A baby. He was a goddamn toddler.
The redhead woman holding him had a look that Auren could only describe as dopey—like someone drunk on love and too far gone to care.
..A stupid, lovesick kind of look, all warmth and no sense.
Goofy, soft, and just a little bit brainless, like she'd forgotten how to think and could only feel. Her hands were warm. That was nice—the annoying kisses were not so nice though.
She was constantly saying things in between kisses, but the language was too weird for him to understand a single word of it.
He wasn't too small—that was another good thing. He could freely feel his hands and legs and even his backbone. He should be able to walk. From the size of his, he had to be around 3 years old or maybe older.
They were in a small house made of wood, dirt and a little bit of stone here and there. It was mostly coated in a mix of clay, straw, and dung. Wooden and iron tools with a large chest was placed in one section of the room. The hooks, pots, tools on walls—herbs drying in the corner.
The house had a stone floor—it was a relief to see that. Auren knew old-timers used to live in a house that had a dirt floor. Thankfully that was not the case here. A fire was burning in the center of the room, with smoke venting through a hole in the roof. The walls for the three different compartments of the big slanted-roofed house were made of solid stone too.
The woman finally let him go with one final long kiss. Leaving him on his feet as she grabbed a wooden bucket, she called for "Korsa"—whatever or whoever that was—and left through the open wooden door. A second later Auren heard a voice from behind him, and he turned to find an old woman's head. She was peeking in through the small window from outside.
She raised her finger and said something. Auren had no idea what it was, but he nodded anyway—it made her laugh like crazy. The sound was enough to scare a grown-ass man like him, let alone a kid. Weird granny.
Finally left alone, Auren checked his body, moving around. He stumbled a few times, but it was just his mind remembering the feeling of walking with his new body. After a few minutes he had mastered walking and had no trouble even running around. His little legs were not so strong though, and he was already feeling tired.
Auren laid down on the stone floor on his small back for a while—raising his arms up to take a close look at them. There was something that had caught his attention before. Behind his palms, on both his hands, there were black crests or something. He had also seen it on his mother's hand, and it was on the granny's hand as well when she pointed at him. But they only had one on the back of their right palm, and it was blue in color—he, for some reason, had two, one on each hand, both pitch black.
That wasn't the only odd thing he had noticed. Maybe it was because he was not used to the body of a toddler, but somewhere inside him—it felt like it was behind his belly button—he felt a bright, cool source of.. of.. he had no idea what to call it. Energy? He could feel light. How in the hell was that even possible? Wasn't it something one saw instead of felt?
It was cool—but that was a separate feeling. Auren could see a white smoke-like energy floating in his mind whenever he focused on his stomach region where this thing was.
'Do all kids feel this thing? Or am I in some alien world?'
The crests on the back of his palms did not look like a tattoo at all. How could he describe it.. It felt heavy. Like he was wearing gloves or something—not that he had done any tattoos before in his last life. But if it grew with a person, assuming that's what happened to the two women he had seen, it had to be a part of his new body.
Auren stopped staring at his chubby hands and also stopped playing with the weird energy in his stomach, he pulled himself up. The door was wide open, and he could see a bright day outside. The only thing he could see from inside was a big, dense tree near the house covering the view. Using his chubby legs, Auren stepped forward. He had to see where he was.
But the second he reached near the open door, he heard the granny say loudly,
"Auren!"
He immediately turned around. It was instinctive. She said a bunch of words after it too and circled around the house to reach the open entrance, she stood there covering his way out. He stared at her knees, then slowly he looked up to see her wrinkled face looking down at him as she continued talking non-stop. She was so freaking huge.
Never did he think in his life he would have to go through this height complex again. He was tall. Near 5'11'', damn it.
His name was Auren, it seems. Same name as his last one—he always felt like his name was really weird, unlike his siblings who all had normal names. His mother had told him that she had a younger sister once—she was ill and bedridden all her life. She used to love reading books and listening to stories. She was the one who had given him this odd name—it was supposed to be a hero's name.
Hnhh.. Heroes don't toss their phones in the ocean and drink alcohol till they drop dead.
Auren still tried to walk around her to sneak out of the small gap, but she blocked the way with her leg and bent down to pick him up. Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
'Outside! Outside, damn it! I wanna go outside.'