Wild Hearts || Miraculous Ladybug

8|| A Sliver of Similarity

It was a slow day at Francoise Dupont. Students and teachers alike milled around the halls, slowly making their way to class. A calm buzz filled the school, too lethargic to be considered excitable and too energetic to be gloomy. Perhaps the best way to describe it was a lazy joy.

Elizabeth's class was no different. As they waited for the day to start, her peers talked among themselves in hushed whisper. Not a single person, even Chloe, was willing to break the comforting silence.

Elizabeth wasn't entirely sure what the cause for the calm was, but she didn't care to find out. She was simply grateful for the rare peace. After all, she knew that it was only a matter of time until the next akumatizaiton. Until she found Hawkmoth and put a stop to his actions, the people of Paris would never be able to be carefree.

The dirty blonde closed her eyes and leaned against the back of the wooden bench, taking some time to soak in the atmosphere. She heard her teacher come in and start attendance once the bell rang. When her name was called, Elizabeth merely lifted her hand, not even bothering to open her eyes.

Well, until she heard the loud clang.

She looked downward to see that Marinette had tripped on her way through the door. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in amusement as the bluenette stuttered and apologized to Miss Bustier, rushing to take her seat. Luckily for her, their teacher was a benevolent one, saying nothing about Marinette's tardiness and continued on with the roll call.

"Alix?" Miss Bustier called out, glancing up to the short pink-haired girl in the second row. She raised her hand and declared her presence. Miss Bustier smiled and glanced down to the next name on her clipboard. "Nathaniel?"

A second of silence passed. Without another thought, Elizabeth reached out and poked Nathaniel in the side. He blinked, tearing himself out of his sketchbook to see what was going on. Seeing the clipboard, he called down, "Oh- here!" and went back to doodling like nothing had happened. Just like he usually did.

Once attendance was called, Miss Bustier started her lecture. Normally, Elizabeth would be right on it, paying close attention and taking notes when necessary. However, today, she couldn't help but let her thoughts wander. Her hand slowly drifted to her leather tan purse, silently unzipping the top of it so her fingers could rest on the cool metal of the broken miraculous.

Her little experiment with the metal had made Elizabeth confident that the kwami could hear the outside world, and somewhat interact with it. Silver disagreed with her (and Jumbe just stayed out of it), but there was nothing the magpie could say that could change her mind. Since then, Elizabeth had begun to take the necklace around with her wherever she went, in hopes of finding a way to communicate with the kwami inside. So far, she was admittedly not doing so well with that.

It wasn't for a lack of trying. Elizabeth had attempted many different things already. She initially tried to communicate with the kwami by asking it to form the metal into different shapes or move it in a different direction. It didn't go well, and she quickly realized that her plan was very flawed. After all, she had no idea or proof that the kwami could actually shape the metal or control its minute movements—only that some of its abilities could leak out into the world to fling metal away.

With her first attempt a complete failure, Elizabeth tried to talk to the kwami through a sort of "yes or no" system. The idea behind it was if the answer to a question was yes, the kwami would deflect the metal, whereas if it was no, the kwami would not. Yet again, it did not go as planned. From this, Elizabeth was beginning to think that the kwami didn't have any control over if its abilities leaked out or not. Well, that or the kwami simply couldn't hear her at all. While both of these thoughts seemed to be reasonable and rather likely, Elizabeth just didn't think that was the case. Something deep in her gut was telling her that there was something else going on here that she wasn't seeing, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out what.