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The Fox Imperator

Clemens, my beloved teacher, I have thought long and hard about your final assignment. You have always been so direct in your instructions, not one inclined for levity. I confess though, the rare moments I am able to drive you to smile and laugh, those were among my most cherished moments in your classes.

However I could not anticipate the sheer lackadaisical confidence you expressed today when, instead of a review of what you have taught, as you usually did when I was to take a leave; you simply handed me ink and paper and told me to write.

"Write what?" I asked.

You did not reply and left the room. There was no deadline, I had no idea when you would return.

I confess, I called in Silk for help with this. I know you have said I rely on him too much but you have also taught me that asking for council where one is lacking is the key to a successful reign.

So if you find me embracing my slave and dearest companion of all when you return, rest assured, it was all to help with the assignment.

Jests aside, Silk gave me the idea of what to write. He told me to write about the most important events in my life, the ones that influenced me the most.

It was my idea to write in the empty pages of this old diary.

Silk, oh Silk, my dearest love. The day my father came home from the market with you in his arms was the beginning of my life. Father saw an arctic fox for sale, recently orphaned from his parents who had fled from across the sea with him, and...

I will not mince words. He wanted his favorite kit to have a prize best friend. Someone who attracted attention but was also under his control. But we figured that out, didn't we? Not even a week after you came into my life.

I could not have survived my youth without you. Father never raised a fist to us, but his harsh guardianship took a toll on us. The early mornings, the military drills, the exercise, the endless studying...

Failure was not tolerated. Father would yell at us if I even came in second place in a race. I was not allowed to be anything but the first...

My litter-mates did not have to endure this so much and I was rarely together with them. When I was sad, you were there in my room every night to hug me.

And then as we grew older...much more...

This was all part of father's plan as well. When we came of age, you must have noticed him whispering in my ear, encouraging me to show off my prowess in the bedroom on you.

The only regret I have with us is that in some way I feel that we're living up to exactly what father bought you for.

But I push these thoughts out of my head. They are invasive. They seek to destroy me and we won't let them.

I love you. I don't care what circumstances led us to be together, only that we are.

We are different from father and that poor wolf.

Clemens, you never had much time for love and have expressed your opinion on the matter often to me. I apologize for beginning with a declaration of love, but I am trying to be totally honest.

I suffer from paralytic anxiety. You have seen it a few times, you scolded me for freezing up in class and one time slapped my desk. This is an infliction I have, you did not know I had it. Silk is one of the few things that can help prevent them.

This infliction struck me at a far worse time. One of my most important memories.

Father sent us, me and Silk, to accompany a patrol in Carpathia, on the border of lawless Transylvania. We were still kits, a year or two from adolescence, and father thought that the patrol would be safe enough to stop us from getting kidnapped but dangerous enough to put some steel in our spines.

He was wrong.

Bad weather, injured horses, and misleading reports from scouts made the patrol a disorganized mess. And then the howls came.

Wolven bandits crashed into our camp but before I could even smell them, I was wrapped up in a net and pulled away on horseback.

I couldn't move. I was so afraid. Father had told me so many tales of what wolves did to captives, especially kits, and all of those were racing in my head all at once.

But I didn't have to fear.

Silk rode after me. He didn't stop until he caught up with us and tackled the wolf off of his horse.

I don't know if you remember, Clemens, but he was even smaller back then. Had the wolf's neck not snapped on the ground, there is no doubt we would both have been held for ransom or worse.

I hit the ground and crawled out of my net before I could secure the wolf's horse and it fled. Silk had ridden his own horse to exhaustion and it would pass away after agonizing hours of us waiting in the torrential raid, the hoof-prints leading back to camp having washed away.

Night eventually fell and the rain began to let up a bit. We realized that the patrol must have lost track of us and we began to move aimlessly through the hills, trying to find our way back.

A middle-aged wolf in worn linen clothes found us and took us back to his farmhouse. He grew rye for a miller who made flour for human slaves to eat. The house was small, but there was a stone fireplace we were able to take off our wet clothes and dry off in front of. The wolf and his mate had two cubs, one male and one female, I cannot remember their names, but one we were dried off we played tag around the torch-lit front of the farmhouse, laughing and crying until late in the night...

And the wolves sat by the front door and laughed.

No arguing with each other like mother and father, no strict discipline...

We were just allowed to play.

We stayed there several days but eventually Silk's exotic looks spread through the local area's rumor mill. It was inevitable. I wanted to stay there forever and the wolf parents offered to let us stay during one family dinner.

But it was not to be.

A scary fox showed up one day. I froze up just catching a glimpse of him in the window. He was almost completely bald, looking much like a criminal from an adventure novel. Even Silk was afraid to see him and he helped hid me in a cupboard while I could not move.

"My name is Livio, an old friend of the Imperator," the hideous fox spoke. "I heard you found two kits?"

Livio was kind once we were forced to greet him. He looked scary and he did some bad things in this journal, but that wasn't him anymore. He ran an orphanage not far from where we were and wanted to return us to father, but father was a long ways away.

We cried. We didn't want to leave. We did not say we hated father, just that we loved the wolves we were with. Livio showed mercy, some at least. He let us stay there and stopped by on a daily basis to check up on us.

I regret not going to see his orphanage.

Those last few days were sad, but I got my first kiss from the daughter of the family. Clemens, you should have seen Silk, he was fuming!

Father finally showed up with his poor wolf in tow and took us away, paying off the family with a bag of silver coins. When we rode away on his horse, father spoke to me:

"They were just acting nice," he snorted. "No doubt they were going to sell you to the Alpha and your friend to a brothel."

"What's a brothel?" I asked.

Silk already knew and sighed.

We had to listen to father teach us about intercourse all the way home, even using his wolf to teach us about anatomy, slapping his privates with his finger the whole while.

The difference in family life between the wolves we stayed with and father was striking. We were all opportunities for him. I was his last chance at a legacy, Silk was an accessory bought for me, and his wolf was a target for his abuse.

This was the first time I knew that father was wrong.

The family there was kind. They showed no signs of wanting to sell us out.

They were simply good people.

That was sadder than I remember, Clemens. It was happy, a very happy memory, but having it taken away was such sorrow.

I never got to meet that family again. I think I would have been happier if we had remained with them.

I will not apologize for saying so.

Still, I am bound by duty and happiness is not a factor in that.

Father taught me well about that. Even when he was removed from duty and free to indulge in opium and drink, he continued to preach about it.

Perhaps the messenger was wrong but the message was correct.

Perhaps the world would have been better off without father's actions, most definitely it would have been.

However, I am not in the position to turn back the clock.

It has been less than a week since I was pulled into the solarium, having been told to head there at once with the utmost urgency.

A grinning crocodile laid on its back atop a sofa. His skin was tight, clinging to his emaciated bones. A pipe laid on the ground before him and before I could be pushed past the clamor of officials whispering around the body, a loud clink shot through the room.

A gold orb rolled along the ground towards me. The crocodile had an empty eye-socket.

Father did not look like himself. I truly did not recognize him until now.

He had retired to the solarium to engage in another bender. We did not think anything of it, save for the freedom from his intrusion into our lives and education for a short period.

Father had been looking poorer every year but he still looked properly vulpine. The opium had ruined him, turning him into the monster that he was on the inside.

And then his heart stopped.

There was no time for me to grieve...

Father said that often in his diary. I fear that I will become him every time I match any of his mannerisms, however benign, but in this case it was true.

There was no time for me to grieve.

Vito and mother made sure of that. You know, of course, Clemens, that my education has come to an abrupt conclusion with his death. I am more than a mere adult, I am to appear as the sole Imperator of the state and must sever myself of any ties to my childhood.

Clemens, I wish you could advise me forever. Silk is courageous and smart, I trust him implicitly, but he is only one fox, one fox that I can trust in this den.

Lucia, mother's favorite kit, what ambitions does she have? She has been on the council since before we reached adulthood.

Tivoli has been pressing to be put on the council in the wake of my succession. What about him?

Francisca...she seems to be a layabout but she is married to Vito and could hold enormous sway.

I thank Canis that Olivo was forced into the army after he confessed his incestous desires. I even thank Canis, though shamefully, that Sofia, named for her aunt, was sent over to the Shah to serve as concubine. Two littermates I don't have to guess about their ambitions.

But father, damn you, you kept me separated from them. Perhaps I could have known more about them, brokered some kind of good relationships, if you had not made me endure your grueling tutelage.

I do not feel like a great ruler. I am a King who has inherited an Empire of dust, an Empire that should never have been.

Oh yes, the Senate voted me in as Imperator. Why wouldn't they? When Vito controls the military and mother controls the Senate, would shouldn't they?

What is this but a monarchy with an extra step?

Clemens, I have been set up for failure. Set up to become the spitting image of my father, to inherit his hangups, his demons, his desires.

Perhaps he wanted me to be an instrument of revenge against mother and Vito. Consolidate power in defiance of their will or perhaps even be the one to kill them.

His journal expressed that he loves me more than any of my littermates. I am not sure he knows what love is, I think he just loved what I could potentially do.

Just as he loved Galip, that poor wolf.

Mother wanted Galip thrown out the moment father had died. He had grown unstable over the years and father's death had broken him, sending him teetering between fits of nigh comatose inactivity and manic depression.

I defied her and used my personal inheritance to buy him a small villa in the Tuscan countryside with a slave to take care of him. I promised the latter total freedom and the villa once Galip died of natural causes.

I hope Galip can get some measure of peace or at least no more additional suffering.

Father did not love him. He just loved what he represented and what he could do to him. I figured that out before I even knew what sex was.

I suspect father did not love Taj either. He just loved that she would enable all of his worst behavior. Mother told me that Taj did not love father either, but mother has her own biases.

Here I am, Clemens. I am less than an hour away from being publicly proclaimed Imperator. I am running out of things to write.

Father has set me up for failure, but I don't have to follow in his footsteps.

It would be better if we could turn back the clock and pretend his actions never happened, but we cannot. We are now an Empire and the least I can do is rule benevolently.

I will not be overcome with hate.

I will not be a tool of my father's wrath.

I am afraid but I must step forward.

I must turn father's disaster into something that can be better.

I will make a prosperous land that all reap the rewards for.

Clemens, I say this, but I am afraid I cannot do it. Silk is here, but I am still afraid.

I am afraid but I will not hate.

I, Cosimo, son of Marco, must do whatever I can do to make things better.

Canis help me.