Tutu

Duck scrambled after Fakir the second she noticed him. He was not in a hurry, and she had to take full advantage of that. There was absolutely nothing he could do to get away from her now, he didn't stand a chance. She leaped as she emerged from the alley, catching just enough air to push forward to Fakir. He had heard the quacks coming; he hadn't wanted to believe it, but his stride broke to turn him right into Duck's charge.

The impact rammed shock onto his face, while her quacking was abruptly muffled by the beakful of his shirt she had claimed. She tugged at it, wings beating into a blur as she tried to yank him around. She was taking him home right now. She entertained the wild thought of her possible victory when she felt him resist. If he was resisting, she had to be doing something. Her head jerked, what would have been a self-directed nod in a more comfortable position. Though, in truth, it was still too soon for her to be pleased with herself.

“What in the world are you trying to do, idiot?!” His hand wrapped around her wings, and he lifted the tiny, trapped bird up to a slit-eyed inspection. A conspicuous bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face.

Duck released him, and the stream of squawks grew in volume once again.

“Shut up!” He hissed, then took a deep breath. “Why did you come? Or more importantly, why didn't you think about what would happen if you got lost somewhere? If I hadn't found you now?” He added quickly, because he believed she was still familiar with the town, but if luck hadn't brought them together before she had wandered back out in the forest again... There were plenty of predators who would love a meal of clumsy duckling.

She shook her head, like that would dissipate his questions, and began to gesture furiously with her beak. It tipped in every direction, leaving him to figure out what she meant by it. The only possibility he could gather was that she was detailing the expansiveness of her search, flailing in the directions she had ventured.

“No. I don't care how far you searched, it was stupid. You didn't find me, it was the other way around.” He said, and set off again, still holding her close. He was beginning to receive looks for speaking to a duck, and he was in no mood to put up with that. Especially not since Duck was being deliberately difficult, matching the pet he was in with one of her own. She was shoving her wings against his grip, punctuating her struggles with the occasional quacks, and contemplating pecking at his fingers. The last, she could not quite bring herself to do, as seriously as she considered it. She supposed he was worried, and not just about her, so she would spare him the sore hands. However, she was worried about him, too, and if he wasn't going to appreciate that, then he hadn't earned an easy time. It was silly, she knew, but so was he.

Fakir did not relent until the passed through the town gates. He pressed her sternly, “Do you promise not to go wandering off for no good reason anymore?”

“Quack!” She snapped, but she nodded and immediately went still. He placed her gently on the ground, and kept pace with her as she waddled along.

“Good,” he paused, then murmured, “Thank you.”

She stopped, tilting her head up at him, and grinned with her oddly large blue eyes. Her happiness flared in them to match the glow of the reflected moon, and she made a quiet cooing sound. Placated, she strutted on down the path ahead of him. He stayed to watch her, brow furrowed above the neutral line of his mouth. The anger had faded into something pale, which dwelt just at the back of his mind and was warm, not burning. Unbeknownst to him, his cheeks flushed. Whether it was from that faded feeling or the day's exertion was impossible to tell.

It barely required a few steps on his part to catch up, as she almost seemed to be going slowly on purpose. She kicked up dust, tripping over herself for her efforts, and walked backward at times to stare at him. Now that he was here again, she wasn't going to rush. A nice, leisurely stroll would be great for both of them, she was sure of it. Yes, she knew he would appreciate it later, even if he didn't think so.

“What?” Fakir finally asked, driven by curiosity and uncertainty alike. Her stare was not what he would have labeled as precisely unpleasant, but it set him on edge, anyway.

The query was not something she expected from him. She quacked loudly, though it was not one of her usual attempts at an answer. That had been a startled cry, stumbling from her as she took a worse tumble onto her back. Her feet waved in the air, so fast that she might have been trying to fly with them. She had knocked herself onto her side and wriggled to her feet before Fakir could do anything. Since there was nothing else for him to do, he laughed. As she shook herself more vigorously in the vain hope of getting the dust off, he simply shook his head. “If it's that hard for you to think and walk at the same time, don't think. You don't most of the time, do you?”

She faced him sourly, voicing a strung-out “Quaaaaaa...” She did not seem to approve of his teasing, and the feather on her head bobbed tensely, becoming much like a broken string from a violin in its final twangs.

He exhaled, an annoyed sigh. “Fine. If it's that big a deal, then don't walk.” She was given no opportunity to protest as he bent down to scoop her up, a good deal more gently than before. She blinked several times, rapidly, but her vision was fine. There wasn't anything she could clear from it to make sense of this. He looked down into her eyes again, but the confusion made whatever else she might be feeling unreadable. She actually had better luck with reading him, because there was only the same chilled green as always, backlit with his peculiar intensity. Solid as steel, and too sharp to be done justice by some metaphorical knife.

She nestled into his arms, cooing gratefully, and he carried her home, neglecting to issue a farewell when he deposited her carefully by the pond.

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

Duck had circled endlessly. The stars lit her path, and they would last longer than the lamp she could see in the distant window of the study. She wasn't going to pressure herself to sleep while they both still had light to use. Once he didn't need his light anymore, and she saw it go out, then she would glide into her nest. It was shrouded in reeds, which would shield her from the light, as well.

Her head hung, a mopey sadness creeping over her, until her mood dropped her head low enough for her beak to break the surface of the water. It refreshed her, reminded her what she was doing, and propelled her halfway into the air. Her head and the feather atop it straightened to be perfectly perpendicular to the water. Under the surface, the pond was churned into a frenzy; she swam at a visibly dizzying speed. It was all well and good if she wanted to stay up with Fakir, but he would never see it. The potential of a symbolic gesture did not appeal to her in the slightest.

Yet she doubted there was a lot she could for him. She failed to notice how her mere presence did have some effect on him, perhaps a positive one, but she was correct in assuming that her being there was not enough, either way. She didn't suppose that quacking repeatedly, right into his ear, would help matters much. Though, that she was tempted to try just because he deserved it, for being so stubborn about this whole thing. She was sure everything was fine, and he should calm down and spend time outside with her again. Maybe he'd been after a change of scenery before, when he went into the house, but it was time to change back. And his story was something she looked forward to reading, so it would be easier for everyone if she didn't have to quack at the door later when she wanted to have a look. All she would need to do would be to fly to him, when he called her to see that he had at last perfected his writing.

Writing. His writing, that was what he was doing now to release his thoughts and ideas, that was how he was seeking to communicate with people. Everyone who would read what he wrote would know his words as well as if they had heard him talk. She backpedaled suddenly, nearly proving it physically possible to trip while swimming. She could not speak to Fakir, but it had to be fitting if she could find a way to write to him. He would see her words, and though only he would see them, that was fine. He was the only one who she wanted to understand her.

She would go inside tomorrow. She didn't want to wait, but as the whirl of her inspiration slowed, tiredness wound a sturdy thread in her limbs. A quack-laden yawn passed over the water, telling Fakir to please wait a little longer. Though he could not hear it, she was irrationally confident that he would receive her hope.

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

He peered at the window, wondering if she had stayed awake. He hoped she hadn't. She was too stubborn about things, however, so she probably had. By being aware of a problem, she would by nature seek to solve it. He understood that nature well; she could be as stubborn as she wanted, but the problem remained his.

His gaze returned to the blank paper on the desk. The window was too dark to see from, while the paper was too white to see anything on. It didn't make a difference where he directed his attention. He set his elbows down on either side of the paper, bracing his forehead against his hands to stare straight at his target. It wasn't that he had even attempted to write after he came back, and was now drained of words. He was waiting. Leafing through Autor's advice in his head. Instead of just lashing out this time, he thought he might find a purpose for what he had been told.

An idea had occurred to him as much as he disliked it. That Drosselmeyer truly had excelled in crafting characters above all else. It had to be rare for characters to gain such strength that they could oppose the force controlling them. Mytho became his own Prince Charming, not a tragic hero; Rue had found a place for herself when none should have existed; the Knight was certainly still in one piece, if not a knight; and Duck had not vanished. The last character caught him for a moment, summoning memories of two very different figures. One was unsteady on her feet, hardly able to keep her balance when both were on the ground, but she didn't let the shakiness of her dancing stop her. The other spun and skipped lightly, without faltering. Each of her motions was pristine, from the grandest leap to the slight circle of her hands as she invited someone to dance.

It was strange, because Duck hadn't been the character who was written. She had shaped her character, to the extent that he could not see so much as a shadow of Princess Tutu in her, and more than that, he had never been able to. As soon as he had found out her true identity, Princess Tutu was another form, the unreal storybook princess. In the end, the girl, clumsy, cheerful, and real, had emerged; and she was Duck. Technically, a bird, not a girl. But with her ways as set as they were, that was quite alright. She came off as herself in any form other than Princess Tutu's.

He frowned, sitting up with such speed that his back slammed into the chair. His hands rested on the edge of the desk for a moment, then one of them reached out for the quill pen. Holding those two different images in his mind, he started writing the unreality.

“<i>She was a princess of rare beauty and rarer grace. Her arms seemed to lift her like wings as she jumped...</i>”

The bottom of the page came before he expected it, and he paused to reread his work. Upon finishing, he lay the pen down with more force than was necessary. His hand was pressed into the desk over it, sending light tremors up his wrist. They did not travel farther than that, as they stemmed simply from the pressure he applied to the wood. His eyes were narrowed, critically, even thoughtfully, but not in frustration.

He read it again, and plucked a new sheet of paper out. The freshly completed document  was pushed aside gently, where he could still see it. He started again, “<i>She was a princess of rare beauty and rarer grace. But more than that, a light seemed to shine around her...</i>” Short as it had been, he would have held the first page up as a good draft. It was far from what he wanted, but he could say with a degree of certainty what his goal for it was. How to reach it was more chancy, but, he told himself hotly, he would get there. He almost nodded to himself, spurred by the energy determination had given to him, but he restrained the impulse. That energy went into his hand, instead, which latched around the quill; a hawk's talons sealing a sparrow in their power.

He stopped only moments before the lamp flickered out, doused in darkness as he gathered his materials together. His own yawn was stifled in a wash of lingering adrenaline. He failed to recall how long it had been since anything had invigorated him on this level. The sensation of the pen in his hand remained, and though he didn't know what it was, there was something enticingly familiar about it.

He didn't want to wait, but he could practice this technique more tomorrow, and intended to do so. For now, he had to acknowledge a need to rest. He spun from the desk, and prepared himself for bed. As he lay waiting for sleep to come, his final thought was of how Duck would view his story.

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

<i>Drosselmeyer's eyes widened from a lazy, half-lidded position at the sound of gears turning.

“Hmmmm?” He hummed. It was quiet now, but he had turned swiftly enough to catch exactly what one normally would have thought to see: gears turning. Briefly, some story had been set in motion. Whatever it was, it had lacked the necessary power to push the clockwork for any length of time. A frown flashed across his face, morphing with unnatural speed into a grin as he leaned forward and shoved right up to the metal pieces. He appeared to be trying to wheedle a response from them.  “What was that about? Is someone being naughty? Uzura!”

“What, what, zura?” The child clomped out from somewhere. She pouted softly, unhappy at being taken away from an imaginary audience in the middle of her best concert ever. She would have another best concert ever tomorrow night, of course, so one need not worry overmuch for her. It was not like she had actually let Drosselmeyer interrupt her, as even without her audience, she continued to beat her drum.

“Did you wind up a story?” His inquiry was laced with exaggerated patience, expecting an affirmative reply, and so, to be disappointed. She withdrew from his fingerpointing, shaking her head insistently.

“I did not, zura! Why, zura?”

He blinked. “You didn't? Oh.” With a dismissive wave, he elegantly evaded her question. “Never mind, child. Go wander off and play somewhere. I'm going to look into something...” A cloak swished, and he vanished, presumably off to some other area of their black, mechanical expanse. Uzura, who had no reason to be interested anymore, returned to her concert. She was not disturbed from it again that night, or for several nights after.</i>