My father always liked to use vague visual metaphors to express himself.
His favorite was the rolling ball.
He would place a rubber ball on the desk next to his favorite chair.
On the even surface of the desk, the ball stayed where it was placed.
But the slightest tilt to the desk resulted in the ball rolling down the slope until it fell.
Being made of rubber, the ball usually bounced right back up for him to catch.
Other times, it bounced away as we watched, until it went out of sight.
But it usually came back up.
"This is most mammals," he would tell me.
Then he would take out the perfectly spherical stone he always held onto.
"This is a fox."
When placed onto the slope, the stone rolled loudly off of the wood desk and clattered on the floor.
The stone never bounced.
"All it takes is one tilt, and a fox will never make its way back up. One tiny nudge down and we're down forever."
I usually watched out of respect for him, but never took the words to heart.
It always made me curious as to why he spoke as if he was already the stone on the floor.
He had it pretty nice, I always thought.
A house in Tundratown, a wife and two pups, even a job working for a very important arctic shrew.
Maybe I was just biased because I got to hang out at Fru Fru's house when he was working.
But my father was right.
Foxes don't get a second chance.
My stone rolled the day I thought my best friend had been killed.
The day I saw red for the first time.
The day that set my life hurtling towards the edge of that desk.
That day, when I sank my teeth into the warm fur and muscle of the arctic wolf pup who had thrown that book...
I could hear the loud clattering of my stone hitting the floor.