Elizabeth Muir, Part 1 of 5

Elizabeth did not like pencils.

Or, rather, she did not like hand-sharpeners. Either they barely scraped anything off the end of the pencil, or they scraped too much, and a centimeter of lead would fall out. The old-fashioned hand-cranked sharpeners in her school's classrooms worked decently, but they made awful noises. She was always afraid of breaking her pencil during a test so that she'd have to stand up and have a go at the sharpener, grinding her classmates' nerves like the tip of the pencil.

"Lizzie," came a whisper from the seat beside her.

This startled her enough that the pencil she was using to draw with promptly broke. She sighed.

Ed, who always sat next to her in history class, was leaning over in his seat to look at her paper.

"Who is that?"

"Mrs. Fennerman."

The drawing in front of her was of a plump woman, looking very much like the teacher at the front of the classroom, who was at the moment droning on about the history of China. The woman was about to climb into one of those boxes magicians use for their saw-a-lady-in-two act. The magician off to the side looked particularly menacing with his saw.

Ed stifled a giggle unsuccessfully, which prompted the real Mrs. Fennerman to stop talking and look at them sharply. "Eyes forward, Ed. Elizabeth. Unless you have something you'd like to share with the class?"

Elizabeth thought Mrs. Fennerman's threats were rather cliche. "No, Mrs. Fennerman."

"Very well." And she continued in her monotone.

Ed looked over at her and gave her a conspiratorial smile. She thought about any pencil replacements she might have in her bag, but realized she'd even left her sketching pencil set at home. She lifted up her broken pencil at Ed and raised her eyebrows as a silent question. He nodded, fishing around in his dirty black backpack as quietly as he could, and gave her a stubby Star Wars pencil. It was so short that if it needed sharpening, Chewbacca's head would be cut off. She had to be careful this time.

It was Ed's lucky pencil, so she smiled in thanks. She made the magician's saw a little sharper.