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By the time he's twelve, Niv learns five fundamental things.
Niv learns not to trust humans.
He learns not to trust a great deal of people, regardless of their race, but in his experience, humans are the absolute worst. There aren't many memories he can recall of his mother - mainly her scent and the small glint of her smile in the dark - but he remembers, as clear as the day, her wariness towards humans.
He understands why, now. With every dirty look he gets, with every mean word, he understands why. He spends most of his early days trying to be smaller, trying to hide his tusks, trying to wash away the color of his skin - thinking if only he can manage to make it paler maybe it'll look more natural, more human. Maybe they'll like him, then. Maybe he'll get to stay.
(Maybe he'll get to have a family again, maybe he'll get to have someone who loves him, someone who takes care of him. Niv would do anything to have that again. He would rip out his own tusks if doing so could get someone to love him.)
It doesn't work, obviously. It never works. It never gets better. On the contrary, it gets so much worse. It seems like the looks and the mean words grow as he grows. The humans that took pity for him never force him to leave.
They don't have to.
He leaves before things can get worse, before the rest of the village can decide he has grown enough to be some kind of menace. He leaves before they can start saying what he can already see in their eyes: if he's not a danger already, he'll be one soon enough.
Niv finds out it's never a good thing to be alone with humans - when there are only humans. Niv finds out there isn't really need for a reason to be mean, to lash out, to hurt someone else. Not when said someone else isn't human. Not when said someone is one of the monsters of their nightmares.
Niv finds out that it doesn't matter how much he tries, how much he molds himself into something he's not, how much he tries to be good and harmless and dumb. He'll never be one of them, he'll never be accepted, he'll never be wanted.
By the time he's twenty, Niv has learned not to trust humans.
When he really thinks about it, that's the very first lesson he learns, with a shrug and a door closed behind the one human who should've been on his side.
Niv learns he's never going to find his father.
He doesn't even know what exactly he hopes for. He remembers the day his father left without a word like it was yesterday. It's not like his father would be happy to see him. It's not like he'd take him back, it's not like he'd decide it's finally time to take care of a son he didn't want.
Niv likes to pretend he doesn't want anything to do with the man. In every dream he has, his father comes back to him and apologize tearfully and hugs him and takes him away, to live a normal life like the kid he still is. In every dream he has, his father smiles and laughs and holds him when he's scared and soothe him when he's scared.
In every dream he has, his father is a completely different person.
He learns he's never going to find him soon enough when he travels from the nearest small city to Kharsaim and there's no one who can tell him anything. It's been too long, he's not even sure his father went into the capital and no one really wants to talk to him.
Niv still looks for him, even when he understands he's never going to find him.
Niv still looks for him because he's ten years old and he doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't know what a ten years old kid should do. He doesn't know what he should do and what he shouldn't do - for more than one reason.
He knows he's hungry and cold, most of the time. He knows he feels useless and alone and not one bit safer than how he felt back in the village.
After one year, Niv starts looking for his father because he has this terrible anger swelling his chest and he doesn't know how to get rid of it. He looks for his father because he wants to find him and yell at him everything he feels, everything he hates about him, about what he did to him.
After two years, Niv stops really looking for his father because he understands that nothing could bring him back what he already lost. Because nothing he could say would make his father a better person, someone who cares about his own son.
Niv learns he's never going to find his father. He learns he doesn't really want to anymore.
Niv learns he's expendable.
Niv learns that being expendable is somehow the best he can hope for because being expendable means you've been useful at least for a while. Niv learns that there's always somebody else.
The woman who took pity on him and gave him food for the day? She already has a son or a daughter and she needs to take care of them, she can help him once, maybe twice but it's never more than that.
Niv doesn't have friends. Niv has other kids his age, in his situation or something similar, that hang with him because other kids are afraid of him, because he can be useful for a while, because he's growing up to be bigger and stronger than a whole lot of them. They all leave after a while, because there's always someone meaner, bigger and stronger.
Niv learns he's not that good at anything, really. Sometimes he manages to stop and think he's a kid, of course he's not good at anything. Most of the times, though, he just wishes he could do something, anything to keep someone with him.
(If he just could manage to be good at something maybe he wouldn't be alone anymore. At least he would be needed.)
But the reality of his life is that there's always someone smarter, braver, bigger and stronger than him. The reality of his life is that Niv knows he'll always be left behind. Maybe not soon, maybe not suddenly, maybe even with some sort of regret.
There always will be someone better than him.
Niv learns he's not cut out to live in a city. He can feel his lungs shrinking down every time there are too many people in the street, he can feel his breath shaking every time someone looks at him. Niv feels too big for the city, too different for anyone in it, too weak to survive and too strong to be taken care of. He feels stretched too thin, pulled and pushed from every direction.
He's too big to steal food without getting caught and not mean enough to take it from other kids like him. He's too big and clumsy to be a thief and too young and weak to do any of the jobs half-orcs usually can get.
So he relies on the pity of the people around him and finds out there isn't much.
The first time he reaches the boundless plains of the tundra his lungs start to work properly. For the first time in his life, Niv feels home. He can see for miles and miles ahead, he can see beautiful colors and marshes and lakes and bushes of berries and ice when he reaches the horizon. For the first time in his whole life, Niv can finally breathe.
It doesn't really matter that he's going to die in a few days. It doesn't really matter that he hasn't eaten in days and that he doesn't know how to survive in the wilderness. It doesn't really matter that he's cold and tired and exhausted. He can finally breathe again, even if it's only for a little while.
(Except he doesn't die. Except Drest takes care he won't actually die, and that's something else.)
It takes him so much time to finally get used to the cities and the people in there. It takes him so much time and the calming presence of Drest by his side - and Drest's voice and Drest's hands on his shoulders whenever he feels like the air he's breathing isn't enough.
Niv learns he's not good with words, that writing and drawing the things he has inside is so much easier than trying to express them out loud. Niv learns to conceal the way some words hurt him and to write it down later, when no one can use it against him.
Niv knows, and this was something he didn't really have to learn, that it's better to be always happy, always confident, always smiling. Niv knows it's best when the people he has around look at him and think he's a bit dumb.
Humans and others alike find him less threatening, and that usually means he'll be left alone. Sometimes it means they'll pick on him, but that doesn't really matter. That's still better than what happens to people like him when they're scared.
Most of the time he can pretend to be dumb enough that he almost believes it too, that the things he hears and feels don't really bother him. Most of the time.
There are certain things that stick with him, though. Certain things, certain looks, certain words. The way people avoid him, the way Drest looks at him when he thinks Niv's not looking, with pity in his eyes and sorrow etching lines around his mouth. There are some thoughts, some feelings, some memories he can't shake away.
Sometimes it gets too much.
Drest asks him to talk about it, insists because he wants to know what's going on in his mind and what he can do to help. No matter how hard he tries, words don't leave Niv's throat.
The first time Drest brings him a few pieces of paper, Niv finds out there's a whole new world waiting just a few steps ahead of him. He just needs some paper and something to write with and then, just out of nowhere, he has a place where he can be scared and afraid and angry at the world.
Drest nods and smiles briefly, patting him on the shoulder, but Niv can tell he has never looked this happy before.
Niv keeps all the things he has learned close to his heart, even after Drest takes him in, even when he finally feels safe enough to actually sleep at night.
Humans are still not to be trusted, even Drest agrees. Well, to be fair Drest doesn't really trust anybody but himself so he probably doesn't count. But still. Humans are the same and the level of trust Niv has in them is still the same. It gets worse with every year that goes by, with every inch Niv grows.
But Niv isn't a kid anymore, and he has stopped trying to fit in long ago. He still doesn't like the color of his skin or his stupid tusks but that's okay. He just has to think about anything else. And it's not like they have that many mirrors lying around.
His father is long gone and most days Niv can't even remember the man's face. The word father means something else entirely, that much Niv knows now. Drest is the one and only father he wants, the one and only father he really needs.
He likes to think his mother would like him. He likes not to think about his biological father, so he simply doesn't. Drest becomes his father in his memories too, in the things he says to other people, in his thoughts and in his dreams.
Niv still knows he's expendable, he harbors no illusions about how quickly things can change. But he's not a ten years old kid anymore. There's something he's good at. He's useful. As long as he can be useful, he's safe.
He still knows he hates cities more than anything else. But he's good at keeping his breath in check, he's good at pushing down whatever he's feeling until he can finally leave the city and breathe again.
Niv doesn't talk about these things with anybody.
Niv finds out sometimes there's no need for him to say anything. That the people who really matter, the ones that really care about him, have no need for words.
The dwarf lady that runs the little bakery in the nearest village (Anette, she wants him to call her, even though Niv will never, ever stop calling her ma'am) always keeps something good for him, at the end of the day.
The first time it's only a way to say thank you for some contract he and Drest just fulfilled. The second time it's because you need something sweet if you're gonna be around that sour face all day while Niv laughs and Drest gives her an outraged look. The third time it's just because Niv is a good kid and needs to keep putting meat on those bones. It never stops from there.
Not everybody in the villages nearby is happy to see him, both of them for what matters, but that's what he expects every time he leaves the comfortable loneliness of their cabin.
(Niv finds out he can ask for things, sometimes, and the ones who love him won't kick him out.
"Can I have him? Can I keep him? I'll go out and hunt something else for you to eat, can I please keep him? I already have a name, he's going to be Muffin and he's already family you can't eat him anymore dad please.")
Niv finds out other things, things he never really thought about it, things that weren't really something he thought he could have.
There's a girl in the nearest village. She's sweet and pretty and wants to spend time with him and Niv doesn't really understand why because she could spend time with literally anybody else. Instead, she laughs at his dumb jokes and wants to hear all about their latest adventures and wants to hold his hand. Niv likes to talk to her, but he knows he doesn't like it the way he should.
Niv thinks there must be something wrong with him.
Then Ander, the blacksmith's son, dark skin and the whites smile Niv has ever seen, steals his first kiss behind a tree and Niv thinks oh, that's what it's supposed to feel like.
(And just like that Niv learns a great deal of other things he didn't know before. Like the fact that he likes to kiss boys behind the trees. Well, to be kissed by boys.)
Niv stutters every time Ander talks to him (to be fair Niv stutters every time any other boy he meets talks to him) and Drest laughs until he can't almost stand straight. Niv takes his revenge that one time a man in his forties winks at him and Drest starts yelling various profanities to keep goddamn fuckers away from his goddamn son.
All things considered, it's not a bad life.
The things he learned before never truly leave him, though.