Tutu

Fakir drove his hand mercilessly across the paper. The pen looped out each letter as he pushed it, hopping between words with all the grace of a dancer. However, this elegance escaped him. Frustration clouded his mind and made the cold ink woven from his fingers no more emotionally engaging than ink stamped mechanically by a press. For some reason, it was easier for him to force his whole body through a complex routine than it was for him to drag a feather along the page. He had not worried about it at first. When he had begun, he assumed it was okay that there was no real flow of ideas into words. He had even saved each scrapped page for possible reference, determined that now, he could even make his failures be of use to himself.

That had not been proven true. Time only made the ideas themselves harder to come by. He used them up, but he could not push them to a real end. This was supposed to be an art. He was aware of that, and the notion brought a self-directed scowl to his face. There was nothing here. The black writing rejected his best efforts, endless training refused to perfect his thoughts as it had done for his dance. He waited for himself to start one day, and be able to finish, like he had finally gathered the stamina through his perseverance. He wished he could actually shed blood, sweat, and tears over this. Such things would be sadly impossible, unless he added several ill-placed blades, a fireplace in the study, and onions to his efforts.

The ridiculousness of this led him to finally throw the pen down. He crushed its clatter under the scraping of the chair, pushing it abruptly away from his desk. There was nothing he wanted at that moment other than to be out of the cramped study. No, out of the house. The smell of flowers and grass would erase the scent of ink, and the clarity of the pond would help more than anything else could.

By the time he stepped out along the dock, he did feel much better, though a persistent frown kept him as the sole cloud on this sunny day. A strange desire rose to remove his shoes and dangle his feet into the pond. Still, it was too soon for him to permit himself full relaxation. He could relax when he had truly accomplished something. He settled for kneeling at the edge and staring at the horizon. Yet his gaze was more distant than that. He was indeed trying to envision somewhere far away, somewhere that didn't really exist yet. Not that he would want it to exist. That had to be the last thing he wanted, or else he feared the goal might overtake him. He stiffened, forcing a shudder into stillness. It wasn't as if he didn't want to create something, because that could be his first success. This would be his true path, not one he was written into. But going about it was so dangerous. If he had failed at mastering the sword, why should he think to master the mightier pen? As he mulled over such sticky questions, a slight yellow duck emerged from the other side of the water, smoothly kicking her way over to him.

She pulled herself up with a few wingbeats, quite literally aflutter with happiness, only to subdue a delighted greeting into a faintly concerned “Quack...?” Duck could not miss the dark dullness in Fakir's eyes. It was a relief when he looked down, and she saw that his eyes reflected her, instead. Whatever dwelt in them a moment ago was not being insistent on hanging around for the moment. He didn't smile, but that was normal. The tension in his spine gave way so he could reach down and offer a piece of bread to her. She appeared to reward his efforts with a much more cheerful “quack!” She even extended her wings, beating the air into currents that matched her usual excited state. In truth, while the bread was something she enjoyed, it was not the most important reason for happiness that Duck saw. Fakir was able to guess at what was, knowing her as he did. The knowledge bit at him; the idea of making her unhappy unnecessarily wasn't something he could stop from worrying over himself.

He could not push those thoughts away. He could, however, stop her from upsetting herself again.

“What, are you that excited about me feeding you?” He smirked. “I hope not. You look like you've been eating more than enough lately.”

Her outraged squawks echoed from the water, and then there was a splash as she took off from the surface. He held up his hands, though he made no serious attempt at driving the bird away while she flapped noisily in his face. She subsided onto the water once she was apparently satisfied that he had suffered enough for her indignity. Turning away, she stuck her beak high in the air and ruffled her feathers fussily back at him. Fakir did not react to this, short of a faintly unimpressed look for her posturing. She felt it against her, and the plume atop her head drooped accordingly. She twisted her neck around as far as it would go to narrow her eyes at him, responding with unusual eloquence.

“Quack! Quack, quack, qua...”

She trailed off, her anger melted into a decidedly duckish pout under his firm expression. He blinked and offered an amused snort. “Just what were you trying to do, idiot?” She almost started to protest again, but that sound had been so close to a laugh. A rare thing to come from him. She thought that she might as well try to make this last. She paddled up to the dock again, beaming as well as one could with a beak.

“Never mind. I doubt you actually had any idea what you were doing,” Fakir speculated bluntly, though while he spoke, he did extend a hand to brush lightly over her head. “I guess I should leave you to your cluelessness.” He stood and turned away before he could see her wings lift against his departure, but he did not ignore her pleading quacks as she had thought he would. “I have work to do. All you do is drift around your pond all day, so don't complain.”

She was one of the people his sword had failed in the past. It was Duck who had saved him, and everyone else, and she was the last one he could give anything. He had no right to be here, not until he repaid her, and yet he was at something of a loss at how to do that. There was someone he was familiar with, however, who probably could come up with a more efficient solution. So Duck could get what she deserved. And, a small part of himself muttered, so he could have something he wanted, with her. He refused unflinchingly to indulge that. He had spoken spoke to silence her.

Fakir, it seemed, was just determined to shatter all of Duck's expectations today. She watched him leave, an oddly pensive sensation sinking in her heart. He may have answered her, but she wished he hadn't done so in that voice she hadn't heard in so long. His tone changed so quickly that she was unable to place it right away. It took a few furiously swum circles for her to get her mind moving before she knew. That voice was way too similar to one that had warned her to stay away from Mytho, all those months ago. Coming now, after it had been so long since she had heard Fakir's voice at all, it was especially jarring.

“Quack!” Duck muttered to herself, glancing in the direction of the cottage. The place Fakir had been spending all of his time lately. In the beginning, Fakir was almost constantly out on the dock, writing and watching her swim in the sun. And when the sun failed in the evening, he had simply brought a lamp out to continue. With the passing of time, he had worked outdoors less and less, growing angry at whatever was on the paper and dragging himself inside with his work after only a few hours. He certainly did not appear to want or need her company as he wrote, or ever, for that matter.

Well, he would get her company, whether or not he wanted it. She nodded to herself, proclaiming slowly, “Quaaaaaa... Quack!” The water exploded around her this time as she came away from the pond. She managed the ascent without undue trouble, her wings straining swiftly to keep her aloft until she found a windowsill under her feet. Unfortunately, the slick webs rejected the surface before she could look into Fakir's study. A loud quack slipped from her beak as she fell, and her wings were only able to clumsily stop her from a total crash. She waited dizzily below the window for Fakir to poke his head out, snap at her, and pick her up with more tenderness than most people would think possible. Then she would help him, somehow. She would be with him, which had to mean she could at least do more than before. It didn't really matter what that would be, she would get to that later.

But perhaps five minutes later, Duck was fairly sure that Fakir had no intention of showing himself. She cooed, impatience mingling with nervousness. If he was so involved in something that he saw no need to reprimand her for being noisy, she doubted it was anything good. She caught the wind again with a determined hop, this time maintaining her balance long enough to look in. Fakir's piles of papers were there, sheets both clean and scrawled-on, and the half-empty pot of ink. Everything Fakir needed was there, but he was not.

She pulled away from the window much more steadily than before, launching herself into the air. She wouldn't let this complicate the situation. Her goal was the same as before, she just needed to go a little farther than she had originally believed. She already had an idea of where to search. If Fakir was going to go anywhere, Goldcrown Town was probably his only option. She didn't stop to consider that trying to find a single person in that town had been hard enough for a human, and so was likely to be more challenging for a duck.

***********************************

There was a single, solid knock on the door. Autor sighed heavily.

He wasn't used to receiving guests, and that was how he preferred it. Well, one may have come, but that did not mean he had to properly welcome the interruption, or acknowledge it at all. He did not spare the door a glance, much less make any move to admit the visitor. He expected another knock or two, and smiled frostily as he pondered whether they would be bothered enough to call for him, or just give up. As it happened, his guest was not waiting for either option. The door slid open without a reasonable pause for a response.

“What- Oh, it would be you. I was wondering where you'd been.” Autor gave his glasses a businesslike adjustment. “But if I'm going to ask you about anything, I suppose it should be about why you're here now?” He sounded more impatient than curious, as if he had thought Fakir would come awhile ago.

Fakir did not miss the expectation. He also caught what was implied by it, that he would not visit Autor for any friendly chat, but out of need. It was an irritating sting in his pride, and that made it easier for him to stand his ground. “I have a question. It's nothing more than that, so don't get too excited.” He was just daring Autor to try him.

“Fine. Go ahead and ask,” Autor invited, neutrally enough. He was at least courteous enough to look away, not that it really concealed his faint smile.

“What do you have to start with to get a story to finish?”

“That's an incredibly broad question, you know. Of course, if you just try to whack at your thoughts, they'll be about as useful as decapitated soldiers.” Autor could have been musing, but his tone was too pointed for that.

“Whatever. I don't need to know what not do here,” Fakir snapped, crossing his arms. “How about you answer my question?”

“As I said, it's a very broad topic.” Autor told him shortly. It looked as if he was being more thoughtful for the moment, deliberately cutting off further inquiries. He believed he had the best answer already, and might have stated as much, if he had not wanted to watch the former knight. He may have grasped Fakir's general motives, but he needed more observation to draw additional conclusions.

Fakir grimaced, forcing himself to stay quiet. There was no point to demanding answers when he was going to get them anyway. He did, however, keep a focused glare on the other boy. He had not come to entertain any academic, or even artistic, curiosity, but to complete a mission. Having most of his entire life centered on one task made him keenly aware of time, how one should spend and save it. Then again, he reflected dourly, maybe his own experiences in that area were not such a good pool to draw from, after all.

“If you've had enough of your usual mental consternation, we can end that now,” Autor lifted his chin, a superior spark shining through his glasses.

Fakir jolted his attention back into place. “Well?”

“You tell me, what makes a story?”

“Conflict,” Fakir replied, ignoring Autor's poorly disguised interest in his opinion.

“That's right. Conflict is an important part of stories, which you know very well... But what about the people involved in those stories? Do you think a boring cast could have held the attention of someone as... picky as Drosselmeyer?”Autor mimicked Fakir's posture, folding his arms, though he was much more relaxed. His smile had drifted into an open smirk. It wasn't mocking, more strangely self-satisfied. He had the air of a great detective, one who had solved his most puzzling crime.

Fakir narrowed his eyes, getting the sense that Autor had considered a more respectful word to describe Drosselmeyer's skill. The jab was still strong enough without Autor's lingering, if pragmatic, admiration for the author showing. He shrugged,“I don't know.”

“Then, of course you can't write anything!” Autor exclaimed, his exasperation flaring. “The prince, the princess, the knights and thieves... Those are just titles. There's going to be more to them than their station.”

“What are you expecting?” Fakir said, with an irritated sigh. Autor's outburst had merely pointed out something obvious to him, on the surface. It had also resembled an accusation. He was hardly in a position to argue, but he would have liked to know what Autor was trying to pin him with.

Autor sighed, too, deflating. “Look, when you walk outside, you don't develop an attachment to everyone you see. But you have a few close friends, or at least people you know more about, who would care about if something happened. That the kind of person you have to write about.”

“What?” Both Autor and Fakir himself knew that there was nothing confusing about that answer. It left a sour taste in Fakir's mouth, for some reason, and he had not been able to avoid questioning it. An instant later, he shook his head. “No, forget it. That should be enough.”

“You're right, it should,” Autor frowned, far from pleased himself. His mouth opened blankly, and stayed that way until he spoke. He appeared almost startled by his own sincerity. “Good luck.”

**********************************

More hours than Duck could keep track of later, she still hadn't stopped to consider how difficult her task really was. She was puffing for breath, and her waddling had become noticeably shaky, but she pressed on. Her wings had not enjoyed the legwork, and her body was not any more fond of it now that it was literal. She kept marching up the street, of course, because borderline exhaustion was no good reason to stop her search. None at all. That was her genuine opinion, at any rate. Rather, that's what she would have thought if she paused long enough to recognize how tired she was.

She stepped out into an intersection, to find the open space was surprisingly dark. Sunset had lengthened the buildings' shadows, and for the first time, she did wonder how long she had been out. That feathery tuft flattened to hang between her eyes at the realization. She angled her wings oddly, pressing the tips against her sides, but trying to shove them out at the shoulders. A semblance of hands-on-hips. A child's display of frustration, not a duckling's. Her behavior attracted a few curious looks, particularly as people were having to step out of her way. She was no longer paying attention to where she was going, instead quacking under her breath about a boy who was silly and stubborn and did weird things just because he was <i>so stubborn</i>!

In fact, she said the last part out loud, an emphatic “Quack!” She was thankfully spared further attention, because she had stomped off down an alley. The brick swallowed her cry, and faintly more coherent line of thinking returned to her in the silence. There were many places she hadn't looked yet, especially since her search had not been exactly systematic. She just searched places she had known him to frequent before. After that, she wandered around the town, believing that she would happen across something. She was forgetting that “something” was often more inclined to happen across her.

A fresh shadow was pitched over her briefly, that of a figure crossing in front of the alley's last light. Fakir. She wondered at the cobblestones' resilience; they bore his intense stare while he clopped along. She was sure his intensity would have singed her feathers.

In a somewhat bizarre twist, her first action following that thought was to dash after him, quacking rabidly.