Leia stepped out from under the shade of the coconut tree to test the pulp of the mulberry bark she was fermenting in wooden tubs of seawater. She was nearly a head taller than her grandmother's five feet, and Tutu was practically skin and bones. I thought you had a pact to always take up different sides of the fence." Leia put the salve down and stood. Leprosy had taken her vocal cords as well as her lips and nose, and her words had a flat, toneless quality. "That feels much better, Leia," her grandmother said in a hoarse voice. To her, Ipo Kahale was the most beautiful woman to ever grace Moloka'i's shores. The sight of her grandmother's missing fingers and toes had ceased to make Leia flinch long ago. Hansen's disease was manageable these days, but the scars were not so easily erased. Leia Kahale rubbed an aromatic salve of crushed ginger, aloe, and other natural ingredients gently into the deformed hand of the old woman seated in front of her.
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