Chapter Text
"He bit us, then ran out! He isn't a person, he's an animal! We can't take care of him. I'm sorry, sir, but this is too much for us."
Police Chief Varka tried to hide his deep sigh of frustration when he heard the lamentations of the third foster family to take in the boy. The nameless child they found in the woods two weeks ago was quickly becoming the police department's biggest headache. No one knew who he was or where he came from. He matched no known missing child, and his white hair and red eyes looked like nobody in Mondstadt.
And most importantly, the boy was incapable of telling them anything. He spoke no language, understood no social cues, and knew nothing about living with people. He communicated only in grunts and growls, snatched uncooked food and devoured it without any table manners, and didn't even understand how to use a toilet. As far as Varka could tell, the boy must have been living in the woods like an animal for years. It was a miracle he survived.
But miracle or not, it seemed none of their regular foster families could handle the feral child. The only options left were either locking him up in a mental hospital, or calling an old friend.
Varka ended the call, promising the family they wouldn't have to look after the kid anymore, and stepped into his patrol car to find the fugitive. As he drove, he activated the hands-free phone.
"Who would you like to call?" the robotic voice asked.
"Andrius Lupical."
Andrius waited underneath the large wooden archway that marked the entrance to his property. "Wolvendom Sanctuary", the letters on the gate spelled. Some wolves crept close to the fence, knowing that when Andrius waited there for so long, it meant that a new pack member would soon arrive. The man chuckled at that. Today's arrival was a little different than the animals he usually took in. Truthfully he had been hesitant to say yes. But eventually he had agreed to at least see the boy before deciding.
A car engine could be heard a minute before a police car emerged from the trees. Even for Springvale, the sanctuary was remote, several miles away from the rest of the village. The wolves barked and clawed at the fence, apparently not noticing the difference between the police car and the large truck that usually brought new wolves.
As the car stopped in front of him, Andrius saw the child in the passenger seat. His first impression was that the boy looked like one of his typical arrivals. His long hair was greasy and unkempt, like wolf fur, and his skin bore many scars. The boy turned to look at him with a frightened, confused gaze just like a new wolf.
Varka stepped out first, then gently opened the passenger side door. It took a minute, but the boy eventually stepped out, looking curiously at Andrius, before his gaze snapped to the wolves behind the fence. He bared his teeth, and the wolves did the same. Andrius stepped back, allowing the boy to step closer to the fence.
Moments later there was a cacophony of snarling and growling back and forth, and Andrius chuckled.
"I can see why you brought him here," he said. Varka just shook his head.
"If anyone can tame him, you can. He's more wolf than human right now, and we need someone who understands wolves. Of course you'll get all the help you need. Teaching materials, clothes, it'll all be provided." he said, grabbing a small suitcase from the trunk. "These are the clothes he already has. He only seems to tolerate fur and wool clothes right now, and when it's warm he just tears them off, so be prepared for some nudity until he learns what clothes are."
Andrius took the suitcase. "Well, it tends to be chilly here. Does he... sleep in a bed? Wash himself?" he hesitantly asked, already unsure if he was up for this task.
"He vaguely understands baths, though he prefers to wash himself in rivers. Doesn't bother with soap or shampoo. As for sleeping… he can sleep in a bed, but he's very restless and tends to go out at night. We have the tracker in his shoes should he run away and get lost. Bathroom breaks seem to be easier done outside. He can hold it, but has a lot of trouble figuring out how a toilet works. He gets anxious, angry at human things he doesn't understand. Obviously we want him to learn how to use a toilet properly, but maybe it's best if he learns some language first," Varka explained, handing over the GPS tracker displaying the boy's coordinates.
"Alright... and he doesn't talk at all?" Andrius asked, paying close attention to the boy interacting with the wolves. Despite some initial distrust, they seemed to have made peace for now.
"He hasn't really said anything, but he understands some words. Yes, no, stop, eat, bed, that kind of stuff. He understands nothing complex, but it's already more than your typical wild wolf!" Varka said, making Andrius chuckle.
"A wolf, but a bit more. That's a good description of him. Does he have a name?" he asked.
"I call him Razor. He scratched me as I put him in the car, and his nails and teeth are razor sharp. It's the only name that makes sense to me," Varka explained. Razor nuzzled against the fence, apparently having been accepted by the pack. Andrius moved closer, careful not to startle the boy.
Razor suddenly turned around, staring at Andrius for a few seconds before nuzzling against his trousers.
"Oh, he likes you. He didn't act like that with the other foster parents," Varka said, clearly relieved.
"I… think I like him too, Andrius said honestly, gently rubbing Razor's messy hair.
"So that's a yes?" Varka asked, not even bothering to hide the desperation in his voice.
"I'll try. But I can't promise the wolves won't eat him. Or adopt him, for that matter," Andrius said, noting the way the pack stared at Razor with curious eyes.
"Wolf go to tree!" Razor said, trying his best to learn grammar. It had been three years since he arrived at Wolvendom. Andrius knew, rationally, that the boy had made incredible progress in learning language, given that he started from absolutely nothing. But most of that had been learning single words, names, the very concept of language. It had taken months before Razor had even spoken his first word.
Of course that word had been 'wolf'.
"No Razor, that's not right. I go, you go, but the wolf…" Andrius tried, holding up the picture book. It displayed a wolf and a tree, with an arrow between them. Archons, the amount of effort it had taken to get Razor to even understand what a drawing like that was. The boy was painfully literal, and had a hard time wrapping his head around anything abstract.
"I go to tree, I am wolf, so wolf go to tree!" Razor proudly said. Despite his frustration with the slow progress, Andrius couldn't help but chuckle at the unique reasoning. Razor often had his own kind of logic like that.
"No, the wolf goes. And it's 'the tree', not just 'tree', remember?" he explained.
"But I go, you go, we go, why not wolf go? It's stupid," Razor growled, fidgeting with his long hair. A clear sign he was annoyed.
"Because… Because that's just the way it is. 'Go' becomes different when talking about he or she or it or wolf or Lisa. Remember 'run'? I run, you run, he runs. Just put the 's' behind the word when you're talking about someone else," Andrius tried his best to stay calm. Once, when he was young, he had considered becoming a teacher, but teaching Razor proved he made the right choice going into animal care. He loved the feral child, no doubt about it, but it was just… so hard to teach him anything.
Thankfully they had Lisa, who came to Wolvendom twice a week to tutor Razor. She was a lot better at it than Andrius was, but he still had to correct Razor whenever he made a mistake when she wasn't here.
"Still stupid! So I go run. Run with wolves. Wolves run, but wolf runs. Make no sense! At least wolf not talks stupid!" the boy shouted, jumping out of his seat and running out the door.
"The wolf doesn't talk, not... " Andrius tried to say, but Razor was already gone. At least running with the wolves would calm him down. It was incredible how the pack had accepted him. Razor needs all the help he could get to learn words and grammar, and if playing wolf helped him relax between lessons, all the better. Though there were worrying signs.
"I am wolf," Razor had said, and Andrius didn't think the boy had been joking.
Razor was running.
When he runs, he doesn't think. He doesn't have to figure out words or gestures or other human things. Running is easy. Humaning is hard. So he ran whenever he could, far away from Andrius and Lisa and the others who tried to get him to speak their silly language, force him to eat with utensils, make him wash himself with soap that smells weird and stings his eyes.
"Awooooo!" he howled as he ran, and moments later the pack appeared, running alongside him. They hunt. Hunt for boar. Smell it, track it, chase it, attack it. And then they'd devour it raw, still warm and bleeding. He'd have to take his shirt off, or else Andrius would be angry at the bloodstains. "Don't eat raw meat!" he'd say. "It's bad for you!"
What nonsense. Razor never felt as good, as alive, as he did in moments like this, when he cut off the boar's escape. The animal's hesitation at seeing him was its undoing. A wolf pounced, biting its neck.
Blood sprayed out. The boar gave a final groan, a last attempt at fighting, before dying. The wolves howled in triumph. Razor howled with them.
An hour later his belly was full, but many in the pack were still hungry. Thankfully there were so many boars to hunt in the sanctuary. Wolvendom was a fenced area of many square miles, with its own rivers, hills, and forests. It was in one of those rivers, right next to the tall fence that separated the wolves from the outside world, that Razor was washing himself.
The blood on his face and hands vanished in the water, and he drank deeply. Long white hair floated around him like spun wool. The pack waited for him to finish, clearly eager to hunt more prey.
As he put his clothes back on, one of the pack ran into the clearing, growling softly. It meant that a boar had been spotted nearby, and it was time to hunt once more.
The pack snuck through the forest, right next to the fence, following the boar. But just when Razor spotted their prey, there was a loud bang. The boar jumped and instantly ran off. But before the pack could even think of chasing it, more explosions echoed through the forest, coming from the other side of the fence.
The wind picked up, and Razor smelled something that he normally only smelled in the house on cold nights.
Smoke.
More booms, and then a scream. Not animal. Human! Razor pushed his face to the fence, trying to look through it as best he could. The smoke became thicker, and a faint glow flickered behind the trees.
Razor howled, telling the pack to run away. Too dangerous to hunt. There was fire coming this way! But how? There was no lightning that could have started it.
Smoke stung at his eyes, but he could still see a red figure running towards him. It was screaming something. Words. Language. A human. A tiny one. It took Razor a few seconds before he could even begin figuring out what the words meant.
"I'm sorry! I didn't want this to happen! Jean! Please help!"
She was running downwind, right where the fire was spreading. Razor could already see the flames behind her, could see the sparks fly on the wind and burn the bushes where they landed. If the human kept going that way, she would be trapped!
"Stop! Back! Back! That way… Bad! Fire! Go… there!" he shouted, desperately searching for the right words. The girl stopped running, looking at him with wide eyes.
"Run! Run like me! I run, you run!" he screamed, before running along the fence in the safe direction. A glance over his shoulder told him she was following. "Good!" he shouted. She shouted something back, but he couldn't make it out.
A few minutes later they reached the river where he bathed before, and he stopped. They would be safe in water.
"Thank you! I'm sorry about the fire, I didn't mean for it to get that big! I just had these treasures from New Years, and I wanted to play with them. I'm Klee, by the way!" she said, showing him a box. Razor couldn't read the words, but the picture on it… he had seen something like that. On the picture box in the house. Fireworks.
"Fire bad. Could have hurt. And now wolves go hungry!" he told the girl, who looked like she was about to cry.
"I'm really sorry! You saved me! What's your name?" she asked, coming a little closer to the fence.
His name? Oh right, this girl wouldn't know. Everybody has to learn names. Even the humans who seem to know all things he doesn't know.
"My name… Razor. I am… wolf boy," he slowly answered. The girl smiled brightly.
"Nice to meet you, Razor! Let's be friends!" she said loudly. Before he could respond, another voice called from the trees behind the red girl.
"Klee! Klee, where are you? I know you started that fire, no need to hide! Just be honest about it!"
"Oh no, I have to go! Bye, Razor!" the girl said before running towards the voice. A moment later she was gone
"...Bye," he managed to say, not understanding what had happened. Humans were so confusing. Razor was tempted to run with the wolves some more, but there were questions he needed answers to. Questions that Andrius could answer. Who was the red burny girl? How did fireworks cause a forest fire? And above all… what is 'friends'?