....she has no idea whether that counts as a dramatically appropriate moment. Maybe it does? But maybe it won't work and she'll just end up being herself and then he'll know she was following him and he's kind of scary right now -

She'll just hide behind this other tree for a bit and see if he maybe calms down on his own?

Whatever language he's speaking, to himself in a furious undertone, it isn't German anymore.

Calm does not seem to be the direction in which he is headed.

"Now, now, now," says a voice from nowhere in particular, momentarily audible only to Duck. "That's hardly conduct befitting the heroine of this story, is it. If you're the heroine, you've got to be able to conquer your fears and throw yourself into danger without a thought for your own safety. Now, why don't you find out what's happening here, Princess Tutu!"

Aha! OK then.

The sun dims and is replaced with a spotlight on Serafin. A woman in a white dress and a golden tiara steps out of the forest.

"Hello, Serafin."

"What??????"

The woman seems unperturbed by his confusion. "The feeling you are experiencing is not your own. Will you dance with me?"

...He has... a lot of questions. Too many to even begin to articulate.

But Serafin is always ready to dance.

He reaches for her hand, touches his fingertips to hers—

—and spins away, leaping into the air, returning in an instant from confusion to rage.

The dance that expresses his feelings is fast, sharp, chaotic, intense. He never lingers in one place for more than the time it takes to spin or step or leap away, never takes a moment to reorient or catch his breath, never slows down. Flames blossom in his wake, trailing his limbs as they slash the air.

The forest around them lights on fire, as the flames he trails hit the trees around them. Princess Tutu watches his dance with something like sadness, even grief. She doesn't try to put out the fire; she needs to address its source. She answers with a dance of her own - this one is slow, graceful, gentle, open. Listening.

"Why are you in such pain, Serafin?"

"I—don't know—"

He dances faster, burns brighter.

"I hate that teacher! He's annoying and unfair and always getting on my case about paying attention just because I never make excuses when he catches me daydreaming! But why did I just try to fight a tree???"

"The pain you are experiencing is not your own," explains Tutu. "Someone else's anger has made its home in yours." 

"That's not a thing that should be able to happen!!!"

The fire roars with him, spinning into an inferno; it obscures him almost completely, reducing him to nothing but a dark shadow dancing with the flames.

This is strictly more terrifying than beating up the tree. But she isn't terrified; this is what she's here for.

"No," she agrees. "But it does, and so it must be fixed."

"I hate this town!" the shadow yells. "I hate all this weird magic nonsense! Ballet is the only good thing in the world and now that's magic too apparently!! I want to go home!"

—and on home, the fire freezes. He comes to an abrupt halt, panting slightly, poised atop a column of ice-sculpted flames. All the burning trees are frozen too, now, the wreckage suddenly calm and quiet and still and cold.

"Oh, how delightful," says the voice, to itself, in a different place where neither of them can hear it. "How will you go about solving this one, Princess Tutu, when you've only begun to understand this town yourself?"

Her dance is as sad as it was before - acknowledging his grief, and more than that, mirroring his with her own. It isn't fair that he should have to deal with this. She at least answered a call, but the victims of various heart shards have done nothing at all to result in this. Nothing except be in pain.

"Where is your home, Serafin?"

"Thule."

He starts moving again, dancing slower this time.

"It's far away across the ocean and it's the most beautiful place in the world and I haven't seen it since I was ten and I miss it."

His steps take him down his column of ice in a slow spiral, jumping lightly from the curve of one flame to the point of another.

"It sounds lovely. It makes sense that you would miss it after so long, but anger won't bring you closer to it."

She dances towards him and his ice sculpture. She offers him her hand.

He looks at her, and for a moment seems to be all set to erupt in flaming rage again—

—but then he sighs, and takes her hand, and dances her dance.

Her dance is calmer than his, but it has its own life, too. It isn't just sad, and it doesn't just run on grief - there's acceptance, there's appreciation for her current surroundings and her current partner. And there's hope.

"Anger is an important emotion, just like all the others. It spurs us to take action when things are not as they should be. And sometimes it confuses us, leading us to take actions that bring us no closer to the thing we want."

"Like punching trees."

"Yes," she says, laughing. "The heart shard you have has been lost for a very long time, too. Will you let me return it to its proper home?"

"Yes. Please. I have enough anger problems of my own, I don't need anybody else's."

She draws something out of him; it momentarily takes the form of a sort of pale red ghost. It's Mytho, one of the students from his class, except sort of transparent at the moment.

"I am the feeling of anger," says the heart shard. It still looks frustrated, but it's calmed down a lot.

"Yes," says Tutu. "This is not where you belong. Would you like to go home now?"

"Can I go home?"

"Yes."

"Please, take me there."

And so the heart shard returns to the form of a small red object in Tutu's hand, like a shard of broken glass. 

"Goodbye!" says Tutu, smiling at Serafin. "And thank you."

And then she leaps away, too fast for him to follow. He's alone again in a perfectly normal forest, with a single tree that looks a little bit worse for wear.

...what

just

happened????

"Hey!" he yells. "Magic dance lady!" He tries to come up with some sort of question to add to that, but all he's got is— "What?!"