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It hadn't been too long since the events on Dagon, during which Ekstrom had made a mental note of one of the strangest things she'd ever experienced since becoming a fully fledged knight and transcending. It was stranger than when she had first experienced getting sick because she'd waited too long between her visits, though perhaps not quite as strange as the sight of the many patches of colorful wildflowers that had somehow bloomed amidst the typical snowy white of a Destiny City winter. She was on a bench just nearby a cluster of these patches, her thoughts on the events of that evening and the sensation of her magic...resisting her for some reason. She'd turned it over in her mind so many times now but she still couldn't imagine why it suddenly felt that way. It had taken every ounce of her focus and energy to push it out to its maximum coverage, and while she had been under a fair amount of duress given what all was going on it didn't seem like it should have taken as much out of her as it did.

Upon getting home that evening she promptly passed out, feeling far more exhausted from using her magic than she ever had before. She even had to call off work the next day, though she still forced herself to very sleepily try and make progress on her final project. They'd finally given her the date she would be presenting, and she couldn't waste away in bed even if it meant taping her eyelids open while she worked. She very nearly did it, too, but thankfully walking around her apartment while she typed away, one-handed, on her laptop and keeping herself caffeinated helped keep her awake and focused without the need for it.

The exhaustion persisted for another day, though gradually ebbed until she was feeling back to her usual energy levels just a few days later. She tested it on her Wonder again shortly after that, and much to her regret managed to successfully recreate the symptoms. It'd been grating her ever since she recovered for a second time, and she'd been particularly mindful of when she used her magic ever since.

Which annoyed her. And worried her.

Probably more the latter.

So she shot a brief message off to Joy just before taking a seat.


Ekstrom only looked up when she felt an energy signature that was not unlike her own, and she felt a bit of relief wash over her when she saw her friend.

"Hey," she said, doing her best to smile despite what all was weighing on her mind. It didn't quite reach her eyes, but she hoped she looked her usual cheerful self and not quite as tired as she actually felt. "Thanks for coming." Then she pointed at the flowers.

"Weird but pretty, right?"

She folded her arms over her legs and leaned forward slightly, watching Joy as she plucked up some flowers despite her words. It bolstered her smile some, and she eased back onto the bench and turned slightly to watch as she began to braid the colorful blossoms into her hair. “Suits you,” she said, choosing not to comment on what she imagined was the last of the black eye she mentioned she’d gotten on Dagon. She vaguely remembered seeing Joy there, but there was so much going on that she didn’t get a chance to touch base with her while there. “The flowers, I mean,” she added after a beat, just to be clear.

She took a heavy breath when the question came, then shook her head. “Nothing dire,” she replied, her hands shifting so they were resting on the edge of the bench. “Just. I noticed something off with my magic while I was on Dagon. I’m asking around, trying to see if anyone else felt anything or…I don’t know. Ever felt anything weird with their magic before.” She tapped her fingers on the wood of the bench as she leaned forward again, eyes on the tips of her boots as though she felt guilty for sharing. She knew Joy was going through her own things and probably didn’t need her to pile on to them, but she needed help and there were few people she was comfortable reaching out to about this kind of thing.

“I was basically out for a whole day after using not even a quarter of my magic pool. Took days to feel normal. I thought I shook it off, but when I tried again.” She shrugged. “It happened again, so I’ve just been…not really using my magic, I guess. Which I hate, but.” Her brows furrowed, the frustration surfacing the more she explained. “I’ve still got my big project at school to worry about, not to mention work. I can’t be out for days, so…”

She was hoping for something a little more reassuring, but in a way maybe this was just as reassuring as the more common “everything is gonna be okay” sorts of lines. It meant that her worries weren’t unfounded, and that she wasn’t necessarily overthinking.

“Not exactly like this, no,” she said, thinking back on specific encounters involving other knights and their magic. “I helped a Saturn Knight try to sort out his magic once, said there was something going on with it. I asked another friend of mine but he was out of the game until a little more recently so he couldn’t tell me much. You’re the only other person I’ve asked besides him, so far.” Ekstrom glanced over at her, her lips spread in a weak smile at mention of her Code Piece. She’d be lying if she said she agreed with Joy on this aspect. She was still fond of hers even after everything, and had made her peace with the decisions it made with regard to…how she started out.

“I haven’t used mine since I tested it out to see if it was just something on Dagon. It wasn’t, and I’m waiting to head back up to my Wonder until after my presentation to see if my Code Piece can tell me anything.” She could sense the bit of anxiety coming from Joy and tensed slightly at the prospect of coming out of another conversation still without any real answers.

She gripped the edge of the bench now, brows furrowed in thought. “Well. What’s ‘normal ******** up’ for you? And was it different before, or was it always like that?” Though, god forbid this was meant to be a permanent change…

She made a little “o” with her mouth when Joy gestured to her face, then nodded when she mentioned waiting too long. That was a constant, and it wasn’t usually an issue for her because she loved going up to her Wonder. With the exception of the last month or so, she went as often as she could. School was keeping her from doing that of late, but she was nearly done with that so she’d be back to a normal schedule soon enough.

Ekstrom looked up at the suggestion of overextending herself, wondering on it a moment but ultimately shrugging. “Not sure. Think I’ll add that to my list of questions to my Code Piece, though. Be good to know if it is.”

She paused, running the idea through what she did know—which, she found, wasn’t much in the grand scheme. Her focus ever since becoming a knight had been so much on her Wonder that she spent far little time learning about knights on the whole. She made a mental note to change that once this was all sorted.

“It sounds plausible though, doesn’t it? I mean, we could run out of magic in a fight. Wouldn’t be surprising if there was a bigger battery that could tap out. Maybe it’s the opposite of when we don’t visit our Wonders often enough?”

Ekstrom shifted, turning so she was properly facing Joy as she spoke. What she described was familiar to her, and she managed a little smile. “I passed out once, trying to force my way in and go too soon. Before I learned about the timing and limitations and stuff.” She fought back a frown as she tried to wrap her head around something like that for fighting, and around what Joy was describing.

“Limitations to our fighting and how often we can use certain things.” It was more statement than question the way she sounded. She huffed, the sound wry and disbelieving, as she shifted to lean back against the bench, her hands and fingers tired from how tightly she’d been holding onto it. “I feel like we should fill a notepad full of our questions for how this knight…hood, I guess, actually works,” she said after again coming to the same conclusion that she just didn’t know enough. It was starting to feel like no one knew enough. “And I could throw it all at once at my Code Piece.”

Circling back around to the beginning, though, she shook her head. “I mean, I could have been? It almost felt like it didn’t want to come to me—my magic, I mean—so I did reach pretty hard before I got it. So…maybe?”

She was really starting to hate that word…

Ekstrom closed her eyes, taking in Joy's words and considering them for a moment. She had, admittedly, been stretched pretty thin over the past several weeks. The stress of it all had no doubt been cutting into her sleep, which she already did very little of before things started to get particularly hectic, so...maybe. Ugh.

"School, soon," she eventually answered, purposely putting off answering what might have been an unasked question about her personal life. Not that Joy wasn't already privy to the disaster that it was, but there was something that she had yet to share with her. "It's just my presentation left. After that, assuming I pass, maybe another week to do any required revisions." She looked thoughtful as she mentally calculated around when she could expect to finish. "So...by around Christmas, probably, I can take school off the list." Saying it out loud made her visibly relax, as though doing so made it that much more of a reality. She even managed a small smile. "So maybe that'll help if this is an overall battery issue."

And then she circled back to the personal life non-question, which wiped the smile right off her face. Stifling a groan, she slumped over and leaned heavily against her friend.

"Personal life stress might take its place, though," she said wearily. "Latest development: I met a guy online who, at the end of a really, really good date, told me that he'd been lying to me about who he was the entire time."

Ekstrom frowned.

"Yeah, that would've been nice. He said something like 'I would have hated meeting the real him' or something like that," she grumbled, looking down at the petals that were strewn across the snow on the ground by Joy's feet. "It just sounded like an updated version of that 'it's not you, it's me' line."

She let her thoughts wander back to that date and all their previous conversations and, like ripping off the scab of a wound still in the early stages of healing, she felt a fresh surge of irritation and frustration and embarrassment about the whole thing.

Less embarrassment in front of Joy, though. The woman had seen the worst that her love life had thrown at her, so. This was bad, but somehow felt like it paled in comparison.

"Anyway, how would he know if I wouldn't want to know the real him? And hell, how would I know? I didn't actually know anything about him! Other than he's a liar, so I guess that's plenty." She scoffed, adding, "Y'know, I don't even know if the name he gave me was real!" Straightening out then, she very bitterly spat it out.

"Kay."

She sat fully up when Joy moved away, a worry that Joy might have been upset at her for falling for something like that starting to needle its way into her mind when she looked over at her. The words that erupted from the Earth Knight made her eyes widen slightly, though, and she blinked and stared openly at her as she went on.

"Yeah, that's him," was all she managed at the question about whether it was that Kay. If she'd taken him under her wing it could have been through work or knight things, but either way it was clear that Joy knew him, and certainly better than she knew him by the sounds of it. She sat listening as her friend, after a brief pause as though catching herself, proceeded to continue to go off about what she would do to the man.

And she smiled, the expression back to being as bright as it usually was.

Not exactly because of what Joy was describing, though that was pretty satisfying to hear too, but because it just...felt good to hear someone be so angry for her. It made her feel a better knowing someone was on her side. Not that she ever doubted it, but hearing it was a little different from simply knowing it.

"That'd definitely be something," she said, stifling a laugh at the picture that Joy's words had conjured in her mind. "Seeing him hanging by his mustache." It wasn't her favorite, but he made it work for him somehow.

She was looking a little bit more cheerful as she scooted to the edge of the bench again, her blue eyes alight with curiosity as she looked up at Joy.

"So you actually know this guy?"