The wedding was the hardest part.

It was beautiful, yes, and Ahiru and Fakir were happy for them. Ahiru cried so much that she soaked the bandage on Fakir's arm clean through, and she thought that his eyes seemed a little overbright as well. But it was a small wedding, and it was short—Rue and Mytho—or, properly, Siegfried—just wanted to be officially married in Gold Crown Town with their friends before they went on to his palace. Really, the only other person there was the priest, with Ahiru and Fakir as witnesses. So it was not long before Rue and My—Siegfried—left, and Ahiru and Fakir were able to go home.

And Ahiru was able to admit that she was crying for herself as well.

She was happy for them, yes—she was happy! But to be there, in the warmth of Fakir's arms, and to know that—that that would never be them. He would always be with her, she knew, but it seemed so cruel. To finally discover love in herself—the kind she had thought she had for Mytho and that Rue had actually had—and then to watch it slip away. He would be with her, but he could never be with her.

Our true selves, she thought. If my true self is just a duck, why do I feel...?

But the sun rose and set, weeks and months passed, and her resentment began to fade. Maybe she truly was just a duck. It was nice not to worry about school or anything like that—she spent her days swimming and sunning and sleeping, and more importantly, she spent them with Fakir. He read to her, he held her, he talked to her as he had never talked even to the girl she had been. At night she slept on the pillow beside his head, with a blanket the size of a handkerchief when the wind blew icily around the house.

And she was happy.

As time passed, the sharp agony of regret and disappointment faded to a dull ache.

Fakir missed Ahiru, the girl. His friend. The one he loved. But little Ahiru was still with him, and maybe it was better that way. Less complicated. After all, it was the little duck who had first seen a side of him that he usually kept hidden. Maybe it was fate.

But Fakir had always hated the idea of fate.

It was all right. She was with him, and she was safe. And she was happy. That was all that mattered. And most of the time, he was happy too. There was so much that they still could share—and did. One obstacle that they had expected was the difficulty in communicating—after all, now that she was a duck again she had lost the power of human speech. But somehow, ever since they had helped Mytho—er, Sigfried—to end his story, he had been able to hear her thoughts. Not every thought, but somehow she was still able to deliberately broadcast what she was thinking to him, and he was still able to hear her.

Even without that, though, they probably would have been all right. He had gotten pretty good at deciphering her quacking from her tone and expression, and if that failed there was always mime. Mime... he still remembered that day. After the incident with—what was his name? Fernando? Oh, yes, Femio.

"Say, Fakir," she said suddenly. And with a grace that Ahiru's dance did not usually possess, she raised her arms and swept them slowly into the mime for 'I love you.' And the look in her eyes—it was so gentle as to be almost tragic.

She was referring to Mytho's unexpected resurfacing, of course. But for just a moment, he felt his heart beating double time, just enough to burn a faint flush across his cheekbones. For just a moment, he had imagined what it would be like if that mime had been meant for him...

Things were different now. He knew now that she did love him. She knew all too well how much he loved her. And more than anything they both knew that their chance was gone.

She had asked him, once.

~S-say, Fakir~ she thought shyly.

"Yes?"

~Don't you think you could... write something... one more time?~

"Write something?" His voice sounded huskier than normal.

~A story... for me. For us. Don't you miss—?~

He said nothing, and she trailed off into mental silence.

~Fakir?~

"No," he said finally. "We made a promise, remember?"

To be our true selves, she thought, but only to herself. And she did not cry until she was out of the room.

And she never told him that she had seen him that night, with his pen shaking in his hand and tears running down his face onto the blank paper on the desk in front of him. But that night, instead of sleeping on the pillow, she curled up next to his heart and let him hold her—or maybe she let herself be held. And if the next morning his nightshirt or her feathers were salt-stained from tears, neither of them mentioned it to the other.