She thought of how she begged Hi’iaka’s forgiveness. She thought of how badly she wanted to be forgiven by her sister.

 

But she and Amaterasu were not sisters. They only knew each other from a war. It was true that they were both homo fabula. It was true that they had a shared origin in the conscious Astral. But that was only as binding as sharing Earth was binding to humans.

 

She wanted to know why Amaterasu wanted her forgiveness so badly. And so, disguised as one of her human friends, she made arrangements through the proper channels to meet with the sun goddess at her shrine.

 

Pele was surprised to feel a wave of apprehension wash over her as she stood at the radiant tori gate that marked the separation between Amaterasu’s shrine and the outside world. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. What was she afraid of? Amaterasu? She had crushed Amaterasu.

 

Feeling ashamed and angry at herself for her weakness, Pele rushed forward into Amaterasu’s presence.

 

And froze.

 

Pele saw the light of Amaterasu before her like a wall. It dwarfed and surrounded her in endless whiteness. It reminded her of the white walls of water that Namaka brought crashing down upon her so long ago. 

 

Enormity was around her, bearing down on her, forcing her to feel her smallness. She realized that she had always remembered the victory and not the battle.

 

She was terrified. She wanted to throw her fire right at the heart of the light–but she couldn’t. Amaterasu sat humbly on a cushion. Her eyes were warm and welcoming. She was not a threat. She was just sitting there. She was not a threat.

 

She wanted to fight or run but could do neither.

 

She shut her eyes from the light and collapsed on a cushion set aside for her. She spoke quickly from fear that Amaterasu might ask her what was wrong.

 

“Why do you want my forgiveness?” Pele asked. “Why do you want my forgiveness so badly as to kneel and grovel?”

 

“During the war so long ago, I saw you when others could not through the steam and fire.” Amaterasu said. “ I saw your face. I saw the feelings I put there–feelings that you carried for far too long. I would do anything to relieve you of what I have burdened you with. I begged your forgiveness because you needed me to.”

 

At that moment, Pele faced her fear and weakness and broke down into tears. She held herself and cried, and her sobbing was like the crackling of a fading fire. Tears, not of fire but as watery as any woman’s, washed down her glass body.

 

Amaterasu approached her slowly, gently, and held out her arms invitingly. “I’m sorry.” she said. “I’m sorry and I want to help you.”

 

Pele clung to her and wept. 

 

Amaterasu covered her in light. She brought Pele into herself. Here her screams couldn’t threaten the world and she could cry without limitation. She wept like a child–completely, fully, holding nothing back. All the anxiety and fear that decades of frivolity and attention seeking couldn’t move from her heart was cast off by a single moment of surrender.

 

She allowed someone to care for her, and was cared for.

 

Pele found it very difficult to be around beings stronger than she was let alone trust in them. She learned from her older sister to expect pain from those stronger than herself. But she trusted in Amaterasu to hold her.

 

Part of her felt ashamed. She was a goddess and she was sobbing to her enemy. She was acting like a child, not an ageless being of earth and fire. But it was only the smallest part of her that complained, and the largest part of her knew the truth–that she had always been a child. How could she have been anything else? She was chased from her home as a child. She had only herself as a model for what to grow up to be, and so she grew up to be a child.

 

Amaterasu offered her sleeve, and Pele dried her eyes. Then she saw before her a little table with two cups filled with liquid rainbows. Amaterasu took one, drank it, and invited Pele to do the same.

 

She did, and after giving the liquid light time to flow throughout her being she felt composed enough to start conversing.

 

Pele and Amaterasu

 

Pele confided in Amaterasu as if she were the elder sister she should have had. She asked her how she managed to be so well-loved and respected by people. Pele herself was well-loved, but she lacked respect. Her people rolled their eyes at her antics–and why wouldn’t they? She lacked the dignity and poise that radiated as naturally from Amaterasu as sunlight. She wanted to know how she could be more like her.

 

Amaterasu replied that she wished she was more like Pele. She envied how easily and comfortably Pele interacted with people. She expressed herself fully and warmly and people responded to that with the same openness and warmth. Amaterasu herself, for all the veterans she talked to, feared that she was less a friend and more a figurehead to all she spoke to due to her formal disposition.

 

It did Pele’s heart good to hear another goddess, especially one she considered a bitter enemy, compliment her. In the back of her mind, she always suspected that most other goddesses had contempt for her. She was relieved to hear proof to the contrary.

 

Amaterasu told Pele that she shouldn’t be worried about changing herself. Earth was the world of change in opposition to the eternal repetition of the conscious Astral their people hailed from. Earthly existence was about desiring change and regretting change, and usually at the same time. 

 

In her opinion, homo fabula such as Pele and herself were far too hard on themselves when it came to dealing with change. Humans evolved in this world and they still struggled with it. 

 

Amaterasu said that Homo fabula set their expectations for this world far too high. Back in the conscious Astral, things didn’t change, they echoed. They knew of countless versions of themselves. They saw their lives in dreams and felt their memories in the back of their minds. But there was always an unchanging constant that bound them together. All the Amaterasus were life-giving light. All the Peles were power restrained.

 

That was why, Amaterasu said, that when goddesses arrived on Earth they often became overly excited over the possibilities of a world of true change. They didn’t have to repeat anymore. They didn’t have to meld with different iterations of themselves to feel different. They could change. They could be different beings all by themselves. But this excitement often gave way to disappointment. Though free of the conscious Astral, they were still beings of that timeless world. They felt their other selves at the back of their minds. In their dreams, they lived their lives. Pele knew the anger and humiliation of chained stars. But there was a good turn to her being bound to such wretched creatures. They knew her life full of growth and adventure, and knowing her life  brought them some comfort.

 

Pele smiled. She never gave much thought to her other selves. So many of them were pitiful and savage and exhausting to contemplate. She thought of them as nightmare versions of herself–and often saw them in her nightmares. But she was glad that someone thought her life gave some meaning to those miserable monsters.

 

Amaterasu said that their kind would never sever all their ties to the conscious Astral. They repeated their stories by themselves because they were their stories. When homo fabula realize this, they often despair. Amaterasu gave herself as an example. When she emanated to Earth, she was overjoyed. Her greatest story was a story of how she caused suffering. She hid herself away and deprived the world of light and warmth. Her family had to trick her out of hiding. When people worshipped Amaterasu, they did not worship who she was–they worshipped what she was. They worshipped her light, not her actions. If they didn’t need her to survive, they would have ignored her just as she ignored them. But now that she was on Earth, she could change herself so that she was valued for herself, not just her light. It was why she worked tirelessly on reconciliation efforts. 

 

And yet, in a way, it was just as rash a decision as when she hid herself away. It was a far better decision than hiding away, but it was still a decision she threw her entire self into with no consideration of the consequences–and there were consequences. She had underestimated how much her presence mattered to her family back in Japan’s mystic shadow. She was a neutral element that helped resolve disputes. Now that she was spending so much time away from the palace of the amatsukami at Takamagahara, political squabbles were breaking out. Her mother Izanami, goddess of the dead, had decided that since the moon was a place with no life that it belonged to her. Her decision angered Amaterasu’s brother Tsuikiyomi, god of the moon–as well as the insectoid and chiropteran Selenite races that lived below the dead surface. They didn’t want to live in an underworld beneath an underworld. 

 

That was only one of several disputes. 

 

She took light from the world. Now, she took light from the gods. It seemed as if no matter what she did she was destined to hide her light away.

 

Pele said that Amaterasu was wrong to sell her contributions short. “You don’t hide your light at all.” she said. “You’re just more discriminating with it. Humanity needs it more than the gods. You made the right decision.”

 

“And I do not regret it.” Amaterasu replied. “My point is that, though we struggle with our ties to the conscious Astral, we do not lose the struggle.”

 

The sun goddess touched a sunbeam-white hand to Pele’s ebon cheek. “Do not ever lose hope. Do not ever despair. Our lives are hard struggles, but they are worth the victory.”

 

“But there must be something I can do!” Pele said. “Am I just to endure what I am? Am I just to endure being this volatile creature? Can I do nothing but measure my life out in outbursts?”

 

“You can do something.” Amaterasu said. “Look to humanity. They have evolved to thrive in this world. They know how to live here best. When life becomes nothing but endurance to them, they get restless. They light an anxious fire within themselves.”

 

“But that’s what I do.” Pele said. “That’s what I always do.”

 

“Yes. You have an adventurous soul. You can find the answer easier than I can.”

 

“But I don’t have the answer! I’m restless but all I do is get angry and start fights. I don’t change. I dont’ grow.”

 

“Then be restless in a different way. You fight because it’s in your nature. But what do you fight for?”

 

“I fight for my people of course. I fight so that they have a goddess they are never bored of.”

 

“Have you ever thought of fighting for yourself?”

 

“For myself?”

 

“Have you ever fought for what you want? I do not mean what the Pele you show to the public wants to fight for. We both know she fights for attention. But the Pele you are when you are alone, what does she want to fight for?”

 

“I…I have no idea what that could possibly be.”

 

“Think upon it. If you do, the answer will surely come to you.”

 

Pele and Amaterasu continued to speak for hours, and when they were done they departed as friends. But before she left, Pele insisted that she prostrate herself before the solar goddess to even things between them. Amaterasu protested, but Pele wouldn’t hear it. The proud volcano goddess got on her hands and knees and pressed her head to the ground at the sun goddesses’ feet. 

 

And she felt no shame for doing so, only relief. 

Pele dwelled on her conversation with Amaterasu for some time. She thought of herself out of the eyes of the public. She thought of herself without the drama and fire gardens and wild lava festivals. 

 

To her disappointment, she found very little left over when she took those things away.

 

She liked fire. She had liked it ever since she was a child. She liked it when people liked her. She liked movement and dancing and fighting. She liked being angry. It felt strange to admit it considering all the trouble her temper caused, but it was true.

 

Looking at herself, Pele could only see a small cluster of traits, nothing more.

 

And then she thought of Hi’iaka, and the thought pushed all others out of her mind.

 

Hi’iaka.

 

Hi’iaka-in-the-bosom-of-Pele.

 

The thought of Hi’iaka blazed in Pele’s mind like a sun.

She tried to visit Pele at least twice a year, though sometimes she was so busy that she had to skip a year or two. Whenever she arrived on Earth, Pele canceled everything to spend the day with her–everything, from hula recitals to dates with politicians.

 

Hi’iaka was an adventurer. She traveled the worldtunnels of the multiverse righting wrongs, finding the lost, and visiting unknown pantheons on missions of goodwill. Whenever she visited, she brought objects unlike anything Pele had seen, objects that never failed to fill Pele with awe and wonder.

 

 She was powerful. She never stayed in one place for long and learned fast, and because of that she became stronger than Pele, Amaterasu, Namaka, Poliahu, Kanehoalani, and Haumea combined.

 

The gifts Pele had given her back in the mystic shadow were as toys to her now.

 

Pele was so proud of her. She wished she could visit more, and she wished that she could stay longer when she did visit, but she understood the responsibility her little sister had to the cosmos.

 

Pele always wanted to live a life of endless adventures. She wasn’t sure what happened to keep her from that life, but she was happy Hi’iaka got to live it.

 

And that was when Pele realized that she was lonely. She was one of the most socially active goddesses on Earth, and she was terribly lonely.

 

Why was she lonely? That wasn’t hard for her to answer.

 

She was an orphan. She hated to call herself that. She hated to call herself that because it gave Namaka a terrible power over her. It meant that what Namaka did to her affected her to this day. But it was the truth. She was an orphan. Her parents expelled her from Kuaihelani and Namaka ensured that she would never even think about returning. She grew up by herself. She raised herself. 

 

And thankfully, she did a better job raising Hi’iaka than herself.

 

And then it all became clear to her as Amaterasu promised it would.

 

She had no family.

 

So she would fight for a family.

 

She would have daughters. She would love them as she was never loved. They would love her as she loved her mother, but the love would be returned. And they would be perfect friends for each other and their love for each other would be pure unlike the sullied love between Pele and Namaka  and Hi’iaka.

They would be her kamalani. They would be her daughters.