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. He finally threw the pen down, crushing its clatter under the scraping of the chair. 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 warm 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, but he settled for kneeling at the edge. He stared at the horizon, but it seemed as if 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 considered that, 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 that 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 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 ignoring 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.”

Fakir, it seemed, was just determined to shatter all her 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, she found it 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 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 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 discovery before she could peer 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 meant she could at least do more than before.

Perhaps five minutes later, Duck was fairly sure that Fakir had no intention of showing himself. She cooed nervously. 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, and the half-empty pot of ink that had been used to half-fill the topmost sheet on one of the piles. Other clean sheets rested beneath it for him to use, while the other stacks contained his completed writings.

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 was likely to be still more challenging for a duck.