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 Today I complete my first month of collecting te reo snippets. From tomorrow, I’ll do this differently (details soon).

In the meantime, I'll peruse a Maori legend. It's a story about Maui. I have to admit that I find Maori myths quite spooky. And there’s a reason for that.

From the age of 8 through to 12, I brushed up my English after 18 months abroad. For that, I read widely from my favorite shelf at the Children’s library on Upper Stuart Street. (Does anyone else recall it?) It was labeled ‘Myths and Legends from Many Lands’. Those short stories were exactly what I needed.

There were books from many lands and cultures. I became familiar with Andersen and the Grimm brothers. But I found it eerie to delve into Maori tales about the underworld and the separation of the sky and the earth. So science-fiction was what I moved onto next.