Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu
VII. Art
Fakir has never much considered the rain before. Ballet and writing after all are pursuits in which danseur and writer constructs his own world and bewitches his audience into following him into it. The real world and such mundane concerns as weather hardly matter and he has never paid much attention to them beyond remembering to bring an umbrella if it looked like rain when walking from the dorm to the practice rooms. Soggy clothes and headcolds are irritants he can do without.
And yet, here on the lake, the rain creates its own world. Water is their element, like the stage to a dancer or paper to a writer. And when it rains, the air itself seems to blur, become rich and liquid and part of the medium out of which they create beauty, art.
The summer shower sets the still lakewater into perpetual motion, each drop rippling like the sweet tinkling of piano keys. Duck swims around a waterlily that seems to be made for the beauty of this moment and nothing else. The lake is covered in the flowers, a watery field of round leaves and glistening white petals facing the sky, rainwater cupped in the heart of the blossoms. The rain somehow makes all the colors more intense, the yellow of Duck's feathers almost golden, the white of the waterlilies impossibly pure.
She turns towards him, her eyes as clear, as artless as the water itself. Without even thinking, he follows her and the two of them swim in a dance as complex as any he has ever learned, tarnished silver and burnished gold gliding among waterlilies, meeting and parting and meeting again.