Author's Note: I love this anime so damn much and the ending broke my heart happily - I just had to do this.

Once upon a time there was a brave, strong girl who had been cursed to live as a duck for the rest of her life. There was only one way to break the curse: a kiss from a true prince. So the duck-girl looked all over to find such a prince, enduring many hardships, and at last she found one who agreed to kiss her, since she was such an adorable little duck. As soon as he did, she became a girl again, and could return to her (true love) good friend...

Mytho carefully lifts Ahiru from the water and gives her a single delicate kiss on her shining orange bill, which Fakir has thoroughly brushed and polished up for the occasion. ("I don't want you getting any pond germs on him, okay?" "Gwah gwah gwah gwah!" "Just because you don't get sick from it doesn't mean he won't -")

A breathless moment of silence, and then:

"Gwah? ... gwah."

"I'm sorry, Fakir," Mytho says. "I really wanted it to work, too..."

"It's fine," Fakir says, ruffling Mytho's hair harder than necessary, and takes Ahiru back. She snuggles her head into his arm. "Nothing works out right on the first try."

"Certainly not for you," Rue mutters, but without malice, at least.

They stay for lunch, and then leave; they're performing Sleeping Beauty later, and have one last rehearsal before the show. When they're gone Fakir looks across the table at Ahiru, nibbling on the last crumbs of bread, and before he can overthink it he leans over and kisses her - on the top of her head, of course, he's not going anywhere near her bill when she's eating.

"Gwah! Gwah gwah?"

"Nothing," Fakir says, turning red all over. "Just - never mind."

Once upon a time there was a duck who longed to be a human girl, and one day she learned of a fountain with magic water that could grant any wish if you bathed in it at a certain time of day. She set out at once, along with her trusted friend, and after traveling for many days, they reached the fountain. When the proper time arrived, her friend filled a bucket with the magic water -

"Gwah! Gwah gwahgwah gwah gwah!"

"You live in a lake! What do you care if the water's cold?"

"Gwah gwah!"

Fakir kicks the bucket into the bushes. "Damnit - maybe it's a problem with the opening, or the tense, or something like that..."

The clouds overhead break, and sunlight glints off a pair of glasses. "What's wrong, Fakir, stuck on a plot point? Do you need any - assistance?"

"Get lost, Autor," Fakir growls, "it's none of your business."

"Gwah!" Ahiru says firmly, and shakes all the water off onto Autor's pants.

In the morning, Ahiru wakes up and realizes she's a girl.

A single, flat note: "Gwah."

"I am not copying Kafka! Where did you hear that story from, anyway? Just go to sleep already..."

In the morning it's still a duck nestled against his shoulder that Fakir wakes up to. She blinks enormous sleepy blue eyes at him and murbles.

"Okay, so it's not the tense," he says. "Fourth time's the charm?"

"Gwah."

Fakir tries everything he can think of - broken curses, fairy godmothers (that one really doesn't go well), magic potions and quests and miracles - but Ahiru is a duck is a duck is a duck, every time.

He doesn't give up, because she wouldn't, either, but he does take a break and try his hand at other stories. Fairy tales because he's already had the practice, some romances (very popular genre at the moment, though he doesn't really see the difference between it and the fairy tales), some adventure stories, whatever he can come up with. He doesn't know how many of them come true, besides the ones that he writes about Mytho, because Mytho always comes and tells him about those afterward in endless detail while Ahiru sits on Rue's lap and eats up every word.

("- and then I jumped across the chasm just before the edge crumbled, and -" "I know, Mytho, I wrote that." "Gwah gwah gwah!" "What? I did write it!")

He doesn't really care whether they become real or not; he writes them all with happy endings. This town has had enough of drama and so has he, and he's learned better, anyway. Nothing has to end in tears.

The dock is both the best and the worst place to write ever: best because it's peaceful and quiet and conducive to plotting, worst because he's always falling asleep out there and Ahiru won't wake him up. He usually writes out there anyway, only going inside when the weather's bad or it gets too dark to see, and then Ahiru waddles in after him to keep him company and scolds him if he tries to lock her out. (He gave that up a while ago, though; he'd rather have the company.) She sits on the desk or the arm of his chair and watches him work, and if the pen starts heading anywhere unpleasant she'll gently tug it back to a better course.

A steady, (mostly) quiet friendship, a peaceful life, trust earned and rewarded; sometimes Fakir thinks it would almost be enough, except that he can feel her heart beating swiftly against his arm, twice as fast as his own, reminding him that time doesn't stop for ducks and writers. Ahiru never brings it up. Maybe she just doesn't realize it, or maybe she thinks it's still a better deal than she had as Princess Tutu, and sure, if she's happy he's happy, but he's not satisfied.

There's a better ending. He can get it, if he can just find the right words...

He's stopped writing in the middle of a sentence, and Ahiru murbles and pokes his arm. "I get it, I get it," he grumbles, and finishes it off. It's the end of the story, too; he shuffles the pages into something resembling the right order and sticks it in a desk drawer.

Fakir takes a week off from writing to laze around on the dock and do nothing. ("It looks like the same thing to me," Rue says. "You should come back to dancing; I hear there's an opening at the school... in the apprentice class, of course.")

At the end of the week he's done nothing. He dangles his feet in the water and throws Ahiru bits of croissant, and finally says, "Damnit... Maybe I'll just try the other way, then."

"Gwah?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it."

Once upon a time there was a knight on an endless quest. Separated from his (good friend) true love by an unbreakable barrier, he had done everything in his power to bring them back together - fighting monsters, seeking out wise women and men for answers, wishing on stars and praying at shrines - but all of his efforts had been in vain, and the barrier would not fall.

At last, however, the knight realized he had been a damned fool, and the key to the barrier had been in his hands all along...

"Gwah! What did you do to yourself?"

"Just what I needed to do, geh," Fakir grumbles, "you don't have to look that shocked about it."

"But - but gwah! Just look at you!" Ahiru circles around him effortlessly, inspecting him, while he paddles awkwardly and tries not to drown (it's harder than it looks; he really shouldn't have teased Ahiru so much for being klutzy on land). "You're so - I can't believe you would do this, gwah! But what about your writing? You can't hold a pen anymore gwah!"

"Doesn't matter," says Fakir. "Don't need to write anymore, geh. If anything comes up Autor can handle it, I left him a note."

She swims around him again (he's going to get a crick in his neck if she keeps doing that) and says, "You know, gwah, I - I sort of thought you would be a mallard because of your hair... But a mandarin?" She laughs. "Somehow that's just like Fakir, gwah!"

"... geh," Fakir mutters, and nibbles at the edges of a brown wing.

(On the other side of the lake Mytho shades his eyes with one hand and looks across the water. "Rue, look - Ahiru's met another duck. I bet Fakir's going to be jealous..."

Rue looks, rolls her eyes, and wonders - only in a hypothetical sense, of course - what it's like to be Ahiru, to be loved by and love someone who can occasionally put two and two together.

She'll explain it to Mytho later; it's too early in the morning for that kind of news.)