Ahiru wondered why she had stopped herself...why they'd both stopped dancing. What about Fakir suddenly was familiar...more familiar than Mytho had ever been to her. She looked down and twiddled her fingers a bit, feeling a small blush. Maybe there was more to this story...the Black Swan sure seemed to lead her to think so...
Fakir looked at her. He wasn't put off exactly by this feeling. He cared for Ahiru...he'd guessed so since he'd written that sentence in his notebook and she'd appeared human in the forrest...but something was changing. Ahiru was...different at times. And he wasn't sure why...but something about her drew her in...even more so then before, but today...at times she almost repelled him. The Ahiru today seemed almost like Rue when she was the Raven Princess...confident...overly confident and rather impersonal to others. Now, she was softer, meeker and...like the old Ahiru he remembered. Tomorrow was a practice class...maybe then they could work out the pas-de-deux so it always felt more like...this.
"I'm going to go to bed now." Fakir said. "Tomorrow we'll work on it some more...don't stress so much Ahiru."
She nodded and watched him go back inside. Could she even sleep here? Would she not turn into a swan again when the sun rose? She had to do something about this...she just had too.
Ahiru woke up as the sun hit her pillow, recalling a strange dream she had had. She was alone on a lake looking at a Prince, she couldn't see the Prince's face...but knew she was looking at a Prince. She was also Princess Tutu...and danced between the trees, looking at the Prince from afar. The Prince seemed to be amused with another...another girl who also seemed familiar but she could not place. She felt her heart drop, almost as if she'd hoped for herself to be the Princes' muse...when she'd felt another's eyes on her - and thats when she woke up.
It was a long dream...it all had to be...yesterday could not have been real...the swan...the dance on the lake...her black swan twin...it just had to be.
She yawned and tried to rub her eyes. She then looked at her hands in slight disbelief. White feathers. She looked at her reflection on the window sill. A swan. A blue eyed swan with a small white feather that stuck up on her head like she'd once had as a duck. She needed to leave now...Fakir would wake and wonder what could have caused a swan to sleep in Ahiru's bed. She reluctantly opened the window and flew out, just in time to see the sunlight hit the black swan's wings, as she became Ahira and entered the cabin as if she'd never left.
She had to do something about this.
Maybe she would say Swan in front of Fakir.
He'd have to believe her if she turned into a swan in front of his eyes.
He'd just have to.
"You know...I'm really not in any mood to practice more." Fakir said as he left the room after class.
"Why?" Ahira asked.
"Its...just...it's not like last night. You're trying too hard or something... and your not dancing like you did before. How did you magically become perfect for the Odile part? Last night you could barely perform such a dark role and..."
"But Master- I mean the Director likes it..." Ahira said, trying to become more meek. She was made to become her victim's evil twin or dark half. Being like Ahiru wasn't easy...plus Master made it clear he didn't want them to recall their past...or not at least too soon.
"Fine. But...I think you need to dance how you like. I'm sorry but it just wasn't the same." Fakir wondered why the hell it bugged him so much. He shouldn't be this angry but it didn't fit. "I'm going to the library. Just leave me there...I need some time to...think. Sorry." He always hated cutting Ahiru off but this Director-pleasing stuff was affecting her...or something...and not in a good way.
He walked off and left Ahira standing in the middle of the courtyard. Ahiru was watching as a swan...Fakir was mad at her...and now she barely knew why. She just had to make sure she wouldn't do any damage if she said 'Swan' to him and revealed the secret. She couldn't afford messing Fakir up in this.
She watched Ahira walk back towards the forrest and followed her. What else was her evil doppelgänger up to? She landed in the forrest and noticed she'd lost sight of her.
"Following me again? You know the more you meddle the more you're going to make Master angry."
Ahiru turned to see Ahira staring at her, hand on her hip.
Ahiru honked at her and to her surprise she seemed to understand what she was saying. She continued to yell in frustration. Ahira was making Fakir dislike her and she didn't like it. "I'm going to show Fakir! I'm going to say 'Swan' and turn right in front of him! I don't care."
"You should care. Believe me it would have been in your best interest to just keep that to yourself...but on the other hand...if you want to speed up your fate...if you want to put Fakir on the line...go right ahead." Ahira then disappeared into the darkness leaving Ahiru to her own thoughts. Ahira would tell Master Kuro about this...he wouldn't want Fakir knowing...not yet.
Fakir sat in the library. Ahiru wasn't herself once again...or she was...but whatever was making her change he wasnt sure he could stand it. What he did need to figure out was the reason the he couldn't push the idea that this black swan feather didn't mean anything. Plus...last night he'd found a letter shoved in the door right around the time Ahiru left, that he'd kept to himself. Prince Mytho wrote to him...and their kingdom apparently was seeing many more swans about their skies. He'd still hadn't written off that white swan's honking at Ahiru the day before as nothing. Swans...everything about swans.
"You know, I thought I was a book worm...but I've seen you at the library quite a bit."
Fakir turned to see Autor. He really felt weird knowing Autor had helped him so much with Drosselmeyer before and had no recollection. Maybe he would know more about that notebook...
"Just a break from dance practice."
"That new Directors kind of hard eh? Though he seems to favour you and Ahiru." Autor assumed. "He's got quite a thing for that Swan Lake ballet."
Fakir nodded. He did...swans...once again. Maybe his only answers really lied with the puppet master himself. "Did you say you knew where that notebook was that Drosselmeyer kept?"
"Still hung up on him? I actually know quite a few things about Drosselmeyer myself...on that topic though that...I can only guess a few spots..." Autor adjusted his glasses.
"His family history was a bit entangled in mine...if you want to put it that way." Fakir said, not wanting to reveal his own lineage just yet. "Do you know where they could be?"
"Entangled huh? Well his house was located not far from your own cabin and your father's shop...closer to the edge of the forrest. Most of his books however weren't kept...his stories were re-written by others and adapted because of his rumored powers of being able to turn story into reality." Autor said.
"So what happened to all of his books?"
"Well his notebook was always seen with Drosselmeyer...and his other stories were burned in the middle of the town...not one ash left apparently because of the superstitions of it all...but it was said he was buried at what was considered his favorite place to write...besides his writing desk."
"Where?" Fakir had no clue Drosselmeyer had another place to write.
"Well it was only a pond back then according to the maps, so he was buried beside it, even though people swore they'd never see the day he'd truly die. Now...I believe...or at least have noticed most of his stories actually incorporated a lake into their plot..."
"You're saying he was buried...at the lake?"
"I'm assuming...more under the lake by now. But the townspeople first torched his stories and bombarded his house while he was at the pond finding inspiration for a new story. Why? You want to go digging up some remains?" Autor looked at him rather suspiciously, tilting his head up.
"No...no...just trying to figure out what happened. Curiousity..."
"You know what they say though... 'curiosity killed the cat'." Autor said as he walked away and shrugged rather dismissively.
Fakir wondered if that was just some coincidental warning Autor had given him or Drosselmeyer was actually warning him to stay away from his bones...either way...he'd have to check and see if the notebook was really with Drosselmeyer when his hands were chopped off and he was buried. He could imagine it almost... Drosselmeyer running from the mad crowd, his own house already invaded...his only possession a small book in his coat, that Fakir hoped to find years later, un-damaged at the bottom of a pond that might now be the same lake he'd found Ahiru at...that ran who know how deep? However tonight...tonight he might just have to go for a swim...
Director Kugamaii heard a knock at his door and began to wonder how competent his creation of the dark swan had been...doppelgängers where such tricky things. However now that he'd done enough homework to find away to get his boy back...he'd have to trust this bird would want to be human enough to complete her tasks.
"Come in."
He wasn't surprised to see Ahira standing at the door. "Master, we may have a dilemma."
"Even as a human you cannot fix these things for yourself? What? Has the Knight fallen for the dark side of his Princess?" Kuro speculated.
"No, he is indeed repelled and put astray by it, like you had predicted, but the Swan herself...she is more than helpless...she plans on revealing herself by saying the word 'Swan' in front of Fakir tonight."
"Ah, so the little Princess in this world has become more gutsy than the last time we'd seen the infatuated ballerina. All the same, if I really were to worry about her revealing our plan to soon to the Knight then I guess there would be a need for another spell...she is really quite troublesome isn't she..."
"I make a much better Ahiru." The dark twin pouted.
"And that we will see..." Kuro said, challenging her to do her job right. "On the other hand leave it to me, the word 'swan' might be a word we might need to take out of her vocabulary..." Kuro looked at his fist as a red swirl glowed around his hand.