Everyone in Hawai’i knows about the dire consequences of taking lava rocks from the volcano without asking permission. The documented accounts of the bad luck and misfortune that have befallen those out of state visitors who chose to disrespect the Goddess Pele are too numerous to mention. What about people who are residents here in Hawai’i that choose to take lava rocks to decorate their garden or to fill their potted plants? Are they exempt because they live here?
Tamara Flores a part Filipino part Hawaiian woman who was born and raised on ‘O’ahu never gave much credence to local beliefs and folklore. She was even more cynical when it came to any Hawaiian legends; she was a woman of the world and things like that were just fairy tales. However, on a weekend vacation Tamara flew to Hawai’i island with a few friends and they decided to do a bit of sightseeing. Eventually their weekend of playing tourist would lead them to volcanoes national park where they would take in the view of the red glowing lava at dusk. Once all the pictures had been taken and all the videos had been recorded, Tamara and her friends headed back to their rental van. As she stepped up to get into the vehicle with one foot, Tamara stepped on something that rolled under her other foot and caused her to fall forward, almost hitting her head on the running board. She caught herself just in time and as she looked down on the pavement, she saw a large oval shaped porous stone. It was charcoal gray and appeared to be quite out of place in the middle of a parking lot. Tamara took a liking to the unusually shaped stone and put it in her back pack and took it with her. She figured that since it wasn’t a lava rock that it would be alright to take it. The rest of the weekend went off without incident and when Tamara returned to ‘O’ahu she placed the oval stone on a white dish cloth in the middle of her coffee table and went and off to sleep. The following morning Tamara was shocked to see the dish cloth littered with smaller oval shaped pebbles; however the large oblong stone was gone.
“Maybe it wasn’t a stone?” She thought to herself. “Maybe it was dried up mud?”
She gathered up the little pebbles in the dish cloth and tossed it in her trash can. From there she went into her kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee; once she was done she returned to the living room where she’d meant to put her feet up on her table to relax. However, she was confused to see the large oval stone sitting in the middle of her coffee table again. Was she imagining things? Quickly, she went back to the trash can and fished out the dish cloth and opened it up. The oval pebbles were gone. Returning back to her living room she found the large oval stone right were it was a minute ago, except that it was now surrounded by the same smaller oval pebbles. Suddenly, the smell of sulfur filled the entire house. Tamara began to gag and wretch because the odor was so putrid. She ran to open the sliding glass doors on her lanai when she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Standing just inside her living room was a beautiful Hawaiian woman wearing a dark red sarong. She presented an imposing figure with long dark locks that rested on her brown shoulders. The look in the Hawaiian woman’s eyes was like that of a mother who had caught their child in an act of woeful wrong doing. Tamara was too afraid to move or to scream, she could sense that she was helpless and at the mercy of this stranger.
“Anything that comes from my home is mine, be it rock, stone, leaf or flower,” the Hawaiian woman stated.
Tamara immediately grabbed the large oval
She’d be foolish if she did not recognize that it was Pele.
The weight of the stone no longer troubled her hands and as she looked up, she saw that the woman was gone. The pungent odor of sulfur was gone as well but on her carpet were two large foot prints that burned itself right through to the floor. Right in the very spot where Pele stood not less than a second previous.
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