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Razor wakes up to the sounds of the fire crackling and the scratching of a pen, blinking away the sleep and raising his arms above his head with a yawn. Blinking, he looks up to see his current traveling companion completely absorbed in writing in a small book, mouth wordlessly moving as his eyes scanned over the page, brows furrowed.
“What are you doing, Aether?”
The traveler startles slightly, before looking up from his notebook, a slight tilt to his head as he blinks a few times and points to himself, a silent question in his eyes.
Razor nods, and Aether scoots over closer to him, showing him carefully repeated letters and small symbols below each with a small smile, carefully pointing at an umlaut character and its base. “I, I’m trying to… say this better. More differently.”
“Paimon thinks it should be fine!” Razor jumps as the little cherub suddenly appears between the two of them, Aether only looking somewhat amused as she spins around and pats Aether’s forehead. “You’re understandable, and that’s good enough to ask if people have seen your sister and get orders of sticky honey roasts at Good Hunter, so that’s good enough for basically everything important! And anything else, Paimon can say!”
Aether smiles almost indulgently at Paimon, reaching out and gently poking her cheek while she zoomed away with a bit of a pout and an indignant squeak. “I… I still want to learn.” He spoke haltingly, brows furrowed as he pushed each word out, linking it to the next in an unsteady chain.
Paimon sticks out her tongue, zooming around to look at the book once more. “Paimon still thinks that you’ll be fine, since you’ve got your super best friend and travel buddy!”
“But Amber is busy?”
“Hey!”
Razor watches on silently as Paimon straightens up once more, floating a bit closer to Aether and starts to bicker (he wonders if anyone could really even call it bickering, with Paimon slowing down her phrases and waiting for Aether to respond with his rebuttals before saying anything else, a kind of kindness he didn’t expect from her) with him about the merits of sleeping versus learning, a smile creeping up on his lips as he leans back against the tree.
He lets the two argue for a little while longer before interrupting them. “Traveler. I keep watch. You sleep now.”
“Yeah! What wolf boy there said! Go to sleep, Aether!” Paimon puffs up in mock victory as Aether snorts and carefully stows away the little notebook in his bag. “Paimon’s got you, so don’t worry about a thing.”
“Yes. I will sleep.” Aether bats away Paimon and she disappears in a puff of stars, seemingly satisfied with his answer. He lets out a bit of a sigh before leaning his head on Razor’s waiting shoulder, humming a bit as he nestled against Razor’s side.
Razor watches him slowly close his eyes before looking briefly around the small camp they constructed, settling more comfortably against the tree as he listens for any sound for potential enemies, letting his mind wander a bit as he did, seeing the traveler study language so earnestly bringing back memories of an earlier time, of the first real human he had ever encountered.
For the enormous impact that it had, the start the day when Varka had crash landed into his life was increasingly mundane (but maybe that’s just what made the man stand out more). Razor and his pack had been looking for dinner, hunting some of the boars that lived deep in the Wolfdom, when one of his sisters dashed in to alert them of an armed human straying into their territory.
It wasn’t often that humans came. The Wolfdom’s reputation of being full of wild, territorial animals was widespread amongst the people of Mondstandt and visiting merchants, and there was nothing nearby of note to attract tourists. His entire lupical was on edge, deciding to pull away from hunting, and trail deeper into the forest.
Somehow, the tall man had still found him, Razor’s body gangly and long and not able to hide as well as his family, and he stumbled away as the other reached out a hand (one whose similarity to his own hands and lack thereof to his family’s paws haunted him from that day forward) and asked him with a large smile if he wanted to come with him to Mondstandt. Razor winced, trying to scramble backwards while his lupical charged forward, covering for him as he pulled away from the stranger.
Varka had laughed at his family’s immediate protectiveness, raising his arms up in surrender while laughing a bit, a large booming noise, befitting the person it came from.
“Don’t worry, I got it,” He had winked at Razor, whose hair and eyes peeked out of his family’s fur. He spoke slowly, clearly sounding out each consonant and vowel, looking him in his eyes to ensure that he was understood. “I won’t go any deeper into the Wolfdom, everyone. That’s what you guys want, right?”
However, Varka had come back on multiple occasions after, just at the edge of the forest armed with only a bright smile and a few books. After the first month of wariness and another month of curiosity, the other wolves would then simply snort with exasperation before shoving Razor through the underbrush, letting Varka teach him the very basics of human knowledge.
It was, to say the least, difficult. He could only copy the noises coming from Varka (a soft buh noise, a stress on the ah, reach deep inside your throat and sound out the kah), a blank look on his face as the tall man tried his best to explain what each sound meant, giving things (the Wolfdom, the land of Teyvat and the people who live in it, himself) names that never had needed them before. Even with his lack of ability, Varka would always grin broadly, ruffling his hair, promising to bring treats if Razor could look over a few letters, say some words, learn the order of his nouns, verbs, adjectives.
He smiled a bit brighter the day Razor was able to say clearly, with perfect pronunciation, all the harsh consonants slipping out of his mouth with ease, “Thank you, Varka”. The tall man had laughed, the large booming noise echoing through the forest and joining with the wolves’ howls in a cacophony of sound, and ruffled Razor’s hair again, before packing up for the day and leaving with a wave and a “see you again, little wolf” as a farewell.
Learning more and more of humans, the line kept blurring between them and his lupical, an uneasiness festering beneath his skin as he became steadily more aware of what he was, or to be more precise, what he wasn’t. There suddenly was a distance between him and his family, one insurmountable by any means he had, gap widening with each visit and revelation.
It began simply, with his lessons with Varka, then short visits to the city, and then began expanding more and more, as he became the only one who went to confront trespassers, to speak to (other) humans. Razor knew it could only be him who could ask humans to leave without a fuss, the only one with a body that they wouldn’t try attacking immediately, the only one who could ask them politely to leave with his broken sentences and clumsy pronunciation.
Of course it was only him. He wasn’t really a wolf, after all.
Even with these simple requests to leave him and his family alone, the trespassers were tricky, slippery, twisting his straightforward feelings into something far murkier. Words were heavy, clicks and sharp consonants, chains that wrapped around his tongue and throat, kept him from conveying his feelings and thoughts. Humans were complicated, their feelings nuanced and complex, no more so than wolves, but decidedly more duplicitous and careful with their mannerisms. A single inflection changes the meaning of a simple sentence, a deliberately placed emphasis changes the meaning of a few words. He struggled, the words coming out slower, each syllable enunciated to the best of his ability, verbs and nouns lined up in the most straightforward way he could place them.
There was no need for so much weight to be placed in speaking with his lupical, where a single glance was all he needed to feel the pride in his brothers and sisters’ hearts, a nudge or a playful push signaling the start of a hunt or a time to rest. But even there, he struggled, his throat and vocal chords straining to match his lupical’s growls and howls that rang throughout the Wolfdom.
Ironic that his lupical nature is what limits his ability to communicate to humans, while his human body refused to let him speak to his lupical. It was alienating, it was endlessly frustrating, one foot with his lupical, and one unsteadily toeing the line to something that resembles a human, and him caught in between both worlds, teetering on the brink.
Somehow, with his faith in humanity wavering and his sense of self waning, he met Klee, his first friend. The bright eyed girl had heeded his warnings to leave but also taken his hand that day, pulling him along the path, chattering non-stop as he struggled to keep up with her stories. She was unlike both Varka and Lisa, her laughs light, her movements childlike, and she had called him her friend and promised to come by again at the day’s end, after the rain had poured on the two of them, when the wolves had summoned him home.
“Ahhhh, Razor, Razor, let’s play again someday okay?” Klee held out her pinky, her wide eyes and sparkling grin infectious. “We’re friends now, so you have to promise!”
Friend was a word he couldn’t understand before, something that Varka had told him he needed to protect and Lisa simply smiled when asked. But as Klee proudly called him his friend, as she brought up her pinky and taught Razor to wrap his around it in a pact to play again another day, he thinks that he could start to understand. A friend, whether a wolf or not, was lupical. A friend is someone to cherish, someone that cherishes you. A friend is Klee’s warm hand as they ran together laughing in the rain.
Things continued to change, as much as they stayed the same as time passed by. He grew taller, became more proficient with his claymore, spent time with his lupical. There was an unease spreading through the forest after they had heard the crying of Dvalin, Andrius’s pain for his old friend permeating the pack’s mood.
More hilichurls settled in, an uneasy truce between the pack and the newcomers, and poachers became more and more commonplace as food became more and more scarce, tensions running wild as the sky changed from its bright blue to a sickening grey and back to its normal colors again, the dragon’s roaring becoming louder every day that passed, and abyss mages slipping deeper and deeper into their home.
And, in the midst of all of that, Aether had appeared.
Both him and Paimon had stumbled into the Wolfdom suddenly, without much fanfare or grace, scaring away dinner in the process, his poor first impression leaving Razor with a neutral outlook on the traveler. Just another human wandering a bit too far from home, someone who was mostly harmless but needed to be sent away for their own good.
But Aether and Paimon stuck around, bringing another girl (not Klee, but Amber, two syllables, simple) with them, helping his lupical and earning the begrudging respect of Andrius, their stubborn persistence in wanting to help regardless of their own safety them striking a chord within the wolves.
Aether came back after the incident at least once a week, to spar with Andrius and to spend time with him, sometimes taking him back to Mondstandt and taking lessons with Lisa as well, bringing new friends (or sometimes even breaking Klee out of her room with a sly grin) or treats to share for the journey there. The strange traveler, even after realizing his sister was nowhere to be found in the Wolfdom, still made it a habit to visit and chat with him, sometimes even joining him for cloud gazing.
Razor couldn’t fathom the reason why the traveler kept wandering back to the Wolfdom so often, why he spent the effort running back and forth from Liyue Harbor and Mondstandt and everywhere in between before making it back to him, with souvenirs or treats in hand and a smile on his face.
(He kept those little gifts stowed away in a box Klee gave to him to hold his “treasures”, the pressed qingxin flower from the highest mountains in Liyue, a xiao lantern holding wishes and hopes, and the remaining shards of metal of a bomb that he and Klee made together, all tucked away neatly and buried somewhere in the Wolfdom).
When he had pressed Aether about it, the other had smiled (it was much smaller than Varka’s, more contained, but no less joyful, a flash of gold glittering in the deep greens). He looked away, hands simply folded into his lap, a thoughtful hum emanating from his lips.
“Because… I want to.” The traveler shrugged, a hand scratching at his face a bit bashfully. He closes his eyes and thinks a bit longer before he continues, searching for the words to convey himself best. “Because I want to see you.”
Paimon’s stomach then chose to rumble, causing Aether to laugh and Razor to jump, and getting all three of them involved in some more of Xiangling’s (soft x, a name like a bell) schemes and inventions, the words Aether said so simply, the words drawn out and basic, almost lost to the day’s havoc and slime condensate.
Almost, but not quite.
That night, after Aether had wrapped his arms around him and told him that he would come back sometime next week, the warmth of Aether’s body and arms lingering, Razor remembered. It felt as though the warmth of the traveler’s hug had traveled deep inside his chest, and all he could do was lean into one of his brother’s fur and close his eyes.
He was the same as Aether, in that way. For him, it felt strange, how much he looked forward to seeing him, how much he wanted he to hear Aether calling his name (he said it differently, from Andrius, from Varka, from Lisa and Klee, his R’s sliding into L’s, his Z’s softer and more like an S, an almost unnoticeable happy lilt, his ever present accent, at once so mundane and a reminder that Aether was not from Teyvat), how easily he slipped into the ritual of preparing his claymore during the nights, so they could spar with Andrius whenever Aether had the time to drop by that week.
There was no need for pretense with the traveler, neither in his struggle to communicate, both not being exactly fluent in Mondstantan, and in his uneasiness with his place in the world. It was a strange relief to see someone who seemed as old as he was to be struggling with the same words, same vowels, and, in some ways, same expectations as he did, straddling the line between humanity and something more otherworldly, struggling to remember what or who he really could be.
It wasn’t exactly the same, Razor knows, Aether had dropped straight out of the sky and had to learn three different languages at once and then probably more so, looking for his sister with a fervor and trying to reclaim his lost abilities from a forgotten archon of long ago. But there’s something, maybe naive optimism, that whispers that if Razor just asks, reaches out, that Aether would understand, the jumbled pieces of their puzzles would intersect and create a new image for them.
But if nothing else, even if they couldn’t come to an understanding, Razor knows that he is Aether’s friend, and Aether is Razor’s.
The sun started to peek across the sky, a pale pink edging over the dark purples and blues of the night, and Razor turned his head a bit, seeing his traveler still deeply asleep. He shrugs his shoulders in an attempt to wake Aether, poking him a few times in his side to try and wake him up. Aether lets out an almost pathetic whine, before mumbling something in a language that Razor could never know, and pulling up the blanket over his face, determined to get in a few more minutes of sleep, it seemed.
Once, Razor had sat next to Aether just like this on another sunny day, both pouring over a book that Aether had apparently just found and took from the table (“it was going to get wet from the rain,” he said with a shrug, “and Paimon said ‘Finders Keepers’”), shoulders touching, fingers gently brushing against each other as they pointed at words and took turns carefully enunciating each syllable. It was warm, Aether was warm, and Razor could feel the borrowed heat fill him up, peace making him soft inside his chest, just like it did now.
Razor knows that he should probably try harder, that the traveler is busy, that he needed to go back to his pack as well, but there’s a twinge that hurts just enough for him to put his hand down and listen to the traveler’s soft snores again. It’s unlike him, maybe, but he can’t bring himself to wake the other up, so he gently pulls away from Aether and leaves him lying against the tree, standing and shuffling over to the dying embers of the fire.
In the corner of his eyes as he pulls out a few ingredients for breakfast from his bag, he sees the little notebook that Aether had been using earlier that night to practice on the ground, seemingly having fallen out of the other’s bag. He hesitates, then reaches for the little book, seeing it open easily to a page that sends another twinge to his chest.
An image of a girl, so similar to Aether and yet so different, stares back at him, along with the carefully written text ‘have you seen my sister?’ below it, water and what appears to be dirt and dust staining the page.
Razor gently touches the damaged page, where tears had blurred the ink and warped the page, and turns the pages of the book until he finds a blank sheet, finding the pen nearby, and carefully inscribing another message into the book, before stowing both back safely into the traveler’s bag.
He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, turning back to stare at Aether’s peaceful face, gently luminated by the light pink of the dawn. Razor feels a frown edging at the corners of his mouth, before he shakes his head, walks over to Aether’s sleeping form and carefully wraps the blanket around the other’s shoulders, his hands lingering for just a moment longer before he backs away and throws more wood on the fire and ignites it with his vision.
Razor starts cutting potatoes and pinecones and shaping them into paws onto the pan, and barely stifles a snort as Paimon wakes up to the smell of food. She proceeds to bop Aether with harmless looking smacks to his face until the traveler suddenly sits up with a dead look in his eyes, gaze glazing over as he stares directly at Paimon and says something that Razor has picked up on as ‘ five more minutes, please ’ (he had asked Aether about it a few weeks ago, when the traveler refused to get up until Paimon had tugged at his long hair, Aether’s face lighting up as he taught Razor the words) while the small pixie scolds him for trying to stay up when he was like that in the mornings.
Razor turns back to the cooking hashbrowns, a smile playing on his lips. It was such a mundane little thing, spending time with his friends, feeling happy as he did. It was simple, uncomplicated, and there was no need to worry about his ever muddled identity when he knew that there are people, wolves, Aether, who would accept him just the same, no matter what he became.
With his traveler, he could be just Razor, whatever Razor is. He wishes with all his heart that with him, Aether could be just Aether.
They’re a few hours away from the Wolfdom, on the road to Liyue again to (finally, hopefully) get into Inazuma, Ningguang apparently having convinced Beidou to come back to grant a traveler a favor, Aether sitting in the shade and reviewing his few notes on Inazuman, practicing with Paimon, when he turns the next page in his notebook.
“Hm? What’s that?” Paimon swoops near Aether’s face as the traveler stops mid-sentence to stare at his book, eyes wide. “That doesn’t look like your writing, Aether!”
Aether shakes his head, blinking rapidly as he stares at the message. “I-it’s not?” He carefully runs his hand over the dried ink, reading it out loud slowly.
‘When I run with you, when I hunt with you, I am happy. I hope you feel happy, too! With you, I am not a wolf, I am not a boy, I am just me. I am Razor. Because you are my friend. You are my Lupical. We will find your sister together. You are not alone. ’