Alex was born at 9:22pm on the first of August, weighing in at approximately six and a half pounds. She was tiny little thing, and when I held her in my arms, I felt an overwhelming desire to make this girl the happiest she could ever be. Like her mother, Alex was a white furred fox; her hands and feet were tipped with black, she had a ring of puff surrounding her neck, and her tail was as soft as a cloud. She looked so much like her mom, it made people give me looks whenever I took her out in her stroller as a baby.

Ya see, I’m not a fox. I’m human. And where we live, interspecies relations are kinda...complicated. Sure, it’s not illegal like it used to be, but people are still adjusting, for lack of a better word. I first met Lily during my first week of college. Well, ‘met’ might be pushing it. Yea yea, make jokes, call it cliche, but as soon as I saw her, I felt something inside me. Something telling me that I needed to speak to this beautiful angel. It took me almost the entire year to work up the courage to actually talk to her. When I did, she gave me this look. In her eyes, I could see the distrust of humans, and who could blame her? Our ancestors weren’t exactly kind to beatkin. Some people still aren’t, I suppose.

Anyway, despite what reservations she seemed to have, Lily accepted my offer. I felt so excited, I completely forgot to plan an actual date for us. This resulted in us just spending the evening in the campus cafeteria, where we talked. For hours, we slowly worked our way passed the awkward silences and opened up to one another. From that time, I learned how passionate Lily was about history; she was a damn scholar on that stuff, able to tout off even the most minute details of ancient wars and battles, down to individual soldiers and the letters they sent home to loved ones. I, meanwhile, confessed to my dream of owning my own bakery, something I hadn’t really shared with a lot of people before.

And something happened then. Rather than laugh or make fun of me, Lily asked if she could try some of my baking. I was so used to being mocked for this dream, the sheer fact this fox showed genuine interest struck me silent. And so, we had a second ‘real’ date planned a few days later. My apartment was way too small for proper baking, but I made do with what I had, and prepared a platter of delectables. Mini sponge cakes, brownies, fudge squares, muffins, an apple pie, tarts, crepes, even a little homemade ice cream. Looking back on it, I must admit, it was quite a lot of work just for a second date. Yet, nothing made me happier than having Lily eat these sweets and tell me with a huge smile just how much she loved them.

I suppose this is the point one says “and the rest is history,” but it really wasn’t as nice and happy as I’d have hoped. Like I said, interspecies relations were--and are--looked down upon, so once word got out about the two of us, a lot of people on campus began to treat us differently. It started small, just some mean looks, a whispered insult here or there. But, it slowly worked its way up to direct confrontations and even a few acts of violence. It wasn’t just humans, either. Some of the beastkin students also got between us, saying things like I was “stealing their girl.”

It didn’t end with just college. I always assumed my family to be progressive minded when it came to beastkin, especially since my dad worked with some at his factory job. I brought Lily home Christmas of our second year. My parents freaked out. I’d never heard them speak so harshly of beastkin as that day. Some very unkind words were said, many of them directed right at Lily herself. It didn’t take long before I got between Lily and them, at which point my father actually hit me. After that, my parents threatened to cut me off, thus ending my college life. I told them to blow the money out their own asses. Not the wisest choice, because they lived up to that threat. Come next semester, I was on my own, forced to take out a student loan just to continue my education.

We didn’t have any better luck with Lily’s family. Much of the same things were said, only directed towards me and other humans this time. Her brothers ganged up on me, demanding to know what I was plotting bothering “one of their own.” Her mother accused me of brainwashing her daughter and raping her. At one point, Lily lost her nerve and broke out in tears, which is when her family threw me, literally picked me up and tossed me, out the door. I didn’t see Lily for a few weeks, and I got worried she might have had second thoughts about being with me. I wouldn’t blame her. After all, her entire family wanted nothing to do with me. But, like myself, she stuck to her gut and left home.

So, we were living together in my cramped little apartment, working shitty jobs to pay off our loan debt. By the time we graduated, we decided we had enough of that town and left, never looking back once. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we did what we could. We moved to a small town far away, and got the smallest, shittiest home we could afford. It was leaky, drafty, the walls were old and worn, the attic smelled like hot garbage, and the floors were threatening to break underfoot. We loved that shithole. It was ours. We worked countless days and nights fixing it up with what little money we had, and turned it from a piece of shit, to just a piece of junk. A minor improvement, but an improvement all the same.

Our neighbors, while not super welcoming, were at least neutral about our relationship. No one threatened us or got in our faces about anything. We even finally had the chance to make things official and get married. We didn’t tell either of our families. Not like they’d bother showing up, anyway. We didn’t do a church wedding, just a simple little affair for just us. It was nice.

Lily got a teaching gig at the local elementary school. History class. She was so proud to be doing something with her knowledge, and the pride was infectious. I began to save up everything I could from my jobs working in warehouses, every penny and nickel I could. I planned to save up enough to buy a small property to start my own business. It was going well for a time, too. I was about halfway there when Lily got sick. It wasn’t too bad, sure, but it ate at our savings. Little by little, more and more things began to pop up. Washing machine broke down. A tree fell on the roof of our home. A neighbor’s house caught on fire, and some it spread to ours. A nasty case of the flu put me in bed for a week. My dream of having my own business began to drift further and further away.

The effect it had on me was noticeable. I went into a bit of slump, made mistakes on the job, cursed at our neighbors just for playing music just a smidge too high. Lily got tired of my attitude real fast, so she sat me down to have a long talk. We worked out a budget for our savings, meaning I would have to cut back on the saving specific for the business property. It made me upset, but I couldn’t argue against her. We did need the extra money in case something went wrong. And things always seemed to go wrong.

Then, I changed jobs. I went to work at an oil refinery, and my paycheck bumped up something fierce. Nothing insane, of course, but it meant we’d have a little extra money for ourselves. So, we fixed up the house more, turned it from junk to just slightly kinda trash, and then into an actual decent house. We got ourselves a car, so no more public transit. Bought some new-ish furniture for the home, and even started going out more. Before, we would spend every night and weekend at home, doing nothing of interest. But now, we had the opportunity to go places. Restaurants, movies, plays, just heading to a city just to see the sights. We even took our first vacation.

That was when I had an accident at the refinery. I won’t go into specifics, but the basics meant I was out of work for three months. During that time, everything went wrong. Our car just stopped working. The electricity in our house decided it didn’t wanna work anymore. The water heater busted. We got termites. Some punk kids destroyed our fence. A storm blew in and sent some debris flying through three of our windows. A tornado came into town and sent Lily into a panic attack. It was a nightmare.

But, through it all, we had each other. This made things seem less terrible. Waking up every morning to see this angelic fox smile, it was all I needed to know things would turn out ok in the end. But then, Lily got pregnant. I was still stuck at home after the accident when she came to me giddy with the news. We’d talked about kids before, and during that high point before my accident, we really tried our best to have one. Seemed it finally happened, but it came at such a bad time. With all the things going wrong around us, I wasn’t sure how we’d have enough money to raise a kid.

It didn’t matter. Lily woke me up crying one day. Miscarriage. I’m ashamed to admit there was a part of me that was glad, because it meant we had more time to get things back in order before we could make another attempt at starting a family. To this day, I still feel awful for that line of thinking. Every day after the miscarriage, I woke up not to Lily’s smile, but to a sad, dejected look. She was so excited for that first pregnancy, that the awful news just ruined that happiness. It took nearly an entire year for Lily to even think about having a kid again. It put a real damper on our intimacy, and I don’t mean just sex. Just sitting together on the couch was so different. Lily used to lay her head on my shoulder and hold onto me as she fell asleep. But, during that year of depression, she barely looked at me. Even hugging her made her whole body tense up, and I felt so useless. I didn’t know how to help her through this, and nothing I did seemed to cheer her up.

After a year, she slowly warmed up again. Her tail was back to swishing about when she smiled, and her ears would turn up at the sound of my voice. Things weren’t the same as before, there was still a hint of sadness in her eyes, but it eventually died away, replaced with Lily’s old happy self. It took a long time for her to finally be Lily once again, but she put up with me during my funk, so I better understood how she felt then. Having your spouse acting so different from their usual behavior feels wrong. It’s like they’ve become a completely different person.

About five or so months after Lily fully bounced back, she approached me at making another attempt to try for a child. I still felt shitty for my previous feelings on the miscarriage, and it had been in the back of my mind ever since. So, I opened up about it. Lily was naturally upset, but quickly calmed down when she thought about all the problems we were facing at the time. She realized that if we had a kid then, we might have ended up facing a serious financial crisis. And putting a child through something like that was not what either of wanted.

So, we tried again for a kid. But when it finally happened, we were both so elated at the news. Nine months later, our adorable little Alex was born. Oh, the sleepless nights. The endless diapers. The loudest cries I’ve ever heard. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Lily and I made it a point to raise Alex better than we were raised. No bullshiting around on human-beastkin things. We made sure she knew she was loved by her parents. Maybe we spoiled her a bit too much, but all in all, she turned out alright, I’d say.

Lily and I shared our passions with Alex. I’d always have her help me out with baking, giving her her own small portions of ingredients to work with. Lily would read from old books and spout off stories of times past. I don’t know if Alex really fell in love with our things, but she was happy enough to take part, so I guess that’s the best one can expect. She had her own passions, after all. Really loved working on the dinky computer we had. Eventually, she’d work her way up to building a brand new one out of spare parts right before she left for college.

It wasn’t until Alex entered high school did she first start facing discrimination because of me and Lily. It was much of the same shit the two of us got back in college, only maybe more cruel because Alex didn’t have anyone to back her up at school. This was before phones had cameras in them, so it wasn’t like Alex could just record the people making her miserable. The first time she came home in tears, I marched down to the school and demanded the principal reprimand everyone responsible. He was an old guy, kinda looked like my dad. Fatter, though. He hemmed and hawwed, said he didn’t know who did it, that none of the students would own up to it, and that he couldn’t go off on just Alex’s word alone. It took everything I had to not punch the bastard right then and there.

It was actually during her high school days when Alex started asking about the rest of the family. That brought up some painful memories, but Lily and I sat our daughter down to explain the situation. She listened intently, absorbing our words. But still, she asked if she could meet the rest of the family. Lily and I hadn’t talked to either of our families since we left our old town. Not even a single letter. It took us a couple days to decide if we could forgive them for how they acted all those years ago. Lily said we would give them one chance. A single day to show they had changed. So, we called up our parents, and shared the belated news of them having granddaughter.

We went to Lily’s family first. Age had hit all them harder than I’d anticipated. Her mother’s silken fur had thinned out, and the pure white color had dimmed slightly. The black tips of her ears had dulled to a grayish tone. Her brothers seemed to all have gotten well much more body mass. This is my nice way of saying they all got fat. When Lily’s mom saw Alex, she broke out in a wide, motherly smile. A far cry from the screaming banshee she was last time I saw her. Perhaps she’d finally calmed down over the years. After inviting us all inside for lunch, she actually showed how much she’d bettered herself. She was the perfect host, and a wonderful grandmother to Alex, all smiles and asking so many questions.

After lunch, she pulled me aside and actually apologized for how she acted way back when. Knowing how much we’d gone through over the years, and now knowing about Alex, showed her that I wasn’t just some monster, and that Lily and I truly cared for one another. I couldn't forgive her. Not yet, anyway. How she acted was awful. But, I told her that I wasn’t the only one she needed to talk to, that she’d definitely hurt someone far worse than she did me. The old fox nodded and thanked me for hearing her out, then she went over to Lily and pulled her aside. I saw the two exchanging hushed words, and Lily’s mom let some tears flow out when her daughter hugged her.

So, I’d say things went smoothly.

But, then...my family.

When I called them up, my parents sounded so happy to hear from me. I assumed everything was finally smoothed over. The entire trip there, I was actually glad to reconnect with them. But, as soon as we parked in the driveway, my dad was storming out the house, yelling about, and I quote, “those goddamn animals.” I stayed calm, though, and I introduced Alex to him. He sneered at her and asked why I hadn’t “gotten over this fetish and got with an actual woman.”

We left then, leaving him shouting nonsense in the driveway. While I did want to reconnect, I wasn’t going to put up with the same shit again.

Currently, Alex is now in her final year of college. Lily’s now a professor at the same college we graduated from. Meanwhile, I finally opened up that bakery. I work alone, but I work hard. I’ve even had requests to do wedding cakes. Never tried before, but I figure I might as well give it a shot, right?