" Quack! Fakir, let me in!" cried the yellow duck, annoyed. Her feathers were ruffled and messed up as she tried to ram the door of the small hut where they lived. Fakir built it for them not too long ago so that they could live by the lake in peace. However, this morning he had forgotten to leave the door even so slightly ajar.
You see, Ahiru was a duck but she wasn't always that way. After the battle between the Prince and the Raven ceased, she no longer was needed as Princess Tutu. When the climax of the story had come to an end and all returned to normal, she, too, had given up the role she had become so accustomed to. Fakir, the knight of the story, found courage in her and made many an attempt to return her to her human form. However, as of yet, none of his stories had been right. All of the right words were within his grasp. Yet, they deserted him when he needed them most to bring back the girl so important to him.
Well, the little duck continued to hit the door over and over again until she was completely exhausted. Why hadn't she asked Fakir to cut out a little door for her before he had left for town? Oh, that's right, he was already distracted as it was. As the two cared for each other, Fakir had grown to somewhat understand what she needed. However, as of late, he had become increasingly impatient in the seemingly temporary happiness. She felt content with life as it was though a foreign restlessness was creeping through to her from him.
She knew that every day Fakir would come back from school and pick her up and give her a quick squeeze. Her little heart would then burst into excited feelings and she would tell him everything that happened during the course of that day. He, of course, would only smile and make conversation until a slightly dark inkling wandered into his eyes and she would shut her mouth uneasily. He was discontented and how could she feel so at ease when he was suffering so?
When Ahiru could hardly stumble any more, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. The one window on the side of the house was left open ever so slightly. The duck jumped up in excitement and clumsily clambered up to the window pane.
As she stared into the hut, a flash of red light brightened up the reflection in the window. A blue-eyed girl stared back at that blue-eyed duck. The girl's salmon colored hair didn't look much like those yellow feathers though there was a striking resemblance between the two. The girl placed a hand on her side of the window and the duck pressed her own tiny wing against the glass. The small fingers of the girl searched for something just past the glass but found nothing. And so the apparition began to fade as if it had never existed and left the duck as alone as she had been only moments before.
It seemed only an instant that the duck saw the shadow of her former self but it was enough to make her tremble. A gray mist soon covered the forest seeping from the pond as it was. The duck felt her heart flutter in her breast and she would have quacked upset if not for what happened next...