A/N: This 'story' is actually a collection of (what will be, if I finish it) 31 stories centered around Autor/Aotoa from Princess Tutu. I'm doing this as part of the 31Days challenge on Livejournal (31days. in which every day we're assigned a certain theme to write on. HOPEFULLY I'll be able to do them all about Autor (my third (?) favorite character, and sadly underappreciated), although if I start slowing down on inspiration for him, I might make it into a general Princess Tutu challenge.

Before every 'chapter' (story), I'll leave the format from the community to introduce it. Why? Because I'm lazy, and it's easy to start it off that way. Plus, it includes the theme--which might help with understanding where I'm going with a piece.

Oh, and a quick disclaimer: I don't own Princess Tutu, nor am I affliated with it in any way. I'm just a crazy Autor fangirl. (Run for your lives!)

Okay, enough yapping from me. I hope you enjoy this, everyone!

Title: The Blank Page
Day/Theme: March 23. I'd want you beautiful and pale, the way I've dreamed you were
Series: Princess Tutu
Character/Pairing: Autor
Rating: G

Autor sat down at his desk, smoothing out the paper in front of him. The desk was, of course, a perfect replica of Drosselmeyer's, the exact type of wood measured down to the exact millimeter. He had even left in the flaw in the upper-left leg of the desk that caused it to slightly wobble as he pressed down on it.
And the paper, of course, was made from ten-year-old reeds. It had taken him a lot of searching to find a paper-maker in the town that could tell him how old the reeds were, but it didn't matter now that he had found it. The paper was smooth and clean, untouched.

This was the moment he had been dreaming of since he was a child.

He nervously adjusted his frog-shaped inkwell so that it was just the right distance from the paper. He couldn't be too careful. He had worked too hard, researched too long, to mess up this moment now. He had heard the tree sigh, he knew he had. He only needed a little more evidence to prove his ancestry. He knew he could do this.

He carefully took off the lid of the ink well, dipped his duck-feather quill into it, and…stared at the blank page before him.

Just a few moments before, he had so many words he had wanted to write. He thought they would come tumbling out of him, and he would be unable to stop himself from writing until it was done. He would forgo sleep and food for days if he had to, just to finish the story.
But now, he stared at the blank page in front of him, and it seemed as though it dared him to put his pathetic words onto the page. Go ahead, it said, destroy this perfectly white surface with your attempt at a story.

He swallowed and took his quill out of the inkwell, slowly reaching out with his hand to bring it closer to the page. His hand hovered over it, the ink slowly dripping to the tip of the pen.
He jerked his hand back right before a drop of ink fell on the paper, causing the ink to land on his coat sleeve instead. The paper lay on the desk as blank as it had always been.

With a frown, he put the quill back in the ink well and got up from the desk.
"Perhaps I need to drink some tea first."