'Like glittering emeralds encased in sunlight, shining pearls.' She stopped, pencil stilling even before her mind starting wandering. Marinette sighed as if it was just a glimpse, just something a little more than the ordinary.

'Mom, how do you know when you have a soulmate sign moment?' She'd stared wide eyed up at her mother years ago.

'Oh, honey, you just know.' Sabine had smiled, 'Don't worry too much about it, because sometimes it only makes sense when you've met him.' She'd shrugged, and Marinette smiled at the old apron that her mother still wore after all these years, decorated with a piece of bread, and the word, Patisserie. Her mother called it one of her clearest signs and wore it almost every day even now.

Marinette traced those words that felt like whispered poetry, elegant, but yet still a mystery. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine him and yet in all of her almost thirteen years he hadn't gotten any clearer to imagine even with the poetry on the page where she was supposed to be designing something to wear for herself.

"So," Alya grinned that wide grin of hers that within the few months that they'd came to know each other always spelled trouble, "You like fashion, right?" She held a 'Gabriel' magazine out as if it were a lifeline.

Marinette stared at the magazine, feeling as if it couldn't be all that great if Alya was carefully holding it away from her, "I do." She liked fashion from watching celebrities wear such beautiful clothes to looking up fashion designers, and yet Marinette had never settled on one that she liked more than the other, because every dress was a new design, a glimpse at the artist, and a sign of the woman wearing it.

She'd rarely looked much at men's fashion, other than half hearted scribbles meant for her soulmate, and that none of them looked at all perfect for him. Her mother told her to wait, and then she'd know when she met him. Marinette just wanted to get started on it sooner than later, so that she'd already be mostly ready by the time that he arrived in her life.

"Here's a gift. I saw it and thought of you." Alya finally handed the magazine over, and Marinette paused as she locked eyes on bright emeralds or rather the eyes of the model on the front. He looked roughly around her age and somehow his clothes made him seem almost elegant, other wordly, and she smiled at just the sight of him.

It really shouldn't be much, but her belly got the excited butterflies in it that sometimes buzzed when she found an outfit or a dress that inspired her. "Who's he?"

"The model or the designer?" Alya teased, and Marinette wondered if there was a reason that Alya had switched from being homeschooled to going to Marinette's school a year earlier than she was going to.

"The model?" Marinette tried, "Both?" If the rest of the magazine looked just as grand as that first design had then she definitely wanted to know who they both were.

"The model's Adrien Agreste." Alya shrugged, "And the fashion designer is his father, Gabriel Agreste."

"Oh, his father is?" Marinette was already looking through the pages of the magazine, seeing Adrien splashed across the pages, and a woman that looked a lot like him. Suddenly, it just felt a little different to flip through the magazine though not enough to make her really think it through.

"Yeah." Alya shrugged, "I just saw that magazine. I don't know much more than what Chloe might have said or what the cover of the magazine says."

Marinette smiled, "I'd like to meet them one day." That was all that was said on that, and Marinette didn't even pause to think on it for another day longer.

Adrien thinks of when his parents first told him about soulmates and how most people had them, but not all. 'You get signs that will slowly lead you into the right direction.' His mother had smiled as she went on to tell him about how lost, she'd get in a sea of strangers and how she'd stopped looking at the face for a while to see the dresses and the suits.

Emilie had laughed as she'd told him how she used to paint dresses, one she'd seen, and yet she never designed a single one. 'I'd get this dream all the time though that I'd be talking to someone that I couldn't see, and he'd walk me through designing a dress for me, and I'd never paused to think on it as more than weird.'

'Why did you have the same dream so much, Mom?' Adrien had asked her once.

'Well, I think it was a sign that I'd meet your father and fall in love with him.' Emilie smiled, 'He's a designer and once I knew that, it made it all make sense, but I used to look for that dress everywhere, and I never found it, but your dad, he made it for me shortly after we met.'

Adrien had always thought of soulmates as so unreal, almost fantasy like despite all of that, and he'd ask his mother so much if any of his dreams sounded like 'soulmate dreams' though not all signs came in quite the same way. He'd only really felt like may be he didn't have a soulmate when he realized that his great aunt on his mother's side had never had one, but when he'd turned five, she'd stunned him with a gift that she bought him.

'Auntie, Auntie.' He'd cheered, because whenever she visited, she usually brought either really fun stuff to do or came up with the most fascinating stories ever.

'Adrien, dear.' She'd smiled, and somehow through her fading blond hair and her wise green eyes, he found himself relaxing, 'I bought you a birthday gift.'

Sadly, when Adrien had opened up the gift, he found something less 'exotic' and less 'cool,' just a little sewing kit like the one that Chloe had begged for a few months ago when she got it in her head that she was destined to be a fashion designer before she complained so much about making her thumb bleed that she just stopped.

'Why?' Adrien had asked, trying to figure out if she was trying to tell him like the people that worked with his dad that one day, he'd follow in Gabriel's footsteps. He couldn't figure out why his auntie would tell him that when people liked to call her a 'spinster' and complain since she'd never followed the path that others would have expected her to.

'Keep it for your soulmate, Adrien.' His auntie had smiled, 'She'll like it.'

Adrien had just decided that may be a lot of girls liked sewing kits or may be he'd just never met her yet, because Chloe hated to sew, and Adrien didn't know many girls. He'd hold it like a lifeline as one of the only signs that he did have a soulmate until one day, he'd grown less interested in it and wondered if really his aunt was as crazy as a lot of people said that she was since she'd never met her soulmate or married anyone. She had no kids, and yet she spoke like she knew something about people's soulmates though Adrien wouldn't say a word about it to her.

He'd always looked forward to her visits as a kid whether she'd just returned from travelling or whether she was just stopping by. Adrien just wasn't sure how much he actually believed her.

As an umbrella was opened up above her head, Marinette saw something that she'd never pieced together before as she glanced up at bright emeralds encased in sunlight as what remained of the bright sun was all in the boy beside her as he apologized for something that he hadn't done.

It truly broke what remained in disbelief inside her when she head him laugh when the umbrella clamped up around her, because that was pure sunshine to her ears. Suddenly, little things made sense: why it took so long to discover her favorite fashion designer, why she'd been stunned short at seeing a picture of Adrien on a Gabriel magazine, why her designs for her future soulmate were inspired off of this model, and why she had written those words down in her notebook.

Marinette was positive that there were probably many signs that she'd overlooked, but in this moment, she didn't care about a single one of them as she'd found someone that she thought that she knew a little from her love of Ultimate Mecha Strike Three to her craving of anime which she hadn't really been super into before, to even trying to hold her tongue when Chloe said something stupid yet again.

Everything made sense as she looked into bright green eyes that were like emeralds straight to her heart, and she knew that everything would be okay as they put all of their confusing, jumbled up pieces of themselves together and truly learned to see every sign in both of their lives that were pointing them to these steps and standing side by side.

When Adrien blinked up at her after they'd stopped laughing, looking a little confused by the look on her face, she felt somewhat emboldened to tell him though not by much, "I-I think you're my soulmate." Her words felt too soft, too small, too insecure, and yet he heard them, and somehow a smile grew on his face where there wasn't one before.

"Do you sew?" Was the first thing out of his mouth, and Marinette laughed as she nodded. Adrien's arms were around her in a second as he worked up the nerve to ask another question, "Do you like Ultimate Mecha Strike?"

He didn't name which game of the three currently out, but Marinette couldn't help it as she answered, "I used to play the first one with my dad all the time when I was younger, and I love the third one that just came out." She wondered if that sounded nerdy, and yet that worry didn't matter as Adrien just held her closer.

"I found you." Adrien was breathless, and Marinette couldn't help but try to hug him a little tighter and just let the moment roll on.

"I found you too." Marinette felt like crying, "I should have known when Alya had given me that magazine a year ago, because you look like the words that I wrote down once, and you became my inspiration for the designs that I draw for my soulmate." She was just as breathless as every word tumbled out, but everything made so much sense especially how her mom had said it all.

Marinette had finally found her soulmate, and he'd found her.