Once upon a time there was a writer whose stories were supposed to come true. He once wrote a story as a teenager to save his country from an invading army, but instead, his untrained talent destroyed the town, for the writer was unable to accept that he could do nothing to help those he cared about. Many years later, as a man, the writer fell in love with a woman, and was determined to save her from a jealous wizard. Because he again couldn't accept he could do nothing for her, the writer killed his love with his own story.

Act 35: Writing Her Story

(((Moondance)))

Ahiru was growing very concerned.

Usually she and Fakir traveled to the lake every morning so she could swim and he could write. Yet this morning after breakfast, Fakir had gone back up to his room to write, telling Ahiru she could go to the lake if she wanted in an almost dismissive fashion.

Ahiru, however, had decided to stick around her male friend's room to keep an eye on him.

'It's not that much of a problem,' the duck tried to tell herself from her spot in his doorway. 'I mean…Fakir should write wherever it's easiest to write…but…'

She looked at Fakir deeply concentrating on the story he was writing, and it struck her at that moment that Fakir looked more focused on this story than on any story he'd written after The Prince and the Raven. Yet his eyes shone with more than simply focus; it was as if this story he was writing was his last chance to achieve a dream.

'I wonder what he's writing about…'


'Once upon a time there was a duck who transformed…no. It can't be that simple.'

Fakir hadn't even started writing; his quill was still hovering over the page as he pondered how to start Ahiru's story.

'Once upon a time there was a duck that wished to become…no. I can't know what she wants…I don't want to force her to feel like I do. Once upon a time…once upon a time…'

Fakir's hand tightened around his quill, his eyes narrowing in frustration.

'Damn it! How can I write a story about Ahiru with only my power? How can I?

"Quack?"

'The only story I ever wrote with my own power was by accident, and it didn't even end up happening…except for the ravens coming after me…and my parents…'

"Quack?"

Fakir closed his eyes in exasperation.

'How can I write about turning Ahiru back into a human if I can't even decide how to start her story again? I have to write a story with a conflict about the one who means the very most to me…how am I supposed to start that?'

"Quack?"

Fakir was so engrossed in his thoughts he didn't hear the quacking below him and didn't notice his duck friend move back to the door and give him a sad look before leaving the room.


"Oh, you foolish Knight!" scorned Drosslemeyer. "So focused on your story, you ignore your precious Ahiru-chan, the reason for you writing! Keep it up and you'll be able to write stories I can be entertained by…maybe you taking control of the story was a good thing, after all! Ha, ha!"

The old storyteller didn't notice the head of a curious little girl with green hair and violet eyes poke out from behind one of his gears with a surprised look on her face, before running off toward the passage connecting Drosslemeyer's world with the world of reality.


'Damn it all!'

Fakir thrust his quill at the wall when his fist angrily slammed onto the desk.

'How did the old story spinners do it? It's one thing to write a story about strangers, or even about friends…but how can I write about her? How can I write about naive, clumsy, hopeful, loving Ahiru? I did it before…but without these kinds of risks…'

"Fakir!"

Fakir looked up abruptly in surprise, to see a familiar small girl with short light green hair, wide violet eyes, pitch white skin and a drum tied around her waist so it rested on her chest.

"Uzura? What are you doing here?" he asked, before adding as an afterthought, "Where have you been all this time?"

"Fakir, you're not going to be like Drosslemeyer, are you-zura?" Uzura answered him with her chirp of a question.

"Drosslemeyer?" Fakir repeated. "No. What are you going on about?"

"Drosslemeyer said you were going to be like him-zura!" Uzura said, her eyes slightly suspicious. "What did he mean-zura?"

"Drosslemeyer said that?" Fakir recurred, sounding half disbelieving. "Is that where you've been, Uzura? Inside the story?"

"What did he mean-zura?" Uzura inquired again more firmly.

"I don't know," Fakir told her tiredly. "I'll never be like him."

"Then you're not ignoring Ahiru-zura?"

Fakir shook his head firmly. "I would never do that."

"Oh," Uzura whispered, looking around the room. "Where is Ahiru-zura?"

"She-"

Fakir looked around the room as well, and his face grew confused. Then the confusion left, and the writer shrugged, slight regretful that she wasn't there.

"I guess she must've gone to the lake by herself…"

Uzura gave Fakir a very beady, solemn look for such a small, lovable puppet-turned-girl.

"Don't ignore Ahiru-zura."

With those words, little Uzura ran off beating her drum, where to Fakir didn't even attempt to guess.

'Ignoring her…' Fakir thought, looking down and feeling guilty. 'Am I really ignoring her? No…I'm doing the opposite…I can't stop thinking about her…'

This thought almost made him feel worse.

'I wish I could ignore her…just enough to be satisfied with her as a duck. But I just can't make myself ignore that wonderful feeling of comforting her and holding her and dancing with her…I just can't ignore the longing in her eyes when she watches people dancing and laughing…'

Fakir turned back to the empty page on his desk and picked up his quill once more determinedly.

'I won't ignore it.'


"Uzura, you little pest!" Drosslemeyer complained, turning from the gear image of Fakir so he could glare at the returning Uzura. "Keep your nose out of this; you're ruining the lovely tragedy! You really are like Edel…"

Uzura gave the old storyteller a very sour look. "Fakir not going to be like you-zura! He said so-zura!"

"Well, we'll see about that," Drosslemeyer answered coolly. "Seems to me the Knight isn't putting much of a fight, heh, heh…of course, he's the useless knight for a reason!"

Uzura looked at the gear image of Fakir both worriedly and determinedly. "Fakir won't forget Ahiru-zura. He won't-zura."


"Once upon a time," Fakir read his words as he wrote them, "there was a writer who was in love with a duck. This duck had once been human, but had had to give up her humanity to save a prince. The writer wanted to make the duck happy, and so thought to turn her into a human once more. But all he could do was write…so he asked the story to make him write her tale so he could give it a happy ending."

As soon as Fakir finished writing those words, his hand shot unbidden across the page, writing words Fakir had never thought of writing.

"W-what the-?"

Fakir had almost not expected anything to happen and, if he had, he wouldn't have expected it so suddenly.

"Once upon a time…there was a princess named Tutu…"

'Wait…this isn't Ahiru's story! I don't want to write about Tutu!'

He tried pulling his hand off of the page, but his hand was so forcefully writing he couldn't make it do anything, almost as if Drosslemeyer had taken control of his writing like he had in The Prince and the Raven.

'Damn it! Why is this happening? Ahiru isn't Tutu! What did I do wrong?'

Fakir's vision went back to the page in time to catch sight of a name forming that would start sentences to answer his question.

His eyes widened.

"Prince Siegfried."


Ahiru swam a lonely path around the lake, looking up hopefully at the slightest noise that might prompt Fakir's arrival.

Again, however, Fakir wasn't coming.

Ahiru looked back at her reflection in the deep, blue depths of the lake.

'I wonder if Fakir's alright…'

She remembered trying to talk to him, only to have him be too focused on his writing to hear her, and involuntarily felt hurt.

'Fakir likely had his reasons…I shouldn't doubt him like this…but is it really wrong for me to be worried?'

Some of Helios's words from so long ago returned to the top of her mind.


"Drosslemeyer became obsessed with writing after he wrote my story with only his power, instead of merely finishing stories that had gone into motion, and eventually became so ambitious and heartless with his stories that he drove his family away…"


'But Fakir would never do that! He'd never let something like that happen!'

Ahiru's dream of Fakir returned to her mind.


Before Ahiru knew what was happening, Fakir had moved gracefully to her side, moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her tenderly.

Ahiru blushed. 'F-Fakir?'

His arms were warm, just like they had been when Fakir had picked her up as a duck so long ago when she was crying for him; Ahiru involuntarily relaxed into his touch.

Just then a teardrop fell from above Ahiru's head, landing on the lake's surface with a very tiny splash.

Ahiru looked up in worry at Fakir, whose eyes were wet with tears of unfulfilled dreams, but whose mouth was still forced upward in a smile of normality.


'Is he really hurting so much? He looked so dedicated to that story…but his eyes were passionate like there was nothing more important…what if he ends up being like Drosslemeyer trying to finish that story? What if he…?'

Ahiru's ocean-like eyes filled up with tears just thinking about what could happen to her friend.

'Fakir…'

A single tear fell from her eye onto the surface of the lake, almost exactly how Fakir's had in her dream, making the water ripple so that blurred her reflection.

As her reflection began to come back into focus, Ahiru noticed a white and brown shape behind her that she hadn't noticed before.

When her reflection finally cleared, Ahiru realized that it was a huge bald eagle sitting on a branch of a tree right behind her.

"QUAAAAACK!"

She jumped away just as the eagle's claws sunk into the spot she had just been.

The duck flapped around as she tried to escape the pursuing eagle, desperately searching for someplace to hide. She dove underneath the water and under the dock, but no matter where she went, the eagle still kept chasing her, screaming its eagle cry loudly.

'Fakir…Fakir, where are you?' Ahiru thought desperately.


Unfortunately Fakir was in no position to help, even if he had known Ahiru was in trouble. His hand was still almost chained to the page as it wrote more words of Tutu and Mytho.

'But where is Ahiru?' he thought impatiently as his writing hand moved to a new page. 'How does Ahiru fit into all this?'


"QUACK! QUACK!"

Ahiru had to flap herself up onto the dock to escape the eagle when its claws almost grabbed her tail. When the duck got up onto the wooden planks, she ran into the woods around Kinkan Town in an attempt of retreat, but the eagle still hounded after her.

'Fakir!' Ahiru thought feverishly, praying with everything in her that Fakir by some miracle would hear her. 'Fakir, help me!'


But Fakir couldn't have heard her; he could only hear her while writing of her progress in a story, and the story he was writing now hadn't mentioned Ahiru at all. Not only that, but Ahiru's story was only being written so Fakir's story of himself learning Ahiru's past could become real.

Just as Fakir's hand started to become tired from writing so fast for so long, words were spelled out to start to create an ending…

…And in that ending were the answers Fakir had been searching for.

'Ahiru is…'

Fakir was so overwhelmed. He had done it. He'd started her story again…and now he could finish it, without creating a whole new story for her!

'Ahiru!'

Fakir pulled himself away from the page so hard that he fell off his chair onto the floor, but he didn't care, instead scrambling up off the floor and running out of the antique store to find Ahiru.

'I can't believe it! I did it! I really did it, Ahiru! I can change you back!'

His emerald eyes were overly bright and he was smiling through his breathless pants as he ran through town toward the lake. Everyone who had seen him could identify the look on his face as that of a man in love.

When Fakir reached the forest surrounding the lake, his excitement became too much for him.

"Ahiru!" he called.

To his surprise, the duck suddenly ran right past him, quacking in loud fear.

"Ahiru, what's-?"

Fakir couldn't finish his question, for he had had to duck so a brown shape coming toward him didn't collide with him.

When he looked up at the shape more closely, he realized it was an eagle…and it was chasing Ahiru in a predatory manner.

"Ahiru!"

The duck found herself trapped between the eagle and a tree, and looked around frantically for some form of escape, to find none. She closed her eyes in terror.

But when the eagle should've grabbed her, a shadow moved in front of Ahiru, Fakir's voice let out a battle cry and the eagle cried out angrily.

Ahiru opened her eyes to find Fakir fighting the eagle off with a tree branch, slashing the giant bird with it as if the branch were a sword.

"Eat any bird you like, but leave her alone!" Fakir shouted angrily despite the fact the eagle logically couldn't have understood him.

The eagle, however, didn't seem to want to follow Fakir's advice. It flew right at him, just barely dodging a blow of his mighty tree branch, before swooping around him and down to the ground so it could grab Ahiru.

"QUACK!" cried Ahiru, squirming in the eagle's grip as the larger bird flew her up higher into the air. "QUACK-QUACK!"

"Ahiru!" Fakir shouted, his eyes filled with fear. "Hold on, I'll-"

His eyes widened as the eagle flapped one of its wing with an almost flourish toward one of the trees, and an endless-looking, almost-black hole-like sphere opened up in front of it.

It was a portal.

The eagle flew toward the portal, and Fakir immediately ran after it.

But just as he was about to grab the eagle and pull it to the ground, his foot caught on a tree root.

Fakir felt his face, chest and legs collide with the dirt as he fall to the ground, just as the eagle and Ahiru flew through the portal and the portal vanished.

The writer was left to stare, dumbstruck, at where the portal had been.

'This…can't be…'

He scrambled up, pounding the tree in a vain attempt to open the portal again.

'This can't be…Ahiru is…no!'

Fakir's legs weakened and he fell to his knees, his shoulders shaking and his head bowed in shame and grief. His eyes filled up with tears of anguish, before he thrust his head back like a wounded dog and cried her name.

"AHIRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

His angst-filled shout was so loud everyone in the whole town could hear him, though no one knew why he was shouting.


I'm afraid that is all for today. Is a fun story awaiting us? A sad story? Or maybe…?


Music Notes:

"Moondance":starts after Fakir states his story's first sentence, with his hand suddenly "shooting unbidden across the page" at the first drumbeat at 0:19. Fakir murmurs "Prince Siegfried," at 0:45 and the scene moves to Ahiru at the lake as the music moves to a softer movement. Ahiru starts her thoughts of Fakir at 0:52; her tear hits the surface of the lake at 1:44, her blurred reflection comes back into focus in that pause, and then she abruptly jumps away to escape the eagle at 1:51. She dives underneath the water at 1:57, swimming and running away, until the scene shifts to Fakir writing at 2:12 and Fakir starts a new page at 2:15. The scene shifts back to Ahiru at 2:18, then once more to Fakir at 2:23. Fakir has his moment of realization at 2:31 and falls out of his chair onto the floor at 2:38, scrambling out the door to find Ahiru. Fakir calls for Ahiru at 2:49, before Ahiru runs past him; Fakir has to duck as the eagle flies after her at 2:54. Fakir first protects Ahiru from the eagle with the tree branch at 3:08 at the first "Hey!" chant. Ahiru is seized at 3:14, and the portal is first opened at 3:21. Fakir trips at 3:25 and falls at 3:26, the eagle and Ahiru disappear through the lessening portal at 3:27 and the portal closes as the piece ends at 3:28.

The piece "Moondance" is by Nightwish.