Vou'a

Summary
Vou'a, or the Son of Laughter, is a god venerated in the Wide Seas. He is the god of mystery.

In the Eastern Ring he is called Iki, and Navikiani is named for him, for the meeting place of Iki and Ani. However, Vou'a is the name the Lays of the Wide Seas use for him.

He was the efelauni at the market at Ikiava who gave Cliopher "Kip" Mdang the efevoa, and is also Buru Tovo's boyfriend.

Ani's Lament
Ani is the Mother of Islands — all the islands of the Wide Seas. She is the ancestor of all the Islanders. Her son was Vonou’a, the first of the seafarers, the Wayfinders. It’s said that when he first set sail over the horizon, her heart broke in two. She set the two pieces in the sky to show him the way home, the Sun and the Moon. The lament she sang for his going was the first song.” He looked ahead to the shafts of sun spotting the path here and there ahead of them. “Her song was so powerful that Vou’a, that is, the god of mystery, lifted the earth from the sea and gave her a place to stand on. She didn’t know who this god was, so she walked along the sands until she found the place where he was waiting for her.” He realized he had slowed his steps to match his words, the cadences jarring with the passages from the Lays he ought to have been singing. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “She sang all her dreams of her son’s far-away adventures, singing her grief for his going and her hope for his return. She came walking down the shore of this new land, the first of the islands, and found the place where Vou’a was waiting for her. It was the most beautiful place of all.” He wished he could tell the story the way Buru Tovo told it. It had been so long since he had been home for the Singing of the Waters, when the Lays were sung in their entirety. It was not at all the same to read them over in his rooms at the Palace. “It was sunrise when she came to the beach where he was waiting. She sang her lament again, and Vou’a called to her, said to her that he had gone to the underworld and brought it to the surface of the sea, to show to her that her son was still alive, that Vonou’a had not perished on the far side of the horizon. And when she listened to him she looked far over the sea, against the rising sun, and she saw the sail of her son’s ship coming home.”

Ani's Mirimiri
Ani was a dear friend of Vou'a's, who had been tricked out of her mirimiri, which was very important to her. Vou'a found the thief and what he wanted, and thought he could recover it by making the right trade. Unfortunately, he lost his trade on the way, and the mirimiri and the item for trade were both one of a kind, so the thief would accept no substitutes. Vou'a never recovered the mirimiri. One moral of this story is how failure is sometimes permanent.