Kai led Moran down a narrow road lined with softly glowing jaws, their food bundles in hand.

hey didn’t stray far before coming upon a section of road bordered by a waist-high wall of weathered stone.

Kai plopped down without hesitation, unwrapping his already half eaten meal and gestured Moran with a nod to join him.

Moran did as he was told, sitting down on the cold stone.

He tore open the large leaf encase package, the smell of it already wetting his mouth. It smelled of meat.

Despite, at least to his memory, having never eaten the stuff he knew instincitively that this would be a treat.

He fount a thick, fatty slab of it inside the leaf. The sauce oozing out of it had already begun to drip throught the caseing.

A soft but rich aroma along with a wave of heat brushed against his face, filling his nose with pure delight.

"Hmh, whaff afe you waffing for?" Kai munched through a full mouth. "Dig in."

Moran did as he was told. As so often, the first bite was the best.

Fluid warmth seeped out of the meat, running down the his chin and hands as he bit of a big chunk of flavor and chewed.

“Well?” Kai asked, already halfway through his own bundle.

Moran wiped at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and gave a slight nod. “It’s good.” He mumbled.

Kai smirked, sliding his tongue over his lips.

“Of course, it’s good. Our cooks don't make bad food. Though, sometimes Ougma tests how little she can season it before someone notices or she puts wierd things into it."

A grimace spreads over the man's face as he remembers some of the headcooks experiments. Whether they were colonary ones or an attempt at crafting a new poision he had yet to figure out.

"Just don't eat anything that she is too eager to give you." He added, giving Moran maybe the most valuable advice there was.

The other man chuckled, already chewing again.

Somehow the taste took him back, despite the complete lack of memory when it came to eating flesh.

The question of how he even knew how meat tasted like flashed through his mind.

It lacked the typical echo followed by a flood of information his usual pondering brought so he drove the thought out of his mind.

Apparenlty that was not something he was supposed to know, so no use thinking about it.

The two chewed fast and audibly as they ate not only the meat but the leaf-wrapping as well.

As they ate, the village continued on around them.

People passed them, some with simular packages in hand, walking towards different destinations.

Despite the chiefs and his guards behaviour during the last week, the other people living her didn't seem to care for the outsider, or was it foreigner, among them.

The few glances he earned ranged from curious to appraising, likely due to his filthy clothes and disheveled appearance, rather than fearful or suspicious.

A soft breeze rustled the leaves overhead, and the distant chatter of villagers created a backdrop of life that felt oddly comforting.

Was this peace?

Then Moran noticed the commotion further up the road.

A group of villagers was gathered at the base of one of the massive trees, shouting commands at each other.

Two of them didn't wear the typical white skin, but their Heartshapes.

One was built like a bull walking on two legs, his frame broad and muscular.

Black fur covered him from head to hoof, with two curved horns rising from his head.

Each of his six arms, two sprouting out the side and four out of his back. carried a thick log.

With a quick bend of his knees, he leapt upward, clearing several meters in one jump.

His hooves landed briefly against the trunk, and he bounced of f it again, extending his jump to reach a massive plateau build one couple of branches.

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The other was more streamlined in comparison. It was a snake with wings.

His crocodilian snout and long tail belonging to the former, with the wings made out of scales instead of feathers being a hint towards the latter.

With a few powerfull flaps he lifted off the ground with his long, serpentine tail wrapped like a noose around a couple of logs, pulling them along as he flew.

“What’s going on there?” Moran asked, gesturing toward the scene with a quick nod.

Kai followed the motion, then shurgged.

“Oh, that? Just some construction work. They’re probably putting up supports for a new platform or fixing something.”

Moran gulbed down the last of his meal and licked his fingers clean of the brown sauce. Afterwards he rubbed his palms against each other.

The whole process looked painfully inefficient.

Small groups of three to four normal Shapeless brought the logs and threw them on a stack from which the two Heartbearer took them and either flew or jumped them up.

Because the Heartbearer always took up multiple logs and their way was shorter in general, there was a difference in speed of the supplier and the supplied, causing frequent pauses.

“They’re... just pulling it up by hand? Or tail...”

Moran commented finally, his brow furrowing as he watched the display of pure efford.

“Yeah,” Kai said around a mouthful of food. “The Heartbearers do most of the heavy lifting. Makes things faster. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

Kai shrugged and with a flick of his hand threw the rest of his meal into his mouth, gulbing it down without even chewing.

Then he rubbed his hands against his pants, leaving four brown lines on each leg.

“It’s better than having regular folks try to lug those things up, but it’s still slow. Plus, we have to tie up a few Heartbearers for this stuff, which means they can’t do anything more important. Like hunting.”

Moran’s eyes followed the one that looked like a minotaur.

After a brief pause, the creature grabbed the stack of logs that had been gathered in front of him and made his way up the tree.

On the plateau above, a swarm of white hands eagerly received the wood.

Without missing a beat, the minotaur leaped down again, landing on the ground with a casual demeanor, just brushing off an impact that would leave a normal person dead.

Though could Moran really consider himself normal in this world?

“You don’t use... pulleys? Levers?” He asked, with genuine curiousity in his voice.

Kai looked at him blankly. “What’s a pulley?”

Moran bit back a sigh. There he had his answer.

Apparently having the powers of various beasts to rely on was just the crutch the Shapeless needed to never need to invent anything.

Maybe it was already an achievement that they had houses, stable fire and warm food.

“Nothing,” he said quickly, biting his still delicously flavored lip.

“Just thinking out loud.”

Kai shot him a skeptical glance, then smirked and poked Moran’s temple with a finger.

“You think a lot,” he said simply.

Moran shrugged. “It appears to be my thing."

The other man snickered.

“Well, if you think of a more efficent way, be sure to let us know. Until then,---"

He sprang to his feet in one smooth motion, brushing crumbs off his hands before gesturing down the downtrodden path.

"We got a few more spots I want to show you. After all you really need a bath, man. You’re smelling like one of old man Bith's shoes."

Having encountered said old man Moran took that as an insult, though there was no denying Kai was right.

He gave a dry. "Ha, Ha" at the comment and followed the other man.

Kai led Moran through more of the village.

Despite its name, the "village" was massive, sprawling out endlessly before them.

The tribe of the Shapeless had to number in the thousands, and those were just the ones living on the ground.

Judging by the bustling construction in the treetops, the population might easily double when accounting for those who resided above.

The sheer scale of it was overwhelming.

Structures both sturdy and improvised filled every nook and cranny, with homes and workshops interwoven seamlessly into the forest.

Narrow paths meandered through the chaos, illuminated by the soft glow of countless jaws placed strategically along the way.

Kai walked ahead, clearly enjoying Moran’s amazement.

His grin widened with every astonished glance Moran cast around, as if the sight of the village through fresh eyes gave him new pride in his home.

One stop brought them to a river that wound clean and steady through the heart of the settlement.

Its water gleamed faintly under the ambient light of the jaws, reflecting the many hands that dipped into it.

Wooden railings lined the edges in some places, likely to prevent accidents, while stones smoothed by years of wear marked others.

Shapeless of all forms and sizes gathered along the banks, busy with the mundane tasks of washing clothes and scrubbing away dirt.

His earlier encounter with water in this realm dampaned Moran's joy to see a place to clean himself at first, but Kai assured him the water wasn't the same as the one filling the Hungry Ocean.

From there, Kai led Moran to an enclosed patch of trampled dirt.

“The training ground,” as Kai called it, was little more than a crude arena, surrounded by makeshift barriers and watched over by a scattering of onlookers.

As they walked by, two figures were clashing in the center.

Moran knew one of them.

Groll, with his massive frame and thick brown skin, swung his jaw-shaped club like it was a piece of grass.

His opponent however was a stranger to Moran.

She looked like some kind of humanoid dragon, her light-blue hair flowing down her back like a cascading river, her arms adorned with blue scales that glimmered in every flash of light she herself produced.

The woman darted around Groll, moving too fast for Moran’s eyes to follow.

Each movement left behind faint sparks of lightning.

Wether she was teleporting, shapeshifting into electricity or just moving very, very fast, Moran couldn't tell.

After every step she unleashed different kind of attacks on her opponent, spitting lightning or flinging it at him, kicking pieces of the ground at him or attempting to piece his body with her wierd sword-spear.

Yet none of it worked.

No matter how quickly she struck or how quickly she moved Groll was always just a second ahead, blocking every singel attack and attempt.

He blocked her blows with his massive club,

His massive club swung around, never in offense, shielding him from everything. The sheer force of it's motion could be enought to fell a tree.

The two continued their dance of power and speed as Kai led Moran away, the sounds of their brawl fading behind them.

After a few more stops Kai finally brought Moran back to his hut.

o Moran’s surprise, no guards were posted outside, no watchful eyes following his every move. For the first time, it seemed the space truly belonged to him.

Kai offered a quick goodbye before leaving, his broad grin still in place.

Moran stepped inside and took a moment to take stock of the day. It had been overwhelming in every sense.

So much to take in, so much to consider.

A small part of him thought he should return to the river to finally clean himself after over a week of stewing in his own smells.

Yet he was too full and to tired to care at the moment, and even if he did, he had no clean clothes to slip into.

He threw himself on the bed that he had sleept in almost a dozen times thus far and closed his eyelids.

It took a while for him to sleep, but once he did, he dreamed of meat wrapped in leafs, big men fighting dragons and an idea how he could earn himself some food.