Title: The Boy Who Had Been Raised by Swans
Characters: Yuuta, Mizuki, Ryouma
Summary: Swans can be difficult to live with.
Notes: For Bedtimepuri on LJ. Sort of "The Ugly Duckling" and sort of not. Kind of more reminiscent of Lynn's take on "Puss in Boots" (http:// community. livejournal. com/ almondinflower/ than anything else, but maybe not as mindbendingly awesome as that fic is. 2154 words.

The Boy Who Had Been Raised by Swans

Once upon a time, there was a boy who had been raised by a family of swans, and he was very angry about it. He had good reason for it: swans are very lovely to look at from a distance, but they are also very difficult to live with, especially when one is not oneself a swan. Swans have their own ways and reasons for those ways, and they are often downright perplexing to the outsider--even the outsider raised among them.

This is not to say that the swans treated the boy who was not a swan unkindly. Indeed, they did quite the opposite--they loved their boy who was not a swan a great deal, and often went to some pains to tell him so. But the boy was not a swan, and the ways of boys are mysterious to those who are not themselves boys, and sometimes the things that the swans did for their boy did not translate very well.

After all, boys, like swans, can be difficult to live with, too.

Especially this particular boy, for he was a very angry boy, for reasons that were, perhaps, not entirely due to the difficulties of living with swans, and were more related to the fact that his family of swans were unfailingly supportive of him and all his endeavors to become a swan, too, and his secret sick suspicion that they were only humoring him after all. After all, who had ever heard of a boy turning into a swan?

But the boy tried, and tried, and tried some more. He tried to swim as gracefully as his mother did, and to arch his neck as his sister did, and to fly as his brother did. But all his floundering about in the water only gave him head colds (which made him angry), and all the attempts to make his neck longer and more graceful only made it hurt (and that made him angrier), and no matter how he flapped his arms, they did not turn into the thunder of wings--it just made his shoulders hurt (and that made him sick at heart, which made him angriest of all). Even so, his family continued to encourage him, because they loved him and didn't see why he shouldn't become like them with enough effort and time. Who wouldn't want to be a swan, after all?

And besides, sometimes love makes people, and swans, very foolish indeed.

Eventually the boy's failures made him so angry and so heartsick that the only thing he knew how to do was run away. This was not so foolish a thing for him to do as it seems, perhaps, because all his life, the only thing he had known was his family's home and their love and his anger that he was not like them. He had not known that there were other people like him, and so running away was, possibly, rather wise of him.

And there were many people like him (though he hadn't known that when he had decided to leave). In fact, the boy who had been raised by swans met one very soon after he'd left his family home, and stared at him with frank astonishment. "Who are you?" he asked this strange creature, who was decked out in fine clothes and preened nearly as much as his sister did.

"I am a hunter," the other announced, grandly, even though this was, perhaps, just the tiniest bit of an exaggeration. But it was mostly true. In principle. Well, intent counts for something, does it not?

The boy who had been raised by swans did not know what a hunter was, really, though he knew from his mother's lore that hunters were very dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. In his anger and his heartsickness, he did something that would have been very foolish indeed, had the hunter, in fact, been a real hunter after all. "Oh," he said, "can I be a hunter, too?"

The boy who was not really a hunter at all looked him over, and said, doubtfully, "You can carry my bags, maybe. Do you know anything to hunt around here?"

"Well, not really," said the boy who had been raised by swans, because he really didn't know any better, "there's just my family of swans."

The hunter's eyes sparked with interest. "Your family of swans?" he repeated.

"But I'm angry with them right now," said the boy (who was angry, and not sure he really wanted to be the boy who had been raised by swans any more). "In fact," he added, defiantly, though he didn't quite know who he was defying, "I don't think I ever really want to see them again."

"And why is that?" the hunter asked, curious, and wondering whether it might be possible to hunt these swans after all.

And the boy who had been raised by swans told him the whole story of it, though he left out the parts about being heartsick over knowing that he would never himself be a swan, or how much he loved his family in spite of that, because those things were embarrassing, private things that he only half-understood himself. Family is a very complicated thing, after all, and sometimes a whole lifetime isn't enough to understand everything about them.

The hunter was a very clever boy himself, and thought he saw a way to make this work out for the both of them. He shouldn't be blamed for this, too much, because he was not working from a complete set of facts, and besides, he had his own family heritage that he wished to overcome. But that is another story, and one that doesn't need to be told here. "Well," he said, when the boy who had been raised by swans finished his story, "how would you like to get back at them, and show them that you don't need them any more?"

And the boy, who had been raised by swans and who didn't really know what it was to be a hunter, said, "Yes, I would like that."

"Then," said the hunter, "show me the way to the swans."

So the boy who had been raised by swans did. "I don't want to see them," he said, when they were close to his family's home.

"I'm sure you don't have to," the hunter told him, magnanimous in his eagerness to finally have something to hunt. "I can find my way from here."

So the boy who had been raised by swans stayed behind, with all the hunter's bags, and amused himself by investigating all the things that the hunter felt were necessary to carry around with him. He had not even begun to exhaust all the possibilities of this pastime before he heard the sounds of an unholy racket coming from his family's lake.

The boy who had been raised by swans was only a boy, but he dropped what he was holding (a fine shirt, with careful embroidery at the throat and the cuffs) and went running to see what was wrong, because he was foolish, perhaps, and a bit naïve, but he was a good boy nonetheless.

Now, swans are very beautiful to look at, but they are other things, too--extraordinarily strong, for one thing, and really quite vicious, for another. They are fully capable of breaking a man's arm when roused, which is precisely what the boy's brother had done to the hunter by the time the boy himself arrived on the scene. His mother and sister were trumpeting their alarm, loudly, and the hunter himself was yelling, and the boy's brother was quiet as he angled for the hunter's other arm.

Things might have gone very badly for the hunter indeed, if all the commotion hadn't attracted another person. This person demanded, loudly, "What is the meaning of all this?"

It was a prince--in fact, it was the very prince whose father owned the forest in which all of these events were occurring. The prince eyed them all from the back of his horse, now, looking rather cross about this interruption to his afternoon ride.

Even swans must recognize princes, so the boy's brother left off terrorizing the hunter, and he and the rest of the boy's family lowered their heads on their long, graceful necks, for this is how swans bow to royalty. "Your Highness," said the boy's brother, "this hunter tried to shoot me."

"You did what?" exclaimed the boy who had been raised by swans, horrified by his sudden understanding of what a hunter actually was.

The prince, who was a practical sort of creature, as princes go, ignored him and addressed himself to the hunter. "Do you have permission to hunt on royal land?" he asked, severe.

The hunter groaned, because broken arms hurt a great deal, and said, piteously, "I didn't know I was on royal land."

"That's no excuse," the prince said, sternly. "You're very lucky that I found you, and not my father. He doesn't like poachers at all. In fact, he usually has them hanged by the neck until they are dead."

The hunter whimpered, possibly because of the avid interest in this possibility that the swans were showing.

But the prince went on. "I like banishment," he said. "Go away, and never let yourself be seen in this kingdom again. If you do, I'll give you back to the swans."

The hunter was a clever boy, and said his thanks for the prince's mercy rather hastily, and then retreated rapidly.

Only then did the prince look at the boy who had been raised by swans, and he asked, "Who are you?"

"I don't know," the boy said, looking up at him. "Not a swan. And not a hunter."

The prince scoffed at that. "Of course you're not a swan. You're a boy. Who ever heard of a boy who was a swan? This isn't a fairy tale."

The boy who had been raised by swans was disappointed to hear this, even though he already knew that it was true. "But what am I supposed to be?" he asked, a little desperately.

The prince looked at him, and took pity on him, in the careless way that princes have. "That's something everyone has to figure out for themselves. But you already have a start: you know that you're not a swan, and that you don't want to be a hunter."

"That's not really very helpful," the boy told him.

The prince shrugged. "That's more help than most of us get," he said. Then he nudged his heels against his horse's ribs, and rode away.

That left the boy who had been raised by swans looking at his family, and they at him. Then his brother said, a little sadly, "You could keep trying."

"But it's never going to work," the boy said, also sad, because it hurts to let go of dreams, even the ones that are clearly impossible.

"Are you going away again?" his sister asked.

"I think I have to," the boy said, and bit his lip. "But I'll come back, and visit."

"Just don't forget that we love you," his mother told him.

The boy ducked his head, because this was embarrassing, but said, "I won't. I love you, too."

And then he took his leave of them, so that he could go and find out what he was going to be.

It wasn't long before he came upon the hunter, who was struggling with all his bags and his broken arm, and looking very miserable doing it. The boy looked at him, silently, until the hunter (who didn't really want to be a hunter any more, after all), snapped, "What?"

"Do you need some help?" asked the boy who had been raised by swans.

The boy who had been a hunter stared at him. "...I tried to kill your brother," he said.

"And he broke your arm," the boy who had been raised by swan said, because swans are practical creatures, and that is a quality that they can share with boys. "You're not going to do it again, so you're even, I guess."

The boy who had been a hunter looked at him, and then said, grudgingly, "I suppose you can help, if you want."

The boy who had been raised by swans was already starting to understand that this really meant that the other boy was too proud to say, "Yes, please." So he took the things that the former hunter couldn't manage, and said, "I'm going to find out what I want to be. Will you come with me, and help me get started?"

"I suppose, if you insist," said the boy who had been a hunter. So they set off, and went on to have many adventures together.

But those are another story altogether, for another time.

the end

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