Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu's plots, characters, or themes.
Die Ente und der Autor
She was a sweet girl, with simple means and freckled cheeks. So cheerful despite what she'd been through, and always there when you needed a smile or a laugh.
He was a noble boy, with elegant movements and a hard surface to coat what he was really like. So changed by the simple girl he knew, and helpful when you needed to find out something. Perhaps his stiff motions needed to be sandpapered slightly, but after those cold eyes was a warm heart.
Today they sat quietly by the harbor, he watching her every movements with a gentle gaze. She looked up at Fakir, her eyes swimming pools of blue, curious and caring, yet hurt at the same time.
Ahiru paddled softly across the wet plain, her yellow feathers curiously soft and smooth. Watching her so calm, but her feelings flowing from her head, Fakir finally found the right words inside of him, yet frustration he would have normally felt was dripping slowly away. He picked up his pen like he had once picked up his heavy sword, yet somehow this weapon had seemed more powerful.
Fakir looked down at the scribbles on the page. Her thoughts in black ink had spilled out of his mind and onto the sheets, turning a blank reality into a beautiful masterpiece. He wrote of how she wished to dance again, wished to talk again, wished to dream again. She had the most incredibly detailed thoughts, he pondered, for someone so silly and dumb.
Yet if he had really thought she was so silly and dumb, he wouldn't have stayed here by her side for this long, writing either by the lake or his house, or if on the odd occasion he felt social, by the coffee shop. Wherever he went she went; whatever she felt he felt. They were in simplest words inseparable.
The final word came to him, and his quickly swaying pen danced to an abrupt stop, lifted directly above where the last period would go.
Was he scared? Did he not want her to be a human again? Was he too used to his daily routine of Ahiru as a duck?
These were the same thoughts she had had when she had the final heart shard on her necklace, not yet ready to give it back to Mytho. She had cried on his shoulder then, not knowing what she wanted, not knowing what to do. He had told her to be herself, to not be scared to change the pattern, and now he told himself the same thing.
He wanted her back as much as a drying river died of thirst.
The ink made one final dark orb on the messy sheets. Fakir looked up to see Ahiru gently swimming around the pond as normal. She dipped her head under and played with the other little birds. Now he just had to give it some time.
He carefully watched her every motion for the next few hours, scarcely blinking and voices screaming inside his head. When the night had passed, he woke up to find the little duck snuggled up next to the story, to which she had apparently fallen asleep by while reading. Fakir didn't know if that meant it was boring or if she was just tired, but at least she now knew it was almost time.
"Duck," he whispered to her. The tiny animal lifted its head up in response, blinking its pools softly.
The rest of the day was spent with him telling her stories until around noon, when one of her feathers slowly dropped to the floor. Another followed it. Fakir stood, astonished that his writing might be coming true.
Ahiru quacked with joy one last time, her feathers slowly turning into hair and skin. When she was fully changed, she stood behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, for he had looked away for fear that she would be as she had been when formerly turning from a duck to a girl.
He turned around to see the silly child dressed in a beautiful ballet costume, a white and yellow short dress. She smiled at him and threw her arms around him.
"Fakir!" she yelled, laughing giddily. "Thank you so much."
He smiled and held his hands around her protectively. Uzura toddled into the room from the room from all the exclamation.
After a while Ahiru quietly spoke. "Umm, Fakir?"
"What is it?" he asked, overly concerned.
She blushed. "Did you know every feeling I had while I was a duck?"
His cheeks clouded up red in reply. "Idiot," he finally said. "Of course I did."
"Is Ahiru lovey-dovey with you, Zura?" Uzura's comment startled both the boy and girl into laughing, with red cheeks and denial in their mouths.
And there they stood, the duck and the writer, quietly smiling at each other in perfect joy.