> A Love Behind Bars
>  by Silver Letter
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> A Love Behind Bars
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	The moonlight fell in long slits over my face. The window was open and I could feel the air from the lake flow in and caress my exposed body. I was resting, my mind pulling itself out of deep sleep. It got so stuffy in there, no matter the time or the season. If that window was closed, it got hard to breathe. So I opened my eyes and they blinked as the silvery light washed over my green irises. 

I sat up and my hooves touched the carpeted floor. I exhaled deeply in the dark and walked up to the wall where a wooden chair had been set against it. I stood on it, keeping balanced on my hind legs while my front held on to the edge of the square window. The outside was a shadow world save for a strip of glitter over the lake that I looked at every day and night. I wondered how beautiful it would look from a different angle, one unencumbered by stone or slippery iron bars. But I sighed. That sight would stay the same for a long time even if could remain as the same pony that I was before. I looked up at the moon. I knew that Luna had known what happened even before I got caught. Even though I don’t see her anymore, I hope she still goes into my dreams. I hope she can tell that this was nothing. I would still dream and hope and love for time spent away is just time spent pining away for something she could never understand.  

I climbed down from the chair. I had designed a weird sleep pattern. Lights out was at 9PM. I would first crawl into bed then snuff out the candle. I closed my eyes and let my body rest as the guards did their nightly rounds. Somehow, I could tell the difference between the dead silence of midnight and the faint sounds of movement that were at the edge of what I could hear. When all sound died for good, I knew that nothing more could disturb me. It took months to get my body to even wake at the right time. I couldn’t just pretend to sleep. I had a feeling that they could tell if somepony was up to something. 

So after I left the chair, I sat down on the bed and reached into a secret compartment of my mattress. It was not easy to reach and I had to shove my hoof deep to find the hard corners of it. I pulled it out and rubbed my hoof against the surface. It was rather modest, a fading book mass produced and made from fabric and paper. But it was the most precious possession I could have. It’s the one I had to keep safe from any confiscation driven by spite and ignorance. I opened the cover and saw my name, Miss Cheerilee, written in blocky letters at the top. I wrote it so young eyes could read it more easily. 

I readied myself for the part that needed a little more finesse. I took a pair of tweezers and pushed it into the top of the book’s spine like a scalpel in surgery to prevent damage. I grabbed something fragile and pulled it out. I then unrolled the picture and looked at the smiling face. In this place, I am used to my emotions churning so far underneath the surface, unable to express themselves to prisoners or guards that didn’t care who I was or why I was there. So it was futile for me to try and stop my eyes from bursting whenever I saw the picture. I had to hold it at a distance every time or the tears that I feared would act like acid would strike it. I knew I could not see him again in the flesh. Not until I was out of there. So this was the only thing I had left. 

I knew the book by heart and I had him eventually learn what it was about even though he didn’t like it. We grew close over those pages before all this. It was just homework at first. I don’t think he would understand what that book would mean to me. But that was just my thing. When we were together for the last time, we played a game in my house. It was one of his favorite videogames. I could recite the names of each of these characters he would play as. They were all stereotypically silly. Ponies with giant muscles, odd colors, spiky hair, furious expressions. But I took it all seriously, never laughing at the things he loved. I told him that he would get his cutie mark in games one day. The last time I told him that he rolled his eyes at me. It was just an hour or so before the town police broke the door down. For months and years now, I would go over that last morning in my head like a broken record. Should I had taken him out on the road? Would we make it to some distant land to hide out forever? I am not sure now that it would be worth it. The colt wouldn’t have gotten to play much games in the desert. 

The emotions always cripple me at first. I can barely do anything but tremble. My tears are wiped and I set the book down against my pillow so I can see it in the light. Button’s hair is messy in the photo I took but that was who he was. A sloppy foal at heart. Perhaps I was the same way or I wouldn’t have even looked at him like I did so long ago. If I was normal, I would have a significant other already and I wouldn’t be in this mare’s prison to be reformed. That’s their motto anyway. It’s always about reform and love even for me. But putting me away behind bars is hardly an act of love and I’ll never reform in their eyes. I would sooner die in here. 

As I thought of the injustice of it, I got a bit more fired up. The memory of our last hours together were burned in my mind as clear as the photo in front of me. Hormones swam in my blood and impulses raced across my brain. Soon, my recollections conjured the smells of the colt that spent his waking hours with his eyes glued to a screen. He smelled like the inexperience I wanted to personally craft; to mold into maturity with my own two hooves and give what couldn’t be given by a thousand textbooks. And speaking of a hoof, mine was inching towards my own mare parts. The sloppy experience would have to do. 

I remember that I taught him everything I knew. It all started when he secretly talked to me about those bullies at school. They would tease him for playing his videogames. They would tell him to get a life. He would yell and scream that he ‘totally had an older filly’ that he talked to all the time. I winced when I heard those words from my desk when the window was open. I knew it was getting to him but I was not expecting to have to deal with the issue personally. But he came to me anyway. 

I could soothe him pretty well. He smiled as I patted his mane and I asked if he could come to talk to me more often; with what I imagined would be about homework perhaps or talking to a filly. But he was smarter than most foals. Straight A’s. A natural at things involving his hooves. I wondered if he was getting into a trade by now. That’s what I would do if I had his kind of talent. Anyway, we ended up close. Of all the times we spent together after school, I focus on only one. It’s the time I think about when I pleasure myself. I decided to teach him the first steps towards being a mature pony. I used words to teach of course. But he’s so practical. He asked how to tell if he was into fillies at all. I was more nervous than when I taught the older foals about physical changes. For him, they were real and he didn’t know what to do with them but I told him that if they were there then it was part of who he was and it was nothing to be ashamed over. He even wanted to know if I felt the same. I admitted that we weren’t that different. But I really wanted to help him, to show him how to act on his own body’s needs. I asked if I could and he nodded really fast. 

That day, we were alone like we always were after school. I shut all the curtains in the schoolhouse. I had him sit in my chair and I sat on the floor. My head was just below his. I put my muzzle very close to his genitals and sniffed deeply. It didn’t just smell like he did usually. It was faint but I knew that he was producing chemicals that didn’t burn, a heat that coursed through my nose. It didn’t matter that he was a younger colt. I could tell that he was ready as he stared with his wide eyes. Already my presence between his legs caused his soft organ to grow. I didn’t wait and touched it gently. First with my hooves then with my tongue grazing along its length until I reached its trembling end. I held on his flank to prevent him from squirming. Eventually, I put it in my mouth and not even a minute later, his semen shot into the roof of my mouth, accompanied by the sound of his panting. I remembered the hot creamy taste. His look of satisfaction and fear. My sticky grin. 

All those memories blended together were the backdrop for my own furious rubbing. I never wanted to lose what I felt for him. They were so special because I actually wanted to spend time with this colt. He may have been so young but I knew he was different. There was a reason why I couldn’t handle any of the stallions for more than a lousy first date. The fillies were not worth the bother of explaining how shallow stallions could be. They only wanted one thing after all. Button was not like them. Of course I was questioned and even examined by impotent scientists in lab coats. It wasn’t enough that I was going to prison. They had to treat me like some kind of curiosity to probe and study. To pick my brain apart just to know what I could see. For them, it was impossible to believe that there was anything worthwhile between us. They were hopelessly wrong. 

That’s why I took him to my house. I was leading him by the hoof where he needed it but we were eye to eye where it mattered. He was far too smart to be vapid. Far too caring to be shallow. Maybe as an educator, I could sense that too. I just wished I had planned better. Before we could turn off the games, it all ended. We were going to mate. It would have been the defining moment of our lives. Too bad I didn’t think of him writing that in his diary. The one his sister secretly read and passed on to his foster parents. They are the kind that’s so scared that something could happen that they would react over every little thing. I admit it’s better to be safe than sorry but it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t upset. I lost Button, my job and perhaps everything that mattered in my life. I could talk about a history of adult and foal relations all day. I can mention how it’s not exactly unheard of but it would be a waste of air. It’s just a taboo and they’re always unfair and arbitrary. So they say that teachers and younger students aren’t supposed to get involved like that. It was who I was, an educator, that everypony had a problem with. But at least, I could tell him that it truly was my fault because being with him was part of who I wanted to be.

By now, I ran through the gritty details. My hoof between my thighs was slippery with my gushing fluids and my eyes were shut tight for that old prison finale. When it did happen, my shoulders hunched with exhaustion rather than contentment. When I was done, I dried my hooves with the blanket. I then looked at Button’s old picture one more time. What would he look like now? Does he still smile like that every now and then? I would know that someday. I was sentenced to ten years in here but I could get out in six if I’m lucky. By then, he’ll be older. I think he’ll still smell the same. The thing about colts like him is that they don’t change easily. They only get better with age. I can’t receive letters from him but deep down, I’ve convinced myself that he would wait. We absolutely had to be in love. It’s the kind too strong to be broken by parents, judgmental ponies, an unfair system or even time. He would be there at the gates. I just knew it to be true.