Peace On Earth

This is a little Christmas story set in the South Pacific, and is an entry for the

Literotica Winter Holidays Story Contest 2024

. Please note that although the language and cultural terms used are borrowed from one particular culture for the sake of consistency, the country setting and characters are fictional.

Enjoy, and don't forget to vote for your favourites in the competition!

Chapter One -- The Committee for Faffing Around

We had been talking for hours, and had achieved precisely nothing. Mission accomplished, but there was no joy in it. I was beginning to think that I had chosen the wrong career.

I had been on this Pacific island for six months. It was my first long-term posting of what I hoped would be a long diplomatic career, and truth to tell, things could have been a lot worse. It was sunny most days, and gloriously warm every day. The people were friendly, the pace relaxed, and I was theoretically only about four hours' flying time from my home city of Dunedin on New Zealand's South Island, although there were no direct flights. Not that I went there very often anyway, with my father gone and my mother sinking further into her shell.

I had a good boss, was paid well, and the staff housing was nice enough. It was just that the work was a bit... disillusioning. Aged 26, in my prime, and I was not embarrassed to be still wanting to change the world. So to be at my fifth monthly meeting of this Committee For A Pacific Peace And Friendship Facility (CFAPPAFF, or 'CFAFF' as we called it for short), to be wandering in circles, and for that to be counted as a

success

... well, it was pretty annoying.

I quietly studied the faces around the table. Jarrod was sitting opposite me and holding forth as he argued a point of detail, inflicting his broadest Aussie accent on us, which was a sure sign that he actually didn't care one way or the other about making progress. He had had the same brief as me:

"Do anything you can to avoid agreement. Just don't make it obvious."

So Jarrod was waffling on about nothing. He was nice enough, but a bit up himself, and coming from one of Australia's non-rugby States, he was a bit disadvantaged compared to us Kiwis. If you couldn't talk rugby in the Pacific, life was harder. Jarrod could also work on his fitness a bit more, to be honest. He wasn't hideous, with a pleasant face and medium brown air, but he was a little pudgy and clearly spent too much time in front of screens in his off hours.

Calvin sat next to Jarrod. I liked Calvin a lot. He was slim, elegant, and always quick with a quip or an amused glance. When he smiled, his perfect teeth shone brilliantly against his smooth, dark skin, and when he spoke... well, let's just say that I knew that he would go far in the US State Department, because he certainly knew how to make an argument. I hadn't asked, but I assumed that at some stage he'd been Captain of the Debating Team.

It was just a shame that Calvin's skills were being wasted on the CFAFF committee, because once again, he had a similar brief to me and Jarrod. He just waffled more eloquently.

At the far end of the table, quiet and serious, was Keiko. I liked her even more than Calvin. By a funny coincidence, her home city of Otaru, in northern Japan, is a Sister City of Dunedin. I had been on a visit there back when I was a straightlaced schoolgirl. I'd been blown away by their incredible courtesy and their alien culture, and that was one of my motivations for going into foreign affairs. Keiko was the epitome of a more educated Japanese woman, with exquisite manners, good English and long jet-black hair arranged in a professional bun. She avoided the high-pitched schoolgirl voice of some of her peers, and always gave careful, considered comments. I also knew that under her polished exterior she would be in the same agony as me, but (unlike me) she would never show it.

Next to me, arms crossed in tension, and virtually making the room vibrate as she quietly seethed, was Mei Lien.

Mei Lien was the reason that the rest of us had been instructed to not agree on much. She knew it, and she wasn't good at restraining her "wolf warrior" instincts. She had been raised to go for our diplomatic throats, and China was still adjusting to some recent setbacks in the region. And as the most recent arrival in our little committee, replacing her predecessor, she was playing catch-up.

"Are you finished?" she jumped in as Jarrod paused for breath, "because all those lovely words seem to be just to say that Australia insists on being part of this facility but doesn't want to pay for it. As my government has communicated several times, we are happy to fund, design, and construct the project entirely by ourselves, of course with the kind permission of our Pacific friends."

Mei Lien's beautiful young face was a little flushed. Her short dark hair was moist and ragged too: she was perspiring in the warm and humid room, and she was overdressed for it. Our host, Tusitala, had smoothly apologised at the start of the meeting for the broken air-conditioning. He had had extra pedestal fans brought in, and iced water served to us with flawless courtesy. Broken air-conditioning and power failures were very normal for the Pacific, and friendliness was always there, but Tusitala's level of sophistication was much rarer, and approached Japanese levels.

Tusitala had been listening quietly, but at Mei Lien's intemperate words, he raised an eyebrow. Wolf warrior she may be, but she quickly subsided as he moved himself to speak.

Tusitala had enormous gravitas, I had decided, even though like the rest of us he was only in his late 20s. His mother and father were both senior leaders here, and he had clearly absorbed their skills from a young age and honed his knowledge at university down in Auckland. It helped too, that he was extremely handsome. His soft voice and finely chiselled Pacific features would melt any heart, female or male. His skin was perfect and unmarked apart from his tattoos, which were visible on his shoulder above his shirt collar. I had not seen him shirtless, but he was clearly as buff a young rugby player as you would ever see. And he was tall. And unmarried, like me...

I admit it, I was not the most objective of diplomats. They had warned us about this in our training of course. I had laughed about it at the time, but after several meetings with Tusitala I had begun to understand how a certain glint in his eye and my racing pulse could start to push me off script.

Down, Isla, down!

I had reminded myself more than once.

Fortunately for my country, he had not shown any particular interest in me, so my diplomatic virtue had remained intact. I was sure that he had his pick of the local prospects, if he could find a discreet opportunity amongst the constant round of social, church and government engagements that this country was famous for. Courting the other sex in the Pacific was usually something to be approached carefully, as it was easy to incur obligations, particularly with haphazard use of contraceptives.

"I thank you, Mei Lien, and also you, Jarrod, for those valuable contributions to the discussion," he said in his sonorous, slow bass. "As you will recall, Mei Lien, my country warmly welcomed the offer of China, and asked that a joint plan be agreed for the Pacific Peace And Friendship Facility, rather than having it as a single-country initiative. We value all our partners, but we value them even more when they work together."

He looked slowly around the room and continued, "That said, I agree that faster progress would be desirable. Each of your governments would prefer to have bilateral projects rather than a joint facility, and that that is the reason for the slow pace of this discussion. But we will not accept five different friendship facilities. On this, we are determined."

He paused again, letting the silence drag uncomfortably long before he put us out of our misery by looking at his watch.

"We are out of time for today. Next month, it will be Christmas. As you know, nothing will happen then until February. I propose that we bring the next meeting forward to two weeks from now, before Christmas, and I will host you for a more informal Christmas party, where perhaps we might speak more constructively and freely. And I encourage you to discuss the matter between yourselves in the meantime. If we don't make faster progress here, the outcomes may suit none of you."

We all nodded our assent. We had little choice, really: as junior diplomats we were not in a position to offend our host. This was a small country, but with a loud voice.

We wandered out of the building together into the bright heat of the day. We were in cyclone season, and the air was stifling. I was keen to get back to the office, where the air conditioning was always on: we had our own generator in case of power failures, too. But just as I unlocked my car, I heard Tusitala's voice close behind me.

"Isla?"

I turned, surprised.

He was speaking softly to avoid being overheard, "Isla, tomorrow is Saturday, and there is a good high tide in the morning. If you are free, would you like to come snorkelling with me?"

I was taken aback, and before thinking blurted out, "Is this a diplomatic snorkel or a... private snorkel?" And then I mentally kicked myself. It didn't matter, did it? The answer would be the same.

He was amused. "Let's call it an informal diplomatic snorkel. I could pick you up at, let's say, nine o'clock?"

I nodded, dumbly, and then remembered to smile and thank him before getting into the car. I didn't need to tell him where I lived. Everybody knew where everybody lived. Everybody knew everybody's business here.

With that last thought, I headed straight to my boss' office as soon as I got back to the New Zealand High Commission. Julie was about ten years older than me, and a no-nonsense operator. Unlike me, she was also part- Māori and spoke the Māori language in New Zealand very well, as well as being competent in the closely-related language here on the island. She'd taught me a lot already about dealing with the locals.

"No progress in the meeting, as requested," I said, dropping down into her visitor's chair. "Tusitala's putting his foot down though and has brought forward the next meeting to before Christmas. He has asked that we meet informally before then to work things out. Oh, and he's invited me snorkelling tomorrow to talk 1:1. Ok?"

Julie was also good with a raised eyebrow, and she didn't miss the way that I threw in that last point during my report. Smiling, she rose and beckoned me out of her office, and then outside to a lawn area behind the main building, with a big shady tree standing to the side. We regularly had our office swept for bugs, but you never knew.

"For the main issue, I'm going to leave it to you," she said. "I'm leaving for Wellington before Christmas, and I give you discretion. You know what we can commit to if pressed. The US and China won't agree to work together without significant pressure. If they do agree, which is unlikely, Australia and Japan will probably go with the flow, and we can fit in."

I nodded.

"For your date with the hottest man on the island," she continued, "you know the rules. If you bend them, I'll look the other way as long as you're getting results or it's too much in my face. I need plausible deniability from you, and a full recount at some stage when we're off-duty together in a bar back home."

She stood back and looked me up and down. "Isla, we're a small country and we need all the advantages we can use. You're young, blonde, smart, and you're attractive when you don't put that stoop on. Nobody minds that you're tall apart from you, so stand up proudly. Also, don't wear a bikini tomorrow of course, but don't overdo the prude in you."

Julie knew me far too well. I had been thinking about the full board shorts and long-sleeved top for sun protection in the water. And she was right: I had always been embarrassed about my gawky height and skinny frame and tended to hunch over to minimise it.

Later that afternoon, after vainly trying to make my wardrobe fit the brief, I dashed down to the only decent beachwear store, at a local tourist resort, and got a one-piece bathing suit in a floral print. It was modest enough to not raise eyebrows in this conservative country, but still showed off the curves of my backside, which I thought was my best feature: I didn't have much to write home about in the boob department. It would have to do.

Chapter Two -- Coral diplomacy

Tusitala stunned me by picking me up on time. Anybody else would have been living and breathing "Pacific Time" on a Saturday, but he wasn't one for being too casual.

"The tide will be perfect if we get there soon," he explained when I made a point of glancing at my watch. "The Pacific Ocean doesn't run on Pacific Time. It runs on Moon Time."

Fair enough, and colour me impressed. We jumped in his car, which like most of the cars on the island was a second-hand import from Japan, with its digital display and radio still in Japanese.

I was expecting him to take me to the local reef, but he turned to drive over the top of the ridge in the middle of the island and over the other side, which took nearly an hour, ending up in a little cove that I'd never been to. He didn't seem to want to rush into diplomatic conversations, and instead just chatted about the places we were passing, who lived there, what the local issues were, and lots of fascinating detail about local life. The guy was obviously a born leader: he knew

everything

about the people, and he obviously really cared. I eventually realised that through his commentary he was giving me a message about the kind of commitment he wanted from foreign diplomats like me. We were not here for a holiday, but to be helpful.

After we arrived, we grabbed our gear and walked down to the beach. There was a local guy there to take payment from any tourists, but he just smiled at Tusitala and waved us through. Apart from him, the place was deserted.

I had my togs on underneath a top and a loose skirt, and I decided to just take the initiative and strip down in front of him, digging my (coral-safe) sunscreen out and applying it to my face and limbs. When I started reaching around to my back, he quietly held out his hand for the sunscreen and began rubbing it into my neck, the exposed parts of my shoulders, and my ears. I shivered at that last one. He must have worked out quickly that my ears were erogenous zones, and he took his time.

This, clearly, was why he wanted me away from the prying eyes of the capital city. I was going to be much easier to work with diplomatically if I was a quivering mess of hormone-fuelled jelly.

"May I help with your calves as well?" he asked, but he didn't wait for my answer, bending down to massage the lotion into the back of my lower legs, then my ankles (another shiver!), and finally the backs of my knees (and again!), before handing the tube back to me so that I could do the back of my thighs. Even though it was a simple task and he was doing it for nefarious ends, he was assured, thoughtful, and respectful. This man was going to make a local woman very happy one day.

He was wearing an

ie faitaga

, the local skirt-type garment worn by men, and a loose shirt, and he casually stripped them both off, leaving him in some brief shorts. His sculpted torso was as impressive as I'd suspected, but for the first time, I saw most of his tattoos. The one on his shoulder had an intricate geometric pattern that was impressive enough. But the one that took my breath away was his

Pe'a

tattoo, which started well above his waist, was partially hidden by the shorts, and then extended down his thighs to his knees. I knew that this was no decoration, but an essential part of his masculinity. I had also heard that the process was excruciating, as the tattoos were done in a traditional way that was brutal, bloody and slow.

"Did it hurt?" I asked.

He didn't look at me, and it was a moment before he spoke. "To be honest, Isla, it was worse that I could have possibly imagined. I wanted to scream my lungs out for every minute of the ten days that it took. But I held my pain in, and now I wear it with pride."

He gestured towards the ocean, and we grabbed our snorkels and flippers and headed down. I'd been snorkelling on the island before, but after only a minute I realised that this spot was even more special than the places I'd been to. It had masses of fish grazing around the coral, which looked to be healthy and undamaged from last year's cyclone. But Tusitala swam me straight past those corals and to an area of slightly deeper water, and I suddenly forgot to breathe. In front of me were scores of giant clams, opened wide under the water, with fish swimming around them. It was an amazing sight.

We hung there near the surface for what seemed forever. I moved to dive down a bit for a closer look, but Tusitala waved me back, and mimicked the action of a clam suddenly closing. That was fair: I had heard some bad stories. The sight from the surface was spectacular enough anyway.

Finally, we swam back to shore, and dried ourselves. Tusitala had brought some large beach towels, and he laid them in the shade so that we could relax without cooking ourselves in the heat of the sun, as by now it was late in the morning.

Tusitala waited a few minutes before he spoke.

"Isla, I know you understand that this country is special. The ocean is precious, my people are beautiful, and we live in a delicate harmony with nature. But we do need New Zealand's support, and that includes in the way that we deal with these superpowers and others who are trying to control us. Some of them don't even pay lip service to respecting our culture."

I had not expected such a direct conversation, and scrambled to engage a diplomatic and suitably humble response. No doubt he also had his issues with New Zealand.

"You know that we value our connections deeply, Tusitala, although I can't claim any Pasifika blood myself. My family was Scottish all the way. And I wish I had all the answers. Do you have any angles on the decision-makers for the other countries? My boss has given me authority for this one over Christmas, but if we knew what could push the others over the edge to agreeing on a joint approach, it might help."

"Angles?" mused Tusitala. "Interesting. Well, it's not like it's a defence base or anything, so maybe we don't have to threaten them with revealing deep secrets to get a change of heart. I will think on this. Thank you for your insights and support."

He fell silent, pondering, sitting up and watching the ocean. I laid back on my towel and stretched out languidly, eyes closed and chest pushed slightly upwards to maximise my meagre assets. If Tusitala wanted to have a little perv as a reward for his nice words, he was very welcome. And in the meantime, I was feeling a little dozy...

...

I awoke with a start, and opened my eyes. The sun was still high in the sky, but it had moved. I could hear noises behind me. I quietly stretched, and sat up enough to look around. Tusitala was facing away from me, kneeling next to another towel on the sand, where he had set up a simple lunch for us. He was no less attractive from this angle, and I enjoyed just watching him while he laid out some plates. Onto these he placed some oka (marinated fish) and vegetables including some greens that I recognised as an edible local seaweed. He sensed me watching, and turned with a smile, gesturing for me to join the little feast.