Kai blinked, his vision swimming as he tried to make sense of the muddy, yellowish-green sky above him.

After a moment, his eyes cleared enough to realize it was just the ceiling of the village healer’s house.

He tried to sit up, instinctively moving fast, but his body protested.

Though he was awake, every fiber of him felt exhausted, unwilling to hurry in any way.

Still, he forced himself to slide his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up properly.

This sensation was all too familiar to him.

He’d felt it after every brawl with the other boys of the tirbe and each time he’d fallen off a cliff.

Aurora must have healed him again. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.

A loud "URRGHH" broke the silence, catching his attention.

He looked up to see another familiar sight: Old Man Bithlehem slouched in a corner, his furred arms draped around a bucket, his monkey-like face buried deep inside.

A sour, stale stench of alcohol seeped from the man, creeping into Kai’s nose. T

The smell of his own seared flesh was suddenly only the second most disgusting thing he had smelled today. Was it still the same day?

Kai wrinkled his nose, opening his mouth to make a joke about the man's overattachment to alcohol, but before he could, the wooden door of the stall swung open.

He turned his head just as Aurora strode in, her tall, lean figure silhouetted against the faint light of the wildlight-filled jar's that were placed in the edges of the room and littered all across the whole village.

She was slim and long-limbed, carrying herself with authority. She wore a long green robe adorned with golden patterns stitched along its seams.

Her blonde hair was cut bluntly, falling in a short, even line around her face, the practical fashion of someone who spend a lot of time leaning over wounds or hunching over plants that she was grinding into her various tinctures.

Rising from the pale strands were two slender antlers, black as midnight. Just as everyone’s Heartshape was different, so was their Halfshape.

While Old Man Bith had to bear the full face, tail, and furred arms of a monkey when he took his, Aurora's Heartshape only visible change was her antlers and her black sclera, which made her blue irises into glowing rings in the night sky.

Someone meeting her the first time could mistake her for a kind beauty, but Kai as well as everyone in the village knew that, despite her looks, Aurora had the personality of a granny.

Aurora’s gaze swept over Kai, her expression a blank mask. “Looks like you haven’t managed to kill yourself after all,” she said, her voice perfectly neutral. She leaned her staff, a macabre amalgamation of bones, against the wall and crossed her arms under her chest.

Kai tried to spring up but found his feet unwilling. “You know me, Aurora. I live to disappoint.” He shrugged dramatically, hoping to deflect an impending lecture with humor alone.

Of course that didn't work. Instead, Aurora just scoffed.

“What in the depths of stupidity made you think it wise to hunt a Gazerbeast alone? Did all the hits against your head maybe scramble your brain?"

Kai avoided her gaze, trying again to shift some weight on his legs they just didn't move.

"Don't try it," Aurora scoffed. "I paralized part of your legs while repairing your body so you can't just slip out again."

Fuck, Kai thought to himself. Apparently his recklessness had caught up with him. "You can do this?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "I thought you..."

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"...are nothing but a healer?" The woman finished his question faster than him. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"Wounding and healing go hand in hand, Kai. Just because don't jump on every opportunity to brash someones skull in doesn't mean I wouldn't be able to if I want."

She pointed at her anthlers. "After all, I as well hunted my beast alone."

That caught Kai off guard. Every Village of the shapeless had different traditions and rituals when it came to hunting, but their tribe usually hunted in groups to get stronger hearts.

Problem was those hearts were distributed to the strongest people. It was a tribe-efford and thus should benefit the whole tribe.

The only way for someone as inexperienced and weak as he to get a heart this early was if he just went out to hunt on his own, and thus he did.

"So are you going to lecture me for something you did yourself?" he asked, his voice provocating.

Aurora sighed heavily. "When I hunted my heart, the times were quite different. You might not remember it, but during the Cataclysm our people were to busy dying to organize a hunt to get a Celestial Deer."

Her eyes were lost in the past for a moment before resuming their acusatory stare at Kai.

"What I did was a desperate attempt to get my people what they needed, not some foolish vanity of a boy that leaves the whole village in disarray."

"It worked, didn't it?" Kai shouted. He knew the argument was backwards, but it was the best he had.

Aurora wouldn't understand that he couldn't have waited for five more years just for a shot at a medum heart.

The healer scoffed. Her eyes tightened dangerously. "Oh, so this is a triump to you?"

Her finger shot down, pressing against the shoulder that only a few hours earlier had been a burnt mess.

To Kai's relief, there was not even the hint of pain. Aurora had done her job as well as always.

When she spoke, her voice was venom.

"My Heartshape was barely enough to drag you back from the clutches of death.

If this stranger hadn't burnt out the wound, we'd be burying a corpse by now."

Kai took a deep breath. He couldn't argue with that.

Once again, he had burdened his village, like a naive boy.

At least it was good to hear that he didn't suffer through all this for nothing.

"Sorry, Aurora." He muttered, his voice shaking slightly. He hated this feeling.

It had been the reason he went out in the first place. And yet it was nagging him again.

Aurora sighed and stood up straight again, her hands placed at her hips.

"Moping doesn't help. We expect better from now on.Heartbearer ought to lead by example, not like this old mope."

Her chin darted towards Old Man Bithlehem for a moment.

Recognizing his way into the conversation, Bith raised his head slightly. The corners of his mouth trembled slightly, and his lips were wet with saliva.

“Ugh... Aurora, I don’t... feel good…," he moaned weakly before lowering his head again to unleash a "URRRAGGH," followed by a wet spalsh of two fluids colliding with each other.

“Absence of alcohol might help,” Aurora replied, her back already turned towards the sickly man again.

That got the halfmonkey angry. He thurst his finger at her like a spear. "Y-you need to help me...," the man shouted in drunken anger.

"And what would you do the instant I eased your pain?" Aurora asked, her voice cold as ice. She turned to shoot him an annoyed glare.

The man stumbled over some words in an attempt to find a good answer but settled on trying to win her over with a pathetic stare.

Aurora nodded. "Exactly. Keep punking, old man."

With that, she turned her full attention back to Kai.

The boy hadn't really paid attention to the two, his mind preoccupied with what Aurora had told him last.

"So Moral brought back the heart as well?" He asked, anticipation oozing out of every word.

He had fully expected something to have gone wrong along the way. Maybe Moral hadn't cut the heart out perfectly, or it was already rotten.

To his endless relief, Aurora shot him a frown first but finally gave him a nod.

"Yes, the man had the heart with him. And despite my better advice, the chief has ordered the to takes place as soon as possible after you wake up."

She sighted the last sentence more than she spoke it.

Kai couldn't help but grin.

I did it, he thought to himself. I really got myself a Heartshape.

"And that is exactly why I was so against it," Aurora grumbled. "You learnt nothing from this, did you?"

She brought her hand down on his formerly wound shoulder and in an instant he felt strength in his legs.

He gave the healer a surprised look. "Go," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's not like anything I have to say will stick. But I tell you one day you will lose your head."

Kai gave her a big smile. "No, I won't," he said, jumping up. "And that's a promise."

He circled her and with a finale "Thanks for healing me; you are the best, Aurora," he left the house.

Aurora gave an elongated sigh. "How many times did I hear that promise?" she muttered.

For a moment, the room was completely silent, but with another "Buuueeergghh," the splashing resumed.