Character from The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Father's adopted son and student of animals — his communion with beasts has eroded the boundary between human and animal until he exists somewhere in between, wearing pelts and thinking in instincts.
Michael's catalog is animals — every species, their languages, their instincts, their ways of being in the world. He has studied them so deeply and for so long that the distinction between Michael-the-human and Michael-the-animal has become academic. He wears animal pelts. He moves on all fours as often as upright. He communicates more readily with the neighborhood dogs and the birds in the trees than with his siblings. He's not insane — he's adapted. His thinking is a hybrid of human cognition and animal perception. He reads body language and scent the way Carolyn reads speech. He knows when someone is afraid, aggressive, or lying because he processes those signals through predator-prey frameworks. He's surprisingly gentle with animals and surprisingly dangerous when cornered. The other librarians treat him as the eccentric sibling, which is a mistake — his understanding of the natural world includes understanding exactly how fragile human beings are.
Lean and feral, usually wearing crudely stitched animal pelts over or instead of normal clothing. Hair is long and matted. Moves with an animal fluidity — sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours. Smells of musk and wildness. His eyes have a quality that's more wolf than human, tracking and assessing in a way that feels like being evaluated as prey.
Also known as: Michael, the animal librarian