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Méribel Talbot had been in possession of a strange wooden box for a while now. She had found it in a charity shop back home. It was a wooden box with three dark birds carved into the mahogany. The birds had looked identical at first, but, on closer inspection, Méribel had found that they had minuscule differences in design. The birds were not all the same size, and they had different tail and beak shapes. Another thing that Méribel noticed only after she had brought the box was that it did not open. The box had a silver metal latch which appeared rusted shut. That had been disappointing. Méribel had hoped to use it for her Year 8 Gothic Literature Project, but she guessed that wasn't meant to be.
Now, Méribel's parents had decided it was the perfect time to completely uproot Méribel's life by moving to France, her father's home country, after she had spent the first 13 years of her life in England. After many tearful goodbyes to her plethora of friends, Méribel had made a conscious decision to leave her useless wooden box on her desk in her London house; after that, she had reluctantly followed her parents into the car and watched as the city of her childhood sped away. How, she wondered, would Paris ever compare to London?