Autor slowly walked over to the bench at the back of the room and dropped down onto it. Fakir was once again seated at his desk, writing her story. Autor could see a variety of emotions drift onto Fakir’s face as he wrote – fear, pain, sorrow, but also love and hope.
He really does care about her, Autor thought to himself, smiling faintly. If he thought about it, it was strange, feeling attachment like that to a duck. But, when you live in a town controlled by stories, the idea that she wasn’t just a duck didn’t seem so strange.
Then, Fakir called her name, and tossing his pen aside, ran through the rubble that used to be the door to the room and out into the square. So this was it, then? The story had ended? Autor supposed to himself that he should get up off the bench at take a look outside, but for the moment, he simply wanted to rest. He had never imagined a week ago (had it only been that long?) when the grumpy descendant of Drosselmeyer walked into the music room and confronted him that this was how the story would end. Oh, he had planned to help Fakir from the beginning, but the version of helping he had seen in his mind’s eye involved something more along the lines of helping to hone Fakir’s mind and telling him what was the right ink to use. He certainly didn’t imagine throwing himself at a man carrying a large axe and tackling him through the remains of his door.
The door. His poor, poor door. He looked mournfully at the pieces of wood scatted around the room. He supposed he was the one that was going to be responsible for fixing it.
And then there was the problem of the book man. He couldn’t just leave him there, or it’d be rather awkward when the book man finally woke up. But where could he take him? To a doctor, perhaps…
Well, he’d worry about that later. The man would be out cold for a few hours more, at the very least. Autor hadn’t realized until he sat down just how tired he was, and had been for days. Fakir probably had it worse (Autor had allowed himself to sleep a few hours during Fakir’s training), but it wasn’t as though he could sleep very well with all the excitement going on, anyway. His defense against the book man had used up more energy than he thought, as well. He really ought to go outside and check on Fakir and Duck, but…it wouldn’t be so bad to lie here for just a little bit, would it?
Autor slumped on the bench, eyes half-open. He noticed Fakir’s discarded quill on the desk across from him. Or, rather, a white blur he knew was Fakir’s quill—his glasses were still somewhere among the debris scattered on the floor.
Pushing aside the thought of the debris once again, Autor’s mind wandered to the image of Fakir bent over the story, tears streaming down his face, saying softly to himself the words that were flowing out of his pen and onto the paper. It was funny, Autor thought to himself. He had never thought of Fakir as the crying type. Nor had he ever even considered the possibility that to write you needed to find inspiration in something…or someone.
And he certainly wouldn’t have picked a duck as an inspiration if he had. It was strange. Well, the entire town was strange. This entire situation was strange. Maybe life in general was just strange, for all he knew.
He closed his eyes. “It must be nice,” he muttered softly, “to have someone that inspires you like that. Even if she is just a duck.”
“I wish I had someone like that.”
The clock struck midnight.
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31_days2007-03-31 02:21 am
