Disclaimer: In the ashes sits a maid, in a house both stern and staid. Oh! Wait! This is a different story. Ah, well. I don't own either.
Vignette Nine: Feder und Rabe
Tell me a story.
The command bounced around his head. It had started early that morning and continued on throughout breakfast with Karon. Impatient and incessant.
Tell me a story.
It had slowed on his walk to school. Only repeating every few steps.
Tell me a story.
In his classes it had risen to an angry roar. Repeating endlessly at a volume he didn't know his head could contain.
Tell me a story.
He wanted to write so badly.
Tell me a story.
Ahiru had asked him not to write anything sad.
Tell me a story.
He wanted to know what had happened to Mytho. In the years spent in the story. So much time had been lost it seemed. Only six months to Fakir but Mytho... it had been sixteen years for Mytho. And even if it was sad, even if he felt remorse over the best friend he hadn't done better by, he still wanted to know. More than just that: he wanted to know what happened next.
Tell me a story.
The command wasn't meant for him. He was in-fact the one giving the command. A command to Mytho, a command to Rue and yes, a command to Ahiru.
Now, Princess Tutu, Tell me a story!
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The door to the remedial ballet class burst open.
"I'm sorry I'm late!" The pink-orange haired girl bowed low.
"Oh, my dear, you are flushed." A fellow student in the remedial class offered her not a hand but a rose. "For the cruel school to force such a young and beautiful maiden to exert such effort to attend! It's more than I could bear! It is a crime! And I, as one who is qualified to be a true Prince will not stand for it!"
(A/N: That's right readers! It's Femio. Don't kill me...)
The teacher clapped her paws. "That will be quite enough, Mr. Femio."
Ahiru gazed across the room to see that the teacher was a slender cat with sleek white fur and long elegant whiskers. She turned towards Ahiru.
"You are Mis. Ahiru, are you not." Ahiru nodded. "See to it that you are not late for class again or else I shall have my ex-husband marry you!"
Ahiru immediately straitened. "Y-yes, ma'am!"
"You may take your place at the bar." She licked her paws then rubbed her face. "Start in first position, then move to second position keeping your back strait..."
This all seemed very familiar...
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Autor never thought that when his piano teacher (Penguin-sensei) asked him to fill in on one of the ballet lessons that it would be the only one that mattered to him. The lesson for the advanced class. The class that contained Rue. This was it. This was his chance. He may not be moving the story any more, he may be just a pawn in Hoffnung's evil scheme, but he was also still in love with Rue. He didn't care that she was older now, having an older girlfriend could be cool. He didn't care that she'd had a child, she was still as beautiful as that day she'd fallen across his path, that day she'd pressed her head to his chest and told him she could hear his heart. That day he'd professed his undying love for her!
She had said that it wasn't true. That he didn't really love her, that he couldn't. But he was sure, now more than ever, that he loved Rue more than anything. But she was out of his reach, out of his league, unattainable. And that realization just made his heart break as he watched her dance. She was so beautiful, so elegant. The moderato he was playing didn't do her justice. So he changed it.An andante piece to match the soft elegance of her countenance: Gymnopedie No. 3 by Eric Satie.
Rue faltered in her steps when the music changed suddenly. This song... she knew this song very well, it had played in the background of her mind so many time back when... when she was Princess Kraehe. She peered over her shoulder at the pianist. Light streaming in through the window was reflected off his glasses making it impossible to see his eyes, but the face did look familiar somehow. She just couldn't place where she'd seen him before.
"Mr.Autor!" Cat-sensei interrupted the hypnotic melody. "You were supposed to be playing No. 14 Scene: Moderato! Is there a problem here? Did you bring the wrong sheet music?"
Autor straitened in his seat on the piano bench. "No, sir. I simply was trying to match the music to the ballerina's uneic elegance and grace." He was still speaking to the teacher but he looked at her when he said "elegance and grace". That was when the angle of light changed and she saw his eyes, so tender and affectionate. Was he one of her stalkers then? Like that Malen girl from the drawing devision. No. No stalker would associate that song with her, he had to have seen her a Kraehe. But the only person she had approached as Kraehe was that ridiculous oaf of a false Prince Femio. So who then...?
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Fakir sat on the steps of the gazebo behind the school. His writing tablet was resting comfortably over his left arm and the quill pen was held by his right had equally as comfortably resting on the black page. Fakir himself, however, was not comfortable. His hand would move as if to write but then tremble and return to it's resting position.
Tell me a story.
"Hear the voice that is voiceless, she the shape that is shapeless." He chanted softly.
He wanted to write. So very badly did he want to write. Ahiru had asked him not to write anymore sad things. But happiness and sadness was in the eye of the reader. It was variable, relative.
"Hear the voice that is voiceless, she the shape that is shapeless."
Mytho's shard of hope was what made Ahiru human.
"Don't write anymore sad things, Fakir." Those were her words.
Mytho and Rue had had their chance at a happy ending and had blown it. Ahiru had be cursed to be a duck forever and she had accepted that fate smilingly. No one deserved a happy ending more than she did and it had been denied her. If... Mytho didn't get the shard back...
"Don't write anymore sad things, Fakir."
If Mytho didn't take back the shard of hope then she... then she could live as a human girl.
"Don't write anymore sad things, Fakir."
Tell me a story.
"Hear the voice that is voiceless, she the shape that is shapeless."
It was maddening! All the word! The voices, HIS voice! All swirling around in his head he didn't know what he wanted from the story or what the story wanted from him.
"Fakir?" He looked up at the sound of his name to see big innocent eyes of Ahiru full of concern and looking at him. "Are you okay, Fakir? Do you have a headache? You were pulling at your hair."
"I'm fine." He lied. "It's just that writing is still pretty hard." A hollow smile.
She smiled back, a warm comforting smile full of light and joy that made his heart due a grand jete deep in his chest. "Can I read what you've got?" Without waiting to hear his reply she slid the writing tablet off of his lap and on to hers. She frowned when she saw the page.
"I haven't actually written anything since last night." He confessed.
"Oh." Her frown deepened. "So this is a journal then?"
"Huh?" He took the page back from her. Written haphazardly over the page in his own had writing was the sentence: "The words swirled and swam around the young authors head as he pondered his own conflict of duty, friendship and love."
"What the heck is this B.S.?" He gawked at the last word "love". Ahiru had read that. Did she understand it's meaning or was she to dense to understand even that obvious a statement? And when exactly did he right this, anyway? His thoughts were interrupted, however, by the announcement of another cast member's entrance.
"Princess Tutu." Hoffnung's voice was strong and commanding. "I'll take that shard of my father's heart now."
Ahiru placed a hand protectively over the ruby gem. "Hoff-chan." She began. "You don't really want to do this. Rue-chan and Mytho both love you very much so-"
"Shut-up!" An expression of unfocused anger contorted his beautiful face. "Don't talk about things you couldn't possibly understand! I want that shard of my father's heart and I will take it. By force if necessary!" At that last statement his blue and white school uniform melted away to be replaced by the black feathered tights and tunic of a Raven.
"Fakir." Ahiru said without looking at him, her voice full of serious determination. "Please write now."
The stone around her neck glowed it's vibrant red as she was enveloped in the familiar pink and silver and gold shojou sparkles. And when the golden egg that had solidified around her dissolved Ahiru was no longer standing there. Instead there was Princess Tutu.
She twirled her hands above her head then extended her palm to Hoffnung. "Please, Hoff-chan, wont you come and dance with me?"
"No, Princess Tutu." He grabbed her up-turned hand by the wrist. "YOU will come and dance with ME." He pulled her in close to himself so that her ear was almost pressed against his chest. "Dance with me, Princess Tutu. Love me, Princess Tutu."
"AHIRU!" Fakir shouted across the tree inclosed lawn. He bit the inside of his cheek as he desperately fought the urge to rush out and pull her away from danger. She had asked him to write, so he would write.
Fakir sat back down, he hadn't been aware of even standing up, and pulled the writing tablet back over his lap. "Hear the voice that is voiceless, see the shape that is shapeless." His mantra. "Ahiru..."
SPACE
Princess Tutu danced slowly and elegantly to the pace set by her Raven partner.
"Why do you fight so hard for the heart, Princess Tutu?" He whispered in her ear. "What is it that drives you? Duty? Friendship? Love? They're all frivolous things in the end."
"I act only according to the Prince's will." She replied mechanically. It was a question she had been struggling with since regaining her human for and didn't yet know the answer to. Did she still love Mytho? Or were her feelings for him false all along? Did she dawn the guise of Princess Tutu for his sake, Rue's sake, Fakir's or her own? Questions she asked herself in the late hours of the night or early hours of the morning. Questions she could never answer for herself.
"'The Prince's will', you say." He scoffed. "Well, the Prince who's will you so eagerly acted on before is now a King, I am the Prince of the story now, Princess Tutu." He pulled her face close to his and gazed into her big blue eyes. "How about acting according to my will." He leaned down to ki---
SPACE
Fakir scratched that last sentence out before even finishing it. Absolutely NOT! Under no circumstances was ANYONE going to kiss Ahiru but HIM!
SPACE
He leaned down as if to kiss her but at the crucial moment the klutz that was Ahiru surfaced in Tutu's dancing and her pink toe shoe clad foot tangled itself in Hoffnung's feet, sending the Raven Prince spiraling downward to contact the ground with a resounding TUMP.
The ebony feather clad divo glared across the lawn at the knight whom had cast away his sword in favor of the pen with such anger and resentment in his eyes that Princess Tutu feared the pages might ignite in their writer's hands.
SPACE
Fakir paused again in his writing to meet Hoffnung's icy gaze. He glared back, fully accepting the unspoken challenge. No one would have Ahiru in any of her incarnations but him. Especially not an evil narcissist who's only real interest in her was the jewel around her neck.
Hoffnung stood and smirked maliciously.
"Trying to save face." Fakir thought.
"I shall with draw for now." And with a swirl of dark wind he was gone, leaving only a single black feather in the place where he had stood.
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Autor had waited outside the girls' locker room for almost an hour and just as he was ready to give up she emerged. The beautiful Miss Rue with her long, curly black hair and immaculate school uniform. She was the very picture of perfection as far as he was concerned.
His courage failed him when he tried to approach her. But he HAD to speak to her, if for no other reason than to apologize.
"Rue-san." He began.
"Yes?" She blinked at him. "You're the pianist from class."
He blushed. He'd never noticed before just how much "pianist" sounded like... well you can figure it out. "Y-yes." He confirmed her statement. "I wanted to apologize to you though."
"That's alright. I agree that sometimes the music in class is a little lacking in the entertainment category. But the purpose is for us to learn our respective crafts and with any form of study there will be boring parts."
"Yeah." He agreed. "No wait. That not what I... what I mean is... um... I don't know how to say this..."
She smiled a sympathetic smile.
He forgot his sins in that smile. "Can I walk you back to your dorm?" He asked.
Now her smile was humorous. "I warn you: I'm taken."
"I know." He said without thinking.
She smiled a third time and passed him her books held together by a leather strap. "You know about the 'five feet' rule, right?"
He gawked.
Fin for now...
Thanx to:
Crimson Rogue: You saw more depth in my OC than I even thought of. I appreciate the complements, but I don't deserve them. And I would hardly call my story "Imchanting" But I'm glad you like it all the same.
Fish Head The 3rd and Co.: I'm more than happy to give you more ideas for Autor's character, I myself was actually disappointed by the lack of Autor jealousy towards Mytho fan fictions.
James Birdsong: "fascinating"? between you and Crimson Rogue, I'm going to get a swelled head over this.
Special Thanx to:
Fish Head The 3rd and Co. for adding me to their favorite stories, and favorite authors