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Moana knows she is meant to be a voyager. Knows it more deeply than she has ever known anything. The sea calls to her and she can feel the pull of it, even when she runs far inland, to the centre of the island. She wants to feel the sea spray on her face with only a wooden deck separating her from the waves below, wants to hear the snap of a sail while she pulls on the ropes, wants to know what it feels like to be far from land with only the stars to guide her way. The horizon stretches before her, a thin line separating the blue of the sea from the blue of sky. The ocean is alive and it wants her to sail across it.
There’s also the name on her wrist. Soul names are not destiny-making, her people agree. They are a guide; helpful to most, but able to be ignored if circumstance or feelings allow. Her mother and father married for love, and they have each other’s names on their wrists. Her father’s mother also married for love, and her husband’s name was never her soul name.
Moana’s name is not in any language she can read. Generally, when that happens, her people will find happiness here on the island. No one would leave, and if they’re truly destined to be together, their other half will come to them. There are legends after all, of such things happening, the ocean bearing their mate to them across the waves.
So, she could find happiness, could settle down and never leave like the rest of her people. But then there is a heart and a voyage, a demigod and a monster, a death and a resurrection, and Moana is free to go.
She becomes a voyager, a true one, sailing far and wide across the seas. But she never finds the one whose name is on her wrist, nor anyone who can read it. There are others, but none of them speak to her in the way that she feels the one who has her name would. She experiences new foods, lands, cultures, and languages. None of them are the right one.
Then, on one long voyage, farther than any other she has ever taken, Moana looks up to see a creature straight out of her Gramma Tala’s legends. It swoops above her, close enough that she can feel the wind in its wake. It lands on the rocky beach of the island Moana has chosen to make landfall on, and she sees that there is a person on its back.
The rider – Moana doesn’t know what else to call them – is dressed in strange, close-fitting armour decorated in shades of blue and yellow, with a crested helmet on. “Who are you?” they ask in one of the common languages of the North, voice curious.
“I am Moana, daughter of the chief.” Moana has learned many languages in her voyages, even if the name on her wrist is still foreign to her.
“Where are you from?”
“Motunui. I am descended from voyagers,” she offers as explanation.
“I’ve never heard of this place,” the rider says. “Why are you here?”
Moana hesitates. Her soul name, though not destiny-making is sacred in its own right. “I wanted to explore,” she begins. “To learn a language foreign to me.”
The rider tilts their head. “Which language?”
She does not want to reveal her soul name yet, so she flips her paddle upside down and uses it to trace the letters she has memorized into the beach. “This is all I know of it,” she says.
The rider slides off their mount and reaches up to take off their helmet. A blonde braid spills over one shoulder as blue eyes meet hers. “That’s my name.”
Moana feels a thrill deep in her heart. Somehow she knows, as sure as the ocean’s call, that this is it. “I am Moana of Motunui,” she says again, “and we are soulmates.”
The rider holds out her hand. “I am Astrid of Berk,” she says, “and I’ve been waiting to meet you.”
They are adventurers, the two of them. Moana sails the ocean with her soulmate soaring above her on a dragon. One is a voyager of the sea, the other a rider of the air. They explore every secret of the northern seas and the islands Astrid’s people call home. Moana wears furs and feels snow tickling her nose, learns what Snoggletog is and never drinks her girlfriend’s yaknog. When they have learned everything they can, they travel south to Motunui. Astrid wears tapa clothing and learns how to dance the sacred dances, is tattooed and kisses her girlfriend on a beach in the light of the full moon.
They are soulmates, adventurers, and most of all fearless. They dare each other to jump off cliffs, dive from dragonback, swim the sea floor. Whoever issued the challenge is more often than not met with, “After you.” It’s more than a challenge in return. It’s a promise. I’ll do it after you, right behind you. After you.
“I love you,” they whisper to each other at night, curled up with limbs entangled.
“After you!” they shout from the clifftops, the breakers of the ocean, the wings of dragons.
Both are a promise.