The Maui who caught the sun

At the creation of the world, the sun thinks it has been wronged: it is the only one working. He looks at the Earth at his feet and envies its inhabitants who stroll and sleep... The sun then decides to do like them! “After all, I am a god,” he said to himself. “Men await my coming and pay me homage, so I can do as I please!” »

The following days, he gets up very late and only a few moments are enough for him to cross the sky and lie down behind Moorea, for a long, very long night. The darkness is so long that the Earth suffers cruelly from it. There is not enough heat to heat the stone ovens and not enough light to prepare meals.

The young warrior Maui sees his fiancée Hina's lips burst into flames from eating raw food. Anger gives way to sadness in Maui, who then decides to face the sun and defeat it.

Maui goes in search of the biggest lianas, the longest algae and the strongest bark. After making an immense pile, as high as five men, he begins to weave an extraordinary net of lianas, algae and bark. The centerpiece of this work is a long hair of Hina.

During the day, he works in the fast light of the sun. At night, he works by starlight. While the sun, all asleep and in too much of a hurry, hastens to pass through the sky, the net enlarges little by little.

The trap is finally over. Maui takes advantage of the night, throws the net over his shoulder and goes to the reef, at the edge of the large hole through which the sun comes out of the sea. He waits. After a long, very long vigil, he sees a light appear. This grows and colors the waves and the clouds. She is getting stronger and stronger. The birds start to sing. 

When the first rays appear, Maui throws his net and covers the entire hole. The sun finds itself a prisoner. The sun struggles furiously, but the net holds firm. Twenty times, the star attempts to jump into the sky. Twenty times he was rejected. Twenty times, he tried to go back underground. Twenty times he was detained.

Then the sun begins to heat up so much that the sea begins to boil and the earth begins to crack, all the links of the net burn. Algae, lianas, bark... nothing resists the immense flames. Nothing, except the hair of Hina, Maui's fiancée. The sun may jump, heat up, swell... but it is grabbed by the neck and suffocates. It gradually loses its luster and finally stops, exhausted, defeated.

Then Maui approaches: It is I, Maui, who caught the sun.
The sun begs: Deliver me, Maui, I'm suffocating.

- No ! I will not deliver you. You remain eternally attached for the harm you did to my bride and my people. Their lips are burned by raw sap and their eyes are filled with night. You remain a prisoner!
– Maui, if you don’t give me, I’m going to die and if I die, neither you nor yours will ever be able to live again! Deliver me !
– First promise me that our fish and vegetables will be cooked before nightfall!
- I promise you !

Maui then delivers the sun and the sun leaps into the sky.

It is since that day that the sun rises so early and sets so late. Sometimes, when we watch the sun set, we see a thin green net: it is the hair of Maui's bride which hangs there so that the sun never forgets its promise...