The most pitiful sound he had ever heard, was the whimper like quack. It was rare that she would make it, since her optimism was almost always gleaming through, but sometimes, when she thought he was out of ear shot, she let out what sorrow she really had.
How she would never be with her true love. How she never even got to say she loved him. How she would never dance again, or be the dancer she so wanted to be. How she would never see her old friends, or talk to Fakir in a way he would always understand. How all she could do was quack and hope he would know what she meant. He had gotten used to it, and usually he was right or very close to what she wanted or needed, but she always saw the way his eyebrows furrowed, trying to decipher her noises.
She despised that face of confusion. Because she knew how much he hated it too, how he hated that he couldn't talk to her. It was confusing and annoying.
But that wasn't the only reason he hated it. He hated it because he couldn't hear her voice anymore. Be it the peppy voice of Ahiru or the soft elegant voice of princess tutu. The happy quacks she let out in a hello would never compare to her yelling his name in her joyful little way.
He kept writing. She knew he was trying very hard. Every day he wrote stories upon stories of her turning back to normal, and the town's people's lives. He wrote one story for every person except himself. That would wait until he knew what he would do. That would wait until Ahiru would be apart of it, human.
