For those (
aishuu,
toothycat, and most likely others) who would like me to write something in a fandom they know and enjoy (IE, "K-chan, can you write something other than Transformers for a bit?" ^_-)... a PT story. ^_^ From the "Kingdom" arc that contains "Peace of Heart" and "Enchantment."
Cygnus
by K. Stonham
prereleased 12th December 2007
Hakuchou was late for school... again. This wasn't a surprise to her classmates, and it had ceased being a surprise to her teachers as well. Miss Schlange merely sighed and lowered her hand as she heard the door to the classroom creak open and a pair of shoes start sneakily creeping toward the desk in the back corner of the classroom. The she turned and, striking with deadly speed, flung her chalk at the tardy student. The red-headed girl collapsed backward in a flap of gray uniform, landing on the wooden floor with a graceless thud.
"Ow," Hakuchou muttered, sitting up and rubbing at her forehead where the chalk had nailed it. The entire class was looking at her, most tittering, amused. Her cousin, Prince Rabe, just rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the notes he was taking.
"Miss Hakuchou," the teacher hissed, "this is the fourth time this week you've been late! Do you understand that class starts when the bells ring?"
"Yes, ma'am," Hakuchou muttered miserably, dragging herself up and into the chair at her desk.
"I am assigning you detention," the teacher said, sinuously drawing a large "D" in the air with her right hand. "And I will be having a conference with your parents about this, regardless of who they are. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," Hakuchou muttered miserably, staring at the wood grain of her desk.
"Good." The teacher produced another stick of chalk out of nowhere and returned to her writing. "Now, regarding the ascension of Duke Reynard to the throne in 1283...."
Hakuchou kept staring at the surface of her desk until a folded white square appeared there as if by magic. She blinked and looked up, but no one was glancing her way. Unfolding it, she saw written in Rabe's unmistakeable handwriting "Ignore the Snake. She's all fang and no venom. I'll meet up with you after detention."
Smiling slightly, Hakuchou folded the note away and slipped it into a skirt pocket, pulling out a pen and some paper, starting to take down notes against the next quiz.
It wasn't easy, she thought, being who she was. Everyone in the school knew her, the same way they knew Rabe and his brother and sisters, the same way they'd known who her older sister and all seven of her older brothers were. She was the king and queen's niece; daughter of the King's Champion knight, a writer, dancer, and instructor at the Academy; and daughter of the lovely, lovely Ahiru, a dancer so famous she was known by a second, stage, name: Tutu.
With parents like that, Hakuchou thought glumly, it wouldn't have mattered if she was good at anything. She could never live up to them.
If only, she thought sometimes, Mama wasn't so lovely and graceful and Papa wasn't so clever. If only they were normal parents. If only her brothers were normal brothers, not each more perfect and competent than the last. If only her sister wasn't as shyly elegant and talented as Mama. She leaned her head to the side, resting it on a hand, burying her fingers in her red swan's-down hair.
If only her family, Aunt Rue and Uncle Mytho and all four of her cousins included, wasn't so strange and mysterious and perfect.
If only.
Fairytales were made up of "if onlies."
She looked out the window by her desk, at the snow that had started to fall again, each snowflake a dancer. She could see Mama and Papa dancing too, and the king and queen, and her seven brothers, one sister, and four cousins all dancing as well. They would be the snowflakes. And she... she would be the icicle dripping slowing drips of water onto the ground below, like a running nose. No matter what Mama said about her clever sewing hands and the way she could turn flax into silken thread, the fact remained that Hakuchou didn't fit in to a brave family of knights and dancers and poets and singers. No matter how much Papa stroked her hair and said she reminded him the most of Mama when she was younger, Hakuchou couldn't believe him.
She was a duckling, in a family of swans.
*~*~*
Author's Note: A generation further on. Hakuchou (meaning "swan" in Japanese) and Rabe (meaning "raven" in German) are respectively the youngest members of their families. If you think you're seeing hints of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wild Swans" here, you would be seeing correctly.... ^_^ And Fakir is dead-on in saying that Hakuchou is the most like an adolescent Ahiru. For that, I think, he probably loves her the best of all his children.