Part 2 of my Silas design ramble post! This one gets more into the relationship Silas has with how he looks & his relationship with another important character...
That's right bitches it's CHILD SILAS!!!!!!! Oughghhu he is so little and soft I just want to pet his big ol ears and THROW HIM AROUND. These are drawn in order of toddler -> kid -> preteen -> mid-teens. I have SOOOO many different possible ideas floating around for Silas's upbringing so I'm going to TRY to be a little vague for the sake of not writing a massive amount. But I DO know that the name of Silas' caretaker is Faustus Rose, or Faust for short. So VAGUELY what I'm thinking is that Faust wants a kid so very desperately and Silas is like an answer to his prayers. But he ends up feeling very guilty about Silas for the rest of his life, thinking the fact he wanted this kid so bad makes him to blame for how hard his life ends up being. Yeah as you will soon see, Faust has all the constitution of a wet noodle and he's kinda just pathetic about everything.
The name "Silas" means "of the forest", and I think it's a name Faust would have chosen very intentionally. Like a prayer of some kind to have him turn out like any normal commonfolk kid. And although Faust is smitten with Silas and doesn't care that he's more or less raising an imp, A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE CARE. THEY CARE A LOT. The rest of his community has a very "what the actual hell is that burn it with fire now" attitude towards Silas. Well, once they find out about him, anyways. Faust is very secretive about him, but it becomes increasingly more difficult to hide an entire person as that person gets bigger and more curious about the world.
I dressed little baby in Silas in white because 1. my fauns historically lived in very deep dark woods with very little sunlight and dressing in dark colors meant camouflage from bad scary things. and 2. fauns love upholding traditions. So combining those two lore bits means fauns still wear all blacks and dark colors to this day and are basically not so subtly an entire civilization of goths. White and brighter colors in general are more associated with being easier to spot by dangerous things, so if I went with my idea of Silas being abandoned by his bio mother, it'd make sense that she'd have wrapped him in white to attract something to eat him.
In childhood, Silas' tail grows longer, but the appearance of his buttons makes Faust hopeful that Silas will at least grow antlers and that maybe he'll grow up to resemble fauns well enough to fit in with his peers mostly okay. It's a small bit of relief for him. Silas also comes into his very cheery, sweet, and curious nature, and so they have a couple of fun and hopeful years together. Silas does start to hear a few fucked up things firsthand, though it causes confusion more than anything as he's not quite self-aware enough to understand that he looks different from the people around him. And OOUUGHH I think when Silas first notices his buttons he gets SOOO excited and is always yapping about how excited he is to grow antlers just like Faust.
Eventually though Silas stars interacting with non-Faustus fauns out in the real world (He probably sneaks out to be real) and oh it does not go so well. By kids his own age, he's relentlessly and violently bullied, with a particular incident where his tail nearly gets cut off. And by adults he's treated like an actual freak and always assumed the worst of (picturing him trying to give someone a thing they dropped and they immediately assume he's a thief). It starts fucking him up real fast. Faust really pushes to have Silas stay indoors as much as possible and homeschools him as a part of this, but once the cat is let out of the bag so to speak they can't really fully go back to how things were.
Silas becomes uber-shy to the point of selective mutism for a few years and is pretty much guaranteed to be constantly scared and miserable unless he's with Faust which I'm sure does not establish any sort of alarming pattern of behavior at all. Faust's solution to Silas' problems is never to move away (he can't do that! he can't give up his position! *shoots him*) and it isn't to build up his self confidence. Instead he tries to help Silas find "solutions" to hide everything he doesn't like about himself and what he gets bullied for. That's most clearly seen in the fourth drawing, with the gloves and fake antler accessories (and his developing eye marks are covered by makeup). Oouughhh Like. Silas starting to freak out that some of his teeth are growing into fangs and becoming utterly hysterical over it, and Faust's response is "Oh no my sweet darling innocent baby angel this is so horrible and awful Oh this is so unfair. Don't worry my love I will teach you how to smile and talk without showing your teeth. Maybe we can even shave them down!" and OUUGHHHH THE ANGST OF "Is this happening to me because I'm a bad kid" and Faust getting speared through the heart LOL.
Silas also starts to prefer darker clothes and cloaks, partially because of the safety he feels in hiding and partially because it's more in line with typical faun fashion.
Once Silas starts noticing how different he looks from the people around him and how other people regard him, every single new development just completely shatters him and he considers the way he looks to be moral failing on his part. He's terrified of his own body -- Especially considering he has no reference point for what he's going to end up looking like. Eventually he just avoids looking at himself entirely. And Faust although very loving is also so soft and useless that he spends all those years kinda just reinforcing all of Silas's insecurities and feeling guilty without actually doing anything to help him.
Finlay coming into his life, not giving a second thought as to how he looks and describing to him a gigantic world out there full of people who look ten times weirder than he does, is the little thing that in the long run ends up turning his life around lol. Finlay is the first person he talks to outside of his own bubble and he quickly becomes obsessed with the notion of going on adventures around the world with people who are kind to him and maybe even finding other people who look like him. The reality of it ends up not being so black and white, but his belief that it IS is the only thing that keeps him going and gives him hope for the future. Even though it causes a lot more trouble down the line....
WELL. HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY SILAS RAMBLE. Writing this made me realize I have like ten thousand ideas for what his childhood could look like and I think I need to spend some time pouring over a google doc and dumping every last thought I have about him.