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Razor exists as just him. Not a wolf, nor a man. Just Razor, and that is all that matters.
There are days where he wakes up at night, in a small den curled up with his Lupical, and he wonders. There are not many words that he knows that can be used to describe this feeling, so he calls it, “heart-hurt.”
The feeling starts deep in his chest, so deep and aching that it feels like a permanent feeling. Something that’ll never go away unless he forces it out of his body by tearing through flesh and bone.
Razor knows that this isn’t a good feeling. That’s why he never complies with the desperate thing in his chest when he wakes up on colds nights— despite being wrapped with countless warm bodies and dense furs.
Razor is not a boy, nor a girl. He doesn’t care about what he is called, nor does he want to be seen as one definitive thing. Scary-lightning-lady said that she could not understand after one of their days spent learning lightning-claws and fizzly-metal.
Razor does not care about her curious eyes or her confused gaze. Razor is Razor, that is all that matters.
Andrius gazes down upon Razor as if he sees something precious, faint and dulled yet still there.
Elegant as he may be, Andrius breathes out a long, cold breath before saying in the fondest tones, “She does not understand our concepts of happiness,”
A warm breeze filters through the leaves, the bright morning sun high in the sky.
“What us, as creatures without knowing how to fit in have, is freedom. The freedom to change our names, to change our bodies as we see fit.”
Andrius stares down at the ever-so small boy. Still far larger than when he’d first been adopted by the wolves, yet still small.
“We do not need to have others judge us for our choice in mate, we do not need to have others hate us for meager reasons. All that we have is the freedom to change ourselves as we please, without the restriction of opinion.”
Razor may not understand every word, nor all of the meanings, but he does understand the core meaning. That nobody should dislike him for wanting to be himself.
The wolf of the north sits in a comfortable silence, basking in the warmth radiating from the sky into his eternally cold body. Razor whisks himself away, with much to think about.
What makes him happy is not the decision between humanity and his Lupical, it is that he is who he is, and that Razor is Razor and nobody else can change that.
Scary-lightning-lady comes to their next “class” (what a strange word) with a new inkling of knowledge in her eyes, understanding still slightly dawning on her despite what might have happened hours earlier.
She tells him that she understands, however little, and will try her best to continue understanding, all up until the day that she inevitably needs to one day leave him with the wolves yet again.
Razor is happy, Razor brings her a squirrel as a thanks.
She recoils slightly the next time that they meet, easily seeing the matted fur of the small creature in his hands.
He offered it to her, and she takes it with a barely-concealed grimace. It was enough to satisfy him, though.