It took me a little while, a few years of adulthood, to learn exactly why the "Tribe" was the way it was. I assumed that, as a naive teenager and young adult, that the laws of not leaving and encouraged hatred were the doings of some evil dictator. An antagonist to be hunted down, reguarded as a supervillain of the past for his injustice and power-mad actions. Even as I grew intelligent enough to learn that my supervillain was an elected council, I assumed that there must be some kind of driving evil behind it, some corruption. It took me a while, but eventually I realized that the cruelty and corruption could not be pinned on a scapegoat fictional enemy. The foxes didn't want my justice. They didn't want to leave. I was the villain in this mindset, and the conflicting worlds turned me into a passive observer. There was no power-mad dictator, only old and distorted morals guarded and preserved by the fences that enclosed us from the outside world. Outsiders were arrested on trespassing and residents punished for trying to leave. Not because someone stay powerful but for the good of the people. They deserved punishment.

I didn't know very much about Karia then. I knew she lived in the tribe. I knew she was fairly young, and obviously there was nothing spectacularly noticeable about her because I knew absolutely nothing else reguarding her whatsoever. She was, however, someone I could allow myself to view as a person. At a fellow snow-white arctic fox, my 'jailkeep' facade dropped. And so did my jaw, as it happened.

She looked back at me, too stunned to move. Fearfully. Guiltily, almost. Prower looked at me through the bars but didn't let go of her hand. He squeezed it reassuringly, and looked at me with a grin that almost covered up the desperation in his face.

"Miles!" he said in greeting. "Glad you could make it. Three's a crowd."

The fact he trusted me, more than anything else, kept me from running and informing the words came to me for a reply, so I spluttered. Karia still looked terrified, and she looked away in shame. Shame. My own naive feeling of justice- oh, how stupid I was back then, young and innocent!- drove me, at last, to break the law.

"This is why you were arrested."

"I'd been coming here for months too," Prower answered, with comical scorn to the officials. "Shocking that nobody noticed."

"Months?" I was back to spluttering, and looked to Karia for a solution to my puzzlement.

"Please," her voice trembled, barely a whisper. "Please...you can't...you c-can't..."

"I won't." I said simply. "I didn't see anything. Next time, I might." I didn't know if it was a threat or a gift. I suppose it was both.

At any rate, it was a lie; I did see next few months were quiet, and not in a pleasant way. The calm before the storm. Every night, she would come, and sometimes I would see them. Through the bars of the cage, they talked and they touched each other's hands, desperate to be able to hold each other for real but separated. I felt sorry for them. The bars were too closely together for them to kiss. I never said anything. I never looked for too long. A passerby would think that I hadn't noticed them and sometimes, I sorely wish I hadn't. I would hear them talk. Not serious, desperate conversations of romance and death and justice, but playful exchanges.

"Darlin', it's unfortunate that we're separated by the door..."

"I know." she'd whisper.

"Because let me tell you, I am mad at dancing. I bet you are too."

"D-dancing? I couldn't dance."

"Always shy, aren'cha, honey? I bet you're fantastic. Anyone could be fantastic with me as their partner."

She would laugh. It sounded at first like he treated her as below him, but slowly I realized he didn't. That was how he just was, and beneath it, he loved her. He loved her in a way that he could not make her into some kind of adoration statue nor take her for granted. She made him happy. So happy that, underground with a sociopath jailkeeper as the closest thing to a friend and with a trial awaiting him, he stayed strong. He was that strong, I realized. Enough to hold off breaking point for a long, long time. It occurred to me that, without her, he probably wouldn't. He could. But he wouldn't try. His freedom and his friends meant a lot to him, but not enough to keep him away from Karia.

The prison wasn't a building but a basement. It was partly underground. The barred windows, which were high up from down there, were the point where the ground ended and air begun. Light, but no means of contacting anyone above ground.I had known this place for as long as I could remember. My father died in those months, but he had never really been around. I had never known him very well. The jail had raised me. His death saddened me briefly, but my older brother took his place and nothing changed at all.

I knew trouble was brewing. The couple was a time bomb. Their love could only end in heartbreak, and they knew it. But it was so much. So beautiful. I think that, if they had not stayed together, they would have died that would have been for the best. Not for them. But for Miles. For me. Perhaps my life could have continued without the heavy clouds of guilt. Perhaps their love could have been, to me, a martyr for justice. Perhaps their memories would have given me anger and strength, and not the piercing stab of self-hatred it does.

I started to break in two that night when, as I approached them, they were too engrossed in their own interactions to pay attention to me. Prower's bare, red-furred hand was pressed out of the bars and against her stomach, and for once he was devoid of bravado. He looked sad. So, so sad.

I suddenly begun to take in things. The enhanced curves of Karia's stomach and chest. The months of them secretly being in love. Forgetting who and where I was, I ran to them. Too shocked, too grieved, for speech. They understood, and the three of us simply stood there seemed that this little love story was not of Karia and Prower, but of a third person. And that person was not me.

"No." I said simply. They looked at me, pained.

"No." I was whispering now, in an attempt not to scream. Prower pulled his hand back in. Karia left.

I sat next to Prower's cell and we didn't say anything for a while."Do you think I would be a good father, Miles? If things were different?"

I was silent.

"This aren't different." I said at last, and started to leave.

"Perhaps they will be."

I looked back. His dark eyes reflected light in the shading, and they glowed an angry red because of it. "Perhaps they still can be, Miles."

I did not try to keep my dignity. The sheer unwillingness of this existing overcame me, and I ran.