Matrix

M-a-t-r-i-x. Matrix, the catalyst for change. That was what he named himself, the pup who had ran into Flamewalker territory after his own pack had attempted to kill him in order to 'lessen his pain when he grows up'. Or so that's what they explained to him, years later, when he once again made contact with them by accident and discovered they had met more disabled wolves like him after his presumed death at the freezing temperatures of the mountains.

He knew better. 'A pup cursed by the eclipse', they say, not with their words, but with their glances and body language. 'Look at his unnatural three eyes, look at the way he can't even hear, he's a useless runt without hearing, this was a pup made by the Faelcu themselves. Let's leave him to die and forget he existed in the first place.'

He knew better. He taught himself how to read body language and even how a wolf's snout worked, and found a lone wolf who taught him the most common sign language used by deaf or mute wolves. He ran for cover like the loner, living his life between the edges of territories and the cracks between other wolves' memories, and one day, deciding he had enough of existing as nothing but a shadow, he picked the pack least likely to chase him out by force, and negotiated for a small, permanent place of his own. He requested to start his own group within their territory, not quite a pack as they still follow Flamewalker pack orders, but more independent and self-sufficient. This group will be similar to a group of loners, he said, a group for the strange and the unwelcome and the disgraced like me. A safe place for disabled and 'unnatural' wolves, should they wish to stay.

He knew better than to bow down to his so-called fate.