A body is just MEAT and CHEMICALS

Kaukab was crying. There, he admitted it. The fact didn’t make him proud, even though Kab never had any reason to feel ashamed for the tears leaking down his pale cheeks. Kahlan had never admonished him for showing his emotions; if anything, his wonderful mother was exceedingly tolerant of her bright, outgoing boy. He tried to recall a time when she’d told him to suck it up, or “act like a brute,” but . . . nothing. And still the flesh under his fur prickled with uncomfortable warmth to be crying so openly in front of his mama, because he’d obviously done something wrong—except he couldn’t think of what that “something” was. This confusion hurt him the worst. At least if Kahlan explained to Kaukab what he’d done, he could properly apologize . . .

And then his dear mother swore again. And again. And her brown hackles bristled like pine needles, and true annoyance narrowed her familiar yellow eyes into unfamiliar yellow slits of annoyance. She might as well have slashed him over the head with a blunt paw; Kab flinched away from her as if struck, shuffling backward with a quiet whimper. “I-it’s me,” he rasped from vocal cords that now felt raw and tight. “My whole EVERYTHING changed. I th-think . . . I think I’m sort of p-pretty . . . ?” The wolfess he looked up to most in the world—the wolfess who basically was his world—only kept telling him to leave. To “go home.” Because Wudubearo wasn’t his home anymore, and Kaukab still didn’t understand why, and he really wished that Kah would please stop growling at him and swearing at him now so he could cuddle against her while she cleaned his new small triangular ears and told him that everything was going to be okay—that she still loved him, and he was still her little boy, even though he was now a slightly bigger girl.

The earth-toned fae had kept her words at a brusque, clipped rumble, but the instant Kaukab spoke Kenryk’s name, that unconcealed irritation ceased. In its place, rage boiled hot and powerful in his mother’s glare, and the boy’s stomach twisted itself into a fist-shaped knot. It wasn’t simply that Kahlan hadn’t expected her son to return as an older lassie—she didn’t think this fae standing before her was Kab at all. She had not picked up on Kaukab’s words of transformation and excitement because this wasn’t supposed to happen, something had gone horribly, terrifyingly wrong. Kab hadn't just bloomed into a female through nature’s intent. This was a mistake. HE was a mistake! And it mattered not that he was folding in on himself like a crumpled ball of origami, that his world seemed to tilt and spin around him, for even though Kaukab was now trying his very hardest to turn back into the lad he’d been born as, nothing happened. Still the same small delicate paws. Still the same snowy fur. Not his body.

He hardly heard the warning snarls cutting from between Kahlan’s bared teeth—Kab opened his jaws and howled, a visceral expression of grief and fear so profound no language could express it. And when his lungs ran out of air and he was rasping out breathless screams he inhaled mightily and howled again, bawling, inconsolable, crying the pure and unfettered tears of a heartbroken child. And this time—when his own mother ordered him to leave, he did. He turned on his heels and sprinted into the wilderness beyond Wudubearo, abandoning his only home the way his mother had apparently abandoned him, and he could not see clearly for the tears flooding his gaze nor could he breath past the shuddering sobs wracking his frame—

And suddenly—

“AAAHHH!!!” A blackout. A brief, wrenching second of nothingness. And then Kaukab found himself buried under soil, screaming his head off, still crying pitifully. He spun in a circle, desperate for escape—and recognized several things all at once. First, this was not the forest he’d just been running in: this was a den. HIS den, where he and Kenryk slept. And second . . .

“M-my paws?!” He looked down with incredulous joy. Those were HIS paws, his original ones—too big and covered in white speckles! And the rest of him? Just as he’d left it! Russet-toned fur dusted with ivory freckles, lanky limbs that he hadn’t grown into yet, and it was perfect! Hastily wiping the last few drops of water from his streaming lanterns, Kab raced from the den’s opening, practically tripping over his clumsy feet. “MAMA! MAMA I’M HERE! IT’S ME! I’M BACK!”

Do we have free WILL, or free WON'T?

Kershov x Kahlan | Child of Wudubaro | No love | xathira